Memory Hole

I mentioned a TTAG article a couple years ago...

This dead link in fact: http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/11/firearmconcierge/voted-hillary-clinton/

Other articles of his are still there, both before and after the date of posting.

If you search for that author and Clinton, you will find he's never mentioned her even once.

But he did.

According to the Wayback Machine, by November 19, 2016 the article was no longer there.

But the internet is forever...

And here's the article:

It seems that every time a gun writer talks about supporting something on the “other side” they’re banished to the fringes of the community. Look at Jerry Tsai. His crime? Supporting the status quo regarding the sale and purchase of machine guns. Mr. Tsai lost his job and became a disgraced former gun writer. Yesterday I made the decision to vote for Hillary Clinton. While that might sound like a “crime” worthy of the Jerry Tsai lynch mob, the logic behind it is as solid as any merchant of death could muster.
Let’s start here: no matter what Hillary might have wanted to do to the Second Amendment, in reality she needed both chambers of Congress to make anything happen. Without the support of the House and the Senate she would have been just as powerless as Barack Obama. With both of those chambers against her (as it turned out), any non-Executive Actions she would have taken against the Second Amendment would have been blocked by Congress.
So Hillary wasn’t that great a danger to gun rights. The next logical question: which candidate would make me the most money?
On a macro level, Hillary Clinton was the obvious choice. She might be more corrupt than a floppy disk in a magnet factory, but she’s a known quantity.  She would have kept the stock market happy and my retirement account growing — aside from the quarter million rounds of .22LR and stripped lowers in my diversified portfolio. Wall Street would have kept chugging along and hopefully that rising tide would have lifted all boats.
That’s all good, but the micro economic argument was the real reason I voted for Hillary Clinton.
My business is firearms, and business is booming. Over the last eight years, a large part of the rise in firearms ownership has been the constant fear that, one way or another, a government crackdown on guns is imminent. The buying spike after Sandy Hook and other events is proof of this “panic buying” mentality.
Simply put, those of us in the gun business are in the business of fear, whether founded in reality or not. Now that Republicans have control of Congress and the White House, the constant threat of a government crackdown has evaporated. Gun sales will slump, prices will drop, and I’ll have to start selling plasma to supplement my income.
Again. Post Sandy Hook 2013, we had a MASSIVE slump in the industry that killed off a lot of firearm retailers with marginal balance sheets and limited staying power.
If Hillary Clinton had won there would have been an immediate bump in firearms sales during the remainder of November and December, as people started panic buying before the inauguration in January. But that would have been just the tip of the iceberg.

Just as with Obama, Hillary would have perpetually demanded that “something must be done to prevent gun violence,” introducing new gun control legislation that she wouldn’t have the ability to implement. For a firearms dealer she couldn’t do a better job of bringing in new business if she was standing in front of my office and handing people hundred dollar bills.

Again, all the anti-gun rights political posturing wouldn’t have had any impact on our beloved Constitutionally-protected civil rights. The business is fear, and our stock in trade is political rhetoric.
Another benefit of a Democrat in the White House: the increasing number of gun owners. There’s a large proportion of people coming through my door who already own guns and want to get that one last AR-15 receiver before they’re banned. But a surprisingly large number are brand new shooters.

A perceived impending ban on firearms is an excellent driver to get people to try out firearms for the first time and start investing in my products. Their business not only provides an immediate cash infusion, it also gives me a larger pool of clients to market my wares to in the future. More gun owners are a good thing, and there’s no doubt that Obama has done a much better job of recruiting NRA members than either President Bush did.

Looking at how the election impacts me and my bottom line, there was only one logical thing to do: vote for Hillary Clinton. She was the candidate who would increase my personal bottom line, probably wouldn’t have done any lasting damage to my Constitutionally protected civil rights, and would have increased the number of gun owners in the United States.

Hillary Clinton would have been great for business — even while trying with every fiber of her being to put me out of a job. I’m with her. Well, I was.

Way to stand behind your position, Dude.