Trump spoke at the NRA convention in Dallas to a hero’s welcome.  David Codrea has other thoughts.

No one is expecting the president to exceed his authority or the proper bounds of federalism, but the office does come with a bully pulpit and, depending on your point of view, the man is either famous or notorious for issuing public statements through Twitter. If we’re to believe the “assault on [our] Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end,” what kind of statements would it be reasonable to expect when states are infringing on a right articulated in “the supreme Law of the Land”?

Donald “Ban the bump stocks take the guns first” Trump was heralded at the NRA convention, but by my calculus he has given us (a) a progressive Ninth Circuit judge, (b) a bump stock ban, (c) Fix-NICS, (d) more funding for the CDC to pump out anti-gun garbage.

Tim Harmsen, whom I like and whose videos I enjoy, was interviewed by NPR.  Normally I’d say as I always do, “The first rule of gun club is don’t talk about gun club.”  But NPR did a fair job.

The National Rifle Association’s annual meeting begins Friday in Dallas, and some members of the organization plan to voice their discontent with the positions the NRA has taken in the past year.

Lifetime member Tim Harmsen, the owner of Copper Custom Gun Shop in Valparaiso, Ind., and the creator and host of the Military Arms Channel on YouTube, says he’s bringing boxes of T-shirts that reflect his disappointment.

“The shirts say ‘NRA: Not Real Activists.’ So, we’re not happy with the direction that [NRA leaders] Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox have taken,” Harmsen says. “They think that the resolution to all that ails the country is constant compromise on our constitutional rights, and there’s a growing number of us who are dissatisfied with that.”

They constantly negotiate our rights away. And my opinion is this — that in a compromise, it’s assumed that both parties will get something of equal value, and that’s not what happens. We don’t really compromise — we surrender our rights, endlessly trying to appease the factions that simply want to erase the Second Amendment as though it never existed….

Two issues that they’ve recently pushed through with the assistance of Trump is their NICS fix, which is an expansion of the NICS background check system, which has about a 97 percent false positive rate. … The NRA originally wrote the bill during the Clinton administration, and then they had President Trump expand it, which is a de facto waiting period for most Americans. It inaccurately flags most people.

Then, the second thing that they did is bump stock regulation. It’s really poorly written, and it goes so far as to tell you how to get around the regulations change.

I’m going for two reasons: First of all, I’m a voting member, and I plan to vote — and we keep trying to vote in a board that more reflects the opinions of the membership, which is myself and a large number of NRA members. If you get online and look, go through the discussion forms (sic) and the pro-Second Amendment forms (sic), you’ll see what I’m saying is true….

You’d think that NPR could at least get the word forum right.  As I said, I like Tim, but I don’t believe in compromise.  The problem is not just that we don’t really compromise and the other side gets everything.  The fundamental problem is that when God has spoken and decreed rights, man has no business stepping in to intercede in that right.  Man usurps the position of God, and it makes Him angry.  It also makes men who love God angry.

The problem with the bump stock ban isn’t that it is poorly written, or that it’s a slippery slope, or that we didn’t get anything in the compromise.  If it was well written and we got something in the give-and-take, it’s still wrong.

All gun control is wicked.  Compromise is evil when God has spoken and dictated the terms and conditions of our existence.  But always remember what Trump said in the debates, and what I’ve rehearsed here on these pages many times.

“Everything is negotiable.”