To every "Reagan is the best" guy here just remember the following.


He advocated for the ban of semi autos after he left the White House.

He helped ban an entire class of small arm from new ownership, full stop.*

He help give the Bush Clan more power and influence then they would have EVER been able to achieve on their own and set up us for the cluster fuck of Bush and Son admins and harm they caused.

He raised taxes many times in office, for spend cuts, that never came, he should have known better then to trust the enemy party

He gave 3 million invaders citizenship, in exchange for a secure border after the amnesty, once again that NEVER came, knowing better then to trust the enemy party.

He gave away 55 Electoral College Votes away maybe for a generation, if not Permanently because of that Amnesty, never mind the loss of income, jobs decrease in the quality of and sky rocketing cost of life because of it, never mind red districts, cities, states, seats, etc going blue because of it.


He started and pushed for NAFTA proof and "Wonderful" impact it has had.

You didn't live through the Carter years made Obama seem like the Clinton years.

And there wasn’t and hasn’t been one more conservative president 30 years before or after him. Lol, he was a Democrat and the former president of a union, and he’s still the most conservative president in the 60 years surrounding him....wtf does that say?

The 80's....your what 24 ?

Oh, and he followed Jimmy Carter, rebuilt a decimated military(carters military would have been good to come to a draw in gulf war 1) and ever heard of stagflation..... look it up.....misery index....again, look it up

Well, if you understand the Constitution as well as you claim to, then you know that the Supreme Court was set up to interpret it, not you. So, unless the Supreme Court defines "shall not be infringed" the same way you do, then you lose. Unfortunately, they have not taken up that issue, so far. They've preferred to work around and not address the full meaning of that phrase. Until they do, you're idea of what it means is meaningless.

Oh, and I grew up under Eisenhower and all the other presidents thereafter and Reagan was the best president of all of them except for President Trump. So far I rate President Trump above President Reagan. President Reagan was not responsible for that crap machinegun ban the FOPA 1986. He asked the NRA if he should veto it or not and they told him not to. So, there's that. And, I worked for the old I&NS and Reagan was a great president for our agency (President Trump is even better for ICE).

He made a deal with congress to allow the democrat's crap Amnesty program in exchange for laws to allow I&NS to investigate, prosecute, and fine or imprison employers who knowingly employ illegal and unauthorized aliens. That created the first time that all employers in the US had to check their prospective employees for documentation to prove that they were authorized to work. The democrats screwed up that with the Employment Eligibility Verification I-9 form that prohibited employers from asking for specific documents to back up their claims on the form. The alien/prospective employee had the option to show their prospective employer whatever documents they wanted to present as long as  they were among those listed on the approved documents list.

Since you're too young to remember, there was a country called Iran that had the Shah of Iran as their leader. He was a friend of the US and was a dictator that ruled Iran with an iron fist. Unfortunately, the opposition was those aligned with the radical anti-American mullahs. The Shah was deposed and Ayatollah Khomeini took over and his stooges (some college students, some not) attacked the US Embassy and took the embassy personnel captive. They were held captive for over a year while President Jimmy Carter fumbled around for over a year. Ronald Reagan won the presidential election and the next day the Iranian "students" released all of their hostages. President Reagan didn't have a chance to order a rescue operation.

Another incident involved Moamar Khadafy, dictator of Libya who had been constantly taking part in funding terrorist attacks and running terrorist training camps in Libya for various Arab terrorist groups. President Reagan ordered a bombing run on one of Khadafy's homes (he wasn't there, but, his daughter was and was killed). Khadafy immediately stopped his aggressively anti-American actions and threats (until he had some of his terrorists put a bomb on a commercial airlines flight that blew up over Lockerbie, England). That was the last terrorist act that Khadafy fronted until his death at the hands of his countrymen, care of Hillary Clinton and her ineptitude. Khadafy was no longer a threat and he was stabilizing Libya from turning into a base for ISIS and Al Qaeda, which is starting to take place now.

Why do conservatives love Reagan?  Two words:  JIMMY CARTER.

It's like Trump compared to Obama.  Anything less than total failure looks great by comparison.

Wait...feels over facts?

I'm in this thread to learn, I'm open minded to both sides as I'm older than OP, but was still too young to follow politics. But this post sums up that it was more of an emotional thing with this guy than revering anything he actually did.

Very informative post, thank you.

He still had a Democrat congress.......And the man at least spoke like an American. There was a reason his nickname was the "Great Communicator"

He had a Republican Senate for his first 6 years.

No, you're misunderstanding.  The reason people look back on the Reagan years with such fondness is what his policies did for America.

