There are a lot of states with vast differences that really shouldn't be compared. Texas and California are a prime example that springs to mind. While both are large and offer a lot of electoral votes to a presidential candidate, that's about where the similarities end politically.
But the states of Tennessee and Montana aren't nearly so far apart, and on Tuesday night, they showed the problem with anti-gunners thinking they know what rural America wants.
First, let's look at Tennessee.
In that case, Tennessee State Rep. Gloria Johnson thought it was time to move up in the world. She made a name for herself grandstanding for gun control during Tennessee's special legislative session after the Nashville shooting. She and two others made royal pains of themselves, though she didn't go so far that she was expelled from the legislature, but her predilection for gun control was clear for everyone to see.
With her state House constituents, that wasn't that big of a deal.
Yet she apparently thought it would work for the state as a whole. How did that work out for her?
Well, all the votes haven't been counted, but there's not much chance of there being a big change at this point, in which case Johnson got absolutely curb-stomped. Sen. Marsha Blackburn won with a nearly 30-point lead. Johnson barely got more than a third of the votes in a state that knows her pretty well.
But she was pretty out and proud of her gun control agenda. That's probably what did it, right?
Well, in the Montana gubernatorial race, former firearms company employee turned gun control activist Ryan Busse didn't talk about how he'd started making money from anti-gun organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety. He actually failed to mention being anti-gun pretty much at all.
And he still only got a shade under 38 percent of the vote.
Again, not every vote has been counted, but there aren't enough outstanding to make that much of a difference.
The two candidates took different approaches but reached the same destination: Humilitation.
Why? Because contrary to what some might want to believe, rural Americans aren't somehow ignorant of the world around them. They have the internet unless they've specifically chosen not to. They have social media. They have the knowledge of how to look for alternative news media that isn't controlled by the left. More than that, even if they have none of these things they have neighbors who do.
You can't pretend to be pro-gun or gun-neutral.
Moreover, these are folks who live in places where there may only be a couple of cops on duty at any given time and they might be on the other side of the county when someone decided to bust in your door. These are folks who have to worry about more than two-legged predators. They value their guns because they value their lives.
You can't hide your anti-gun activism from them and hope they're just too stupid to see through it. Both Johnson and Busse tried it and they got shelacked for their troubles. May it happen over and over again.
