A professor at UCLA School of Law, writing for the Washington Post, says the battle over the Second Amendment will be won by progressives in the coming years, thanks to a secret weapon.

That weapon is immigrants, says Adam Winkler, a law professor and author of the book, "Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America."

In his op-ed, "The NRA will fall. It's inevitable," Winkler argues the demographic transformation of America underway for 30 years through mass immigration – both legal and illegal – assures that the fervor Americans have for the Second Amendment will eventually run out of gas.

Why? The answer lies in the numbers, he says.

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"Support for, and opposition to, gun control is closely associated with several demographic characteristics, including race, level of education and whether one lives in a city. Nearly all are trending forcefully against the NRA," Winkler writes.

"The core of the NRA's support comes from white, rural and relatively less educated voters," he continues. "This demographic is currently influential in politics but clearly on the wane. While the decline of white, rural, less educated Americans is generally well known, less often recognized is what this means for gun legislation."

Basically, these rural whites who support gun rights are being replaced by more urban, less white, more liberal voters from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

So it's just a matter of time before demographics take over. He cites polling data that gun control is "extremely popular" with Hispanics, 75 percent of whom allegedly favor "gun safety over gun rights."

The numbers are almost as high among black Americans, Winkler says. It's only rural and suburban whites who are in love with their guns, and they're being replaced due to low birth rates and high rates of immigration.

He writes:

"Polls show that whites tend to favor gun rights over gun control by a significant margin (57 percent to 40 percent). Yet whites, who comprise 63 percent of the population today, won’t be the majority for long. Racial minorities are soon to be a majority, and they are the nation’s strongest supporters of strict gun laws. "An overwhelming majority of African Americans say that gun control is more important than gun rights (72 percent to 24 percent). While the African American population shows signs of slow growth, other racial minority groups are growing more rapidly — and report even greater support for gun control. "The fastest-growing minority group in America is Latinos. Between 2000 and 2010, the nation’s Latino population grew by 43 percent. Hispanics, which make up 17 percent of the population today, are expected to grow to 30 percent of the population in the coming decades. "Gun control is extremely popular among Hispanics, with 75 percent favoring gun safety over gun rights."

This is a breathtaking admission that the real reason for mass immigration has little to do with the warm and fuzzy "compassion" that liberals often talk about, says William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, or ALIPAC, a group that was instrumental in defeating immigration-reform legislation in 2013-14 and is opposing the speakership of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., because he supports mass immigration.

"As the immigration-backed socialist takeover of America continues, they will speak more boldly," Gheen told WND. "And those who support mass legal immigration and rampant illegal immigration are driven by animosity toward whites, gun owners, and Americans of all races loyal to the Constitution and Bill of Rights."

The unanswered question, Gheen said, is when will liberal factions unfold their plan for full gun confiscation?

"What remains to be seen is what plans these socialist aggressors have for the millions of Americans they know they'll have to kill to achieve their goal of full gun confiscation," he said.

There are an estimated 90 million Americans who own at least one firearm.

"Gun ownership is intrinsic of what it means to be American. And the purpose of these guns is not just to be able to hunt game; the purpose is to be able to correct corrupt government action," Gheen said. "That is why the founders of this nation insisted that its citizens remained armed. And that is a core American value.

"Socialist and communist governments have killed more than 100 million of their own citizens over the decades, but that can't happen here as long as enough Americans are armed and loyal to the Constitution."

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said his organization is also opposing Ryan for speaker, not because of his record on gun rights but because he supports mass immigration.

Progressives, whether they are Democrat or Republican, have figured out that the easiest way to fundamentally transform America is by fundamentally transforming the demographics, he said. Basically, you change America by changing its people.

"Long before this admission in the Washington Post, GOA has opposed the push for amnesty," Pratt said. "Polling among the illegals here tells us that 80 percent will vote Democrat, i.e., anti-gun. We have opposed Paul Ryan as the new speaker because he is a pro-amnesty Republican."

With record-high legal immigration rates of more than 1 million immigrants annually over the past 20 years, plus about 400,000 illegal immigrants entering every year, progressives are well on their way to realizing their dream of fundamental transformation of America – changing it from a constitutional republic where citizens are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights into a socialist state where one's rights come from the government, Pratt said.

"GOA understands why Democrats support amnesty, because the former illegals will be a big boost for the fundamental transformation of America," he told WND. "Why a Republican would support legalizing illegals is harder to explain, because it means permanent minority status for the Republican Party and the platform it says it believes in."

How to 'transform' suburban, rural America

Winkler is correct that more immigrants, minorities and liberal whites are packed into cities, with fewer in the suburbs and fewer yet in rural America. The question is how to transform the suburbs and the countryside. This is being done not only through historic levels of immigration, but also by using the increasingly federalized and globalized education system to teach young people the tenets cultural relativism, collectivism and other anti-American values, Gheen said.

"The biggest product of the American education system right now is socialists," he said. "Our schools and universities produce more socialists than great scientists, inventors and engineers."

Gheen said ALIPAC has monitored the progressive agenda over the past 10 years and found the same interest groups supporting gun confiscation that support immigration reform and open borders.

"We've even watched them argue over which to pursue first and they decided to pursue immigration first," he said. "And if they ever achieve that goal, their full focus will become disarming Americans, and they'll have the illegal immigrants turned into government officers with badges and guns to do it.

"Seizing your neighbors' lawful guns is a job most Americans won't do, but immigrants will. If you want to talk about jobs Americans won't do: Seizing your neighbors' lawful guns is one of them. Americans won't do it, but some immigrants will."

Falling crime rates a factor

Winkler closes his article by adding a significant caveat to his prediction that a less-white, higher-educated America will willingly agree to trade their Second Amendment rights for more gun control. It has to do with crime rates, which Winkler acknowledges are in steep decline from the levels seen in the 1970s and '80s. If those crime rates should creep back up, all bets are off, and gun ownership might again become a priority, Winkler indicates, only to dismiss this possibility as "not likely."

"During the 1970s and ’80s, when crime rates were skyrocketing, the self-defense argument easily found an audience. Yet recent years have seen a drastic reduction in crime; today the crime rate is half of what it was in 1980. Given that this drop coincided with a serious economic downturn, which is usually a predictor of an increase in crime, it is not unreasonable to predict that crime rates aren’t likely to climb significantly anytime soon."

But Jerry Henry, executive director of GeorgiaCarry.org, said Winkler is missing a key part of the equation with regard to the falling crime rates.

Henry says it is exactly because of the rising number of concealed-carry permit holders that violent crime has been falling.

"During the 1970s and '80s, when crime rates were skyrocketing, there was much more gun control in the U.S.," he said. "It was against the law in most states to carry a firearm concealed. That started changing in the '90s when many states changed their laws to allow concealed carry."

When that changed, the number of firearms in the civilian population started increasing and when states relax restrictions, more firearms are bought by civilians. So while there are fewer hunters, that does not mean there are fewer guns.

Today, there are estimates of approximately 350 million firearms in the hands of about 90 million Americans yet the crime rates continue to decline.

"Even if Adam Winkler's pipe dream comes true, who in their right mind actually believes that the American populace will actually give up their firearms?" Henry asked. "And, who in the American populace actually believes that government troops will come to each home to confiscate the firearms that people refuse to surrender?"

"One thing that all Second Amendment supporters know is that if the Second Amendment falls, all other rights that still exist will fall shortly thereafter. The only reason we have any positive rights in this country is because of the Second Amendment.

"It is very difficult for me to understand why anyone would want to give up any fundamental rights for any reason. Too many liberals are of the belief that if they don't want or use something, then no one else should want or use it."