We can argue illegal alien amnesties, deficit spending and Soviet foreign policy all day long, and in truth we did kick the can down the road in financial matters, but he brought ACTUAL hope and change.  We won a 40-year Cold War, becoming the world's sole superpower.  The economy became strong. It was just plain damned good to be an American.

OP thinks like am edgey hipster millenial.

What change? Beside Jihadists having a base, handing over more 2nd Amendment cake, 3 million new welfare voters, open border, and losing 55 EC votes in CA, never mind his push for NAFTA.

Please, do go on.

Because before him, we had Jimmy Carter as President........

Oh look, the semi-annual Reagan derp thread. I think it’s starting to get more airtime than the old Creationism versus Evolution standby.

I can’t help but think there is a connection to it and the increasing attraction to Russian historical narratives.

I stand corrected. This thread is dumber than most.

What does this even mean?

We have a winner here!!!!

Also the fact that Reagan was dealing with a Democrat house, but he did made the Soviets drive themselves into bankruptcy.

As the Soviets became weaker the people of Poland revolted against the commie installed government and it started a chain reaction. This could not have been done as "peacefully" if Reagan didn't play the arms race game. He also played hardball with the Soviets, didn't take their shit and when they did try to pull some BS, he stepped away from the table until they got to their senses to come back under his terms.

Look at our defense Expenditures as percent of gdp then compare that to the Soviet’s.  Reagan bankrupted the, by making war so expensive that the soviets couldn’t afford to keep up.

OP was born after and I'm in before Miami

I'm sorry, you are too young to remember what it was like for all of the country to love America. People love to slam  reagan, but that was the last time that this country was united and took pride in what we were

I was born in '78 so there is a lot I did not experience.  Here is Jimmy Carter's infamous "Malaise" speech from July 15, 1979.



Here is Reagan's Farewell address, just before HW's inauguration:



The difference between the two of them is just as stark as the difference between Trump and Obama.

life is a compromise. your commie teachers never learned this lesson.

Please provide detailed opinions on why I should have voted for Carter and Mondale over Reagan?

Reagan was not perfect but he was FAR better than those two democrat candidates.

Same for Bush Sr. versus Dukakis.

Do you think Barry Goldwater was a staunch conservative that you could understand conservatives "worshipping"?

If you say "yes" you better rethink that because he supported the 1994 AWB and his public opinion was "no one has a need for a semi auto rifle".

No one is perfect, you will always find faults..........grow up.

Reagan reversed the trend of the libtard MANIA sweeping across America during the Carter years.

Releasing them at the change of an administration allowed the Iranians to save face and get out of a situation that was becoming too hot for them. It could have been any new president.

That is your opinion. Thank you for sharing.

Don't be talking the truth it'll confuse us.

Although there were a few things I really disliked about the Reagan administration, and the Iran-Contra Scandal is really unforgivable, there are a lot of things about Reagan I can admire, especially now.

Reagan was intelligent. He wrote a lot of his own speeches, and he used grownup, multi-syllable words. People could always understand what he was talking about, even when his mind started to deteriorate during his last years. He delivered speeches very well. In my memory, only Obama delivered speeches better.

During press conferences, he treated reporters as professionals, part of the fabric of democracy, even when he didn't like their questions.

He reportedly was a very nice man, treating even minor employees with respect and kindness.

From all accounts, he sincerely loved his wife, and treated her with great deference. For example, he never said on radio that he would no longer love his wife if she did not have big tits.

In short, Reagan was not a pussy-grabbing president. He had class.

In his later years Barry Goldwater lost his way and went against his base principles.

At the time I was really upset about it but he was losing it.

Just wait until OP learns that the founding fathers owned slaves.

I liked the VAST majority of his ideology.......I am wired in a way that I liked the bulk of what he believed.

But no one is perfect, Goldwater had his faults and that is to be expected in the real world.

Now I understand when we are younger we are more inclined to demand perfection but when we get older and more worn down by decades of reality we realize that that is a la' la' land perspective and we end up just having to accept the fact that NO ONE is perfect.

That is just the way it is IMHO and that will never change.

Well, well, well...aren’t you just a shining jewel of colossal ignorance, OP?

nailed it.

Trust me, after four years of Carter, you would have thought he was awesome too.

And this too.

I'm guessing this is a generational thing - our younger ARFCOM members don't get this because, well, you had to be there to understand it.

If you WERE there, you would remember the DOUBLE DIGIT INFLATION, and Carter somehow feeling it was a priority to tell us about the "adultery in his heart" while the country was falling apart.

Sorry your girl lost

Your cunt lost, all hail the God Empower as he bathes in your salty liberal tears as you melt into a puddle of low-energy hysterics.

