Reagan grew the government.
He also appointed 2 justices to the Supreme Court who were part of the 5 member majority on Heller. While an imperfect decision, it is certainly better than a decision that did not find an individual right to KBA but instead ruled that the 2nd amendment was about some State right to a militia, or some collective right. And this is an RKBA/OC board.
As for spending: Government spending grew under Reagan and the Democratic controlled House (where by constitutional mandate all spending bills must originate). But rather than having all that growth go to welfare programs, he beefed up the military and fought the cold war, helping to bring about the fall of Soviet Union, saving tens or even hundreds of millions of lives compared to allowing the Soviets and other communists to continue their expansion across the world.
Some interesting numbers regarding Reagan's tax and expenditure policies
from Wiki:
>>In 1981, Reagan significantly reduced the maximum tax rate, which affected the highest income earners, and lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50%; in 1986 he further reduced the rate to 28%.
>>The federal deficit under Reagan peaked at 6% of GDP in 1983, falling to 3.2% of GDP in 1987 and to 3.1% of GDP in his final budget.
>>The inflation-adjusted rate of growth in federal spending fell from 4% under Jimmy Carter to 2.5% under Ronald Reagan;
>>The unemployment rate dropped from 7.1% in 1980 to 5.5% in 1988.
>> A net job increase of about 21 million also occurred through mid-1990.
>>Reagan's administration is the only one not to have raised the minimum wage.
>>The inflation rate, 13.5% in 1980, fell to 4.1% in 1988,
>>The misery index, defined as the inflation rate added to the unemployment rate, shrunk from 19.33 when he began his administration to 9.72 when he left, the greatest improvement record for a President since Harry S. Truman left office.
>>The percentage of total households making less than $10,000 a year (in real 2007 dollars) shrunk from 8.8% in 1980 to 8.3% in 1988 while the percentage of households making over $75,000 went from 20.2% to 25.7% during that period...
There was certainly some bad news under Reagan as well. But rather than accepting Soviet expansion and diminishing quality of life in the USA as inevitable--as did Carter--Reagan called the Soviets the "evil empire" they were and made clear we were going to win the cold war, which we did.
Bottom line and back to the OP, a vote for Reagan, while not perfect, was demonstrably better than had been another 4 years of Carter. And I hope we don't really need to discuss whether Reagan was a better choice than Mondale. Reagan's appointee, Scalia, wrote the majority opinion in Heller. The other Reagan appointee, Kennedy, joined the majority decision. Not a single democrat appointee joined the majority.
Elections rarely present us with a black and white choice between perfectly good and entirely evil. But quite frequently they present us with a choice between fairly good and really, really bad.
Voting makes a difference generally, and has made a huge difference on RsKBA. Save for the pro-RsKBA votes cast in the '94 congressional elections, the RKBA landscape in this nation be very different, far less good for our side, than it is.
Charles