Gun owners and our family and friends, listen up. That little FOID card in your wallet isn’t a participation trophy from the Illinois State Police’s backlog Olympics. It’s a reminder that your rights hang by a thread in this state, and the only people who can cut that thread further are the ones who win elections.
Hunters, same deal. If you want to keep filling your freezer instead of filling out more forms and waiting months for the privilege, you need to vote. Ditto for those who love the great outdoors, including anglers (men and women) and farmers. Vote your rights. Vote your guns.
And not just you. Drag your buddies with you—the ones who own guns, know the difference between a FOID and a fantasy, and understand that a sheriff or state’s attorney in their county can do more damage to their daily life than whatever’s happening in Washington.
Skip the people who still think Chicago’s gang violence is caused by law-abiding FOID holders downstate. Bring the people who get it: friends, family, the guy at the range who actually knows what PICA is. Local offices matter most. Those are the ones that decide whether a self-defense case in your county gets treated like justice or a political show trial.
Macon County Sheriff Jim Root.
Your vote actually matters. Just ask Jim Root, the GSL regular who ran for Macon County Sheriff. The Democrat allegedly won by one vote. After a recount, Root won. The loser then refused to leave office for two years while the courts sorted it out and finally certified the results. One stinkin’ vote decided who wears the badge in Decatur. That’s not a theory or a campaign slogan. That’s Illinois, where every race can turn on a handful of ballots and the losing side sometimes treats the courthouse like a hostage situation. By the way, Jim Root’s running this cycle.
People keep asking what they can do for the current administration’s anti-globalist, pro-American agenda. Here’s the most immediate answer: vote in the midterms, and make sure a dozen of your right-thinking friends do the same. Midterms usually reward the side that’s angrier and more organized—the party out of power shows up because they’re desperate. The cable news hacks and mainstream media types are already declaring Democrat victory from their Chicago studios, trying to further demoralize pro-gun voters. However, pro-gun Republican enthusiasm is matching or beating theirs. Enthusiastic voters show up. Apathetic ones explain to their grandkids why the local state’s attorney treats every self-defense case like a hate crime and why their FOID renewal took longer than a Chicago winter.
Remember Ann Selzer’s final Iowa poll before the 2024 election? The one every cable news talking head called the “gold standard”? In a state Trump had carried by ten points in both 2016 and 2020, she had Harris beating him by three. Trump won by thirteen—the biggest margin there since Nixon’s 1972 landslide. That’s a sixteen-point miss from the “Queen of Polling.” Most of the same prestigious outfits that swore Hillary Clinton would romp in an electoral landslide (she was so confident she campaigned in Texas at the end) and that Kamala would coast in 2024 are now predicting a Democrat midterm wave. The polling industry seems to make money not by being right, but by telling lies and pretending the math backs them up. They’ve got a lot in common with the “scientists” who told us we’d all be underwater by now from global warming and that the COVID shots were safe and effective. If you still believe Dr. Fauci that the virus didn’t come from a Wuhan lab, and if you think Greta Thunberg and Al Gore are brilliant climate scientists, you might believe the pollsters too.
Don’t. The people who want your FOID number, your magazine capacity, and your self-defense rights are counting on you staying home because the polls look bad. Prove them wrong. Vote, and bring the people who understand what this election means for Illinois gun owners. Local races first. Your freezer, your rights, and Jim Root’s old race all depend on it.