Second Term - A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 1) by John Price

the voting strength the President now enjoyed, again, in both Houses of
Congress. We didn’t know at first what the Administration’s bill would include.
The White House Press Secretary assured reporters days after their election
victory that the bill would “include carrots and sticks”.
    We soon learned that
the ‘carrots’ part of the bill was a variation of the old ‘cash for clunkers’
program that caused many Americans to turn in their older automobiles in
exchange for cash payments from the federal government. Some federal genius
must have decided that if it worked for old cars, how about old guns? This gave
Americans very little credit for discerning the difference between wheels to
travel and a weapon to protect one’s life and family. We hoped that very few
gun-owning Americans would give up their defense against death and mayhem for
only five hundred dollars, or in the case of a rifle or shotgun, only seven
hundred dollars. But, if the bill that ended up passing included financial
incentives, given the depressed state of the economy and widespread
unemployment, we knew that only time would tell how many Americans out of work,
and in need of cash, would end up turning in their guns, motivated by the
payment.
    What was not leaked
until the text of the bill was released was what the President’s Press
Secretary meant by ‘sticks’ to be included in the anti-gun bill to insure compliance?
A felony charge and conviction, with a ten year prison term, certainly
qualified as a ‘stick’, if not a whole bag of sticks. The New York Times
exulted that:
     Finally, America
will get over its sick love affair with    deadly weapons. Most thinking Americans,
particularly in crime-impacted cities, and the blue states on the     two
coasts, will step up, voluntarily do the right thing       and turn in their
guns. Undoubtedly, though the           turning over of guns will be motivated
in some parts of          the country only by the proposed time in prison, a
stiff         enough sentence that no American should willingly           want to
endure it, just to pack heat.
    Once the nation had
learned what the bill actually included, the battle lines that had been forming
and loosely coalescing hardened into battle formation. The friends, supporters,
associates and sycophants of the Administration were, of course, united in
supporting 113 S.-1. No one was surprised by their intensity and fervor, at all
levels, in organizing their members, and their family members, to push the
Congress to pass the bill. Likewise, the conservative, tea party, patriot
associations, and many Christian organizations, organized to exert their
members and families’ maximum pressure on their members of Congress. No surprise
there, either. The frantic recruiting efforts by both sides, though, centered
on organizations and leaders of private associations that had not historically
been aligned on either side of the gun debate, or had no prior history of
interest in freedom of the press or speech issues.
    Both sides
instinctively knew that the final outcome came down not to what Congress did,
but instead to what a handful of blue dog Democrats and liberal Republicans in
both Houses, a total of less than eighty Members, would do when the determining
votes were cast. The vote on the health care reform debate provided the outline
for victory for the White House, in that a bill strongly dis-favored by most
Americas, nevertheless, became the law of the land, even though by only seven
votes in the U.S. House of Representatives. Political pundits in the days after
the McAlister Bill was released speculated that the odds slightly favored the
passage of the bill, primarily because of the healthcare reform outcome.
    Senator Blevins let
it be known soon after the bill was made public that he intended to put the
opponents of his bill on the defensive, announcing in his initial news
conference how he intended to do