Reagan fucked up on machine guns and import bans, no question.  Were he alive today with a chance to do it over, I have no doubt he would realize that too.  He did give us FOPA though (for as little used as it is).

You people bashing on Reagan because he fucked up on a few key points about gun rights (and no question, he did) need to remember one thing: if the Democrats had continued to run the show from 1980 to now, without Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2, you would not have any gun rights left by now.

We would already be living under English or Australian style gun control, and this website would never have existed, because none of you younger people would have ever owned an AR-15 in the first place.

I hope Mr. "Born in 1989" OP will take that into consideration, when he condemns Mr. Reagan, who despite some mistakes was an otherwise truly great man.

It really amazes me how the libs have been able to change the narrative about things over time.  Everybody who lived through the 70s and 80s knew that we were losing the Cold War, and that Reagan turned that around and that he caused the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Nobody would have questioned that in the early 90s.  But, over time, libs introduced their "It was going to fall anyway" and "Gorbachev was the hero" narratives, and  now most of the people who started school after 1990 believe it.

The truth is that we have had three competent Presidents since 1789: Washington, Polk and Reagan.  There were a few others who didn't screw up too badly.  The rest were horrible decision makers, including Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln and FDR.  Some good things may have happened during their terms, but in was in spite of the President, not because of him.

I think that is quite a good premise.

Additionally, looking at history and expecting people to behave and think like the world of today is also maddening; Philosophy is ever changing including that on firearms ownership and freedom.  The whole gun rights sold away thing kills me as people tend to forget that while there were no assault weapons bans in those days firearm ownership was mostly FUDD oriented and it took some changes in philosophy and the slippery slope analogy to get people to really start to focus to where we are today.  Basically we saw various tightening federally but again, mostly at state and local levels throughout the 60s and 70s and into the 1980s.  It wasn't until the very late 1980s and then Clinton and the Dem's actions in the 1990s that the philosophy and focus of firearms rights groups really became somewhat uniform and very vocal...that and the Internet.

Also, if you're going to build up the military and get the funding to do so who controls Congress for most of your 8 years...and really there was only a short period of R ownership of anything in Congress (the Senate for what, 2 years?).  You've got to make deals and the Dems saw opportunities to achieve things while Reagan did as well.  Sometimes there were compromises but I don't think Reagan gave that much of a shit about illegals compared to facing down the USSR and promoting America.  If we did it right those illegals would be legal Americans today who love this country and are successful.

Let's see, our choice was Carter or RR, hmmmmmm, ya that's a tuffy.

I agree completely but let's go a step further with the OP making his rather shallow post..........even though he was born in 1989 he is old enough to have thought this through the way you are explaining it.............the question is WHY hasn't he considered the period at issue and what we might have been up against with the likes of Carter and his democrat ilk???

Is it the simple answer that he is just a typical democrat trying to be edgy and stealth..............or is his brainpower lacking???

C'mon now, OP is a young hipster who knows everything!  He's going to get through a long life without ever making a single mistake.

Just ask him.

I have a few “friends” say the same things about Reagan these DU trolls are saying.

It’s their talking points.

It’s sad that my friends are that stupid and also sad that they vote in the republican primaries.

But when Texas was blue I voted in democrat primary’s years ago.

We all did because we were Democrats like Reagan.

The Dems were in control of Congress during Reagan and Bush's years owning both houses (again, except in the Senate for a period of what, 2 years in the mid-1980s) with people like Teddy Kennedy talking about banning any armor piercing ammunition meaning any rifle ammunition.  Anything that would penetrate soft armor.  They had the usual waterworks and politician half-ass cops up there talking about how they had to talk to the families of some fallen officer who was killed by armor piercing ammo and all that shit.  The same old game. 

FOPA was at the time a huge win for firearm owners.  It cleared up a lot of contradictory language from the 68 GCA.  The MG ban was a poison pill but of course we know it wasn't an "outright" ban and that was the little game the dems played.  You're right in that without FOPA a lot of what we take for granted today in terms of firearms freedoms and interest in firearms can be related back to the changes made to the 68 GCA by FOPA.  Do you think we would have an EE without it?  Online ammo sales?  Compromise was the name of the game back then in terms of many things including firearm ownership.  The current philosophy many of us have decided to believe in regarding gun control wasn't mainstream nor even considered "sane" back in those days.

IN!!!











Wait!!!!!!!!!!

I am the one who started this!!!

When google and Wiki are your sources and you let others do your homework for you, this is what you get.

At the end of his last term, looking back, you could see Alzheimer's warning signs, much has been learned since then.