I had the opportunity to attend both The Legislative Policy Committee, and also the Hunting And Wildlife Policy Committee, which I’ll talk about later. All the NRA committee meetings are starting out this year with a disclaimed about the Biparisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, and asked if anyone was working as an employee of a volunteer for a campaign for federal office. Committee members or attendees who raised there hands were asked to recuse themselves from the proceedings as to avoid any charge of “coordination”.
After that Chris Cox went into his address. Although Norton’s bill has been voted out of committee, if the House leadership lives up to their end of the bargain, it will be HR6691 that ends up getting passed. Once out of The House, it will be an uphill battle to get the Senate to pass the bill before the end of their session, but NRA intends to try.
The next big issue is the National Park rule change to allow carrying of firearms for self-defense. We were told that the new rule could be expected on or around October 8th. Cool.
Then onto BATF reform. There are two issues on this front. Ongoing is the effort to get The BATF Modernization and Reform Act, HR4900 passed. The other is that NRA has been working with Sullivan’s office at ATF in an attempt to fix ATF new ridiculous definition of “manufacturing” which even includes giving a paint job to firearms.
They are also actively working with the Transportation Security Administration to change the new rule that prohibits checking .50BMG or larger rounds in checked baggage. This has been a big problem for big game hunters, who use the larger rounds. Apparently a more legitimate interpretation on the DOT rules would allow calibers up to .75, which covers just about all the cartridges out there which are currently lawful.
I would also note that one of the committee members asked Chris about their blogger outreach efforts, and Chris said he was very supportive of the effort, and there was every intention of continuing these relationships. He mentioned the NRA-ILA mix and mingle happy hour in Louisville, as something ILA did as a thank to for the work we’ve done.
The rest of the committee was done in executive session, which is limited to committee members. Right now the Legal Affairs Committee is starting, so I need to wrap this up and head over to that.
Oct. 8 sounds right – though I’d suspect its pushing it a bit. Bush Admin has already stated that all rules must be published in the federal register by Nov. 1 There is usually a 2 – 3 week delay between signing the rule and publication in the federal register.
For my own purposes, we are actually looking at Oct. 1 as the drop date for new Bush rules. As a lobbyist, its very frustrating. But as a citizen, this is a huge achievement compared to the rushed, midnight regulatory wheelings and dealings of the Clinton Administration (but of course no one on the right will even know how much the Bush Administration has done to shrink government in the long run while the left will never give Bush credit for anything).
I might also add, while life has been crazy busy, once mid October comes I”ll haveA TON of free time :)
the one real concern I have is to what extent the scandal that broke yesterday at Interior (in the mineral management service – payoffs, sex, etc.) will interupt the Secretary’s office and push the urgency of this back.
But all in all, I think we are going to see some good things between now and October 1 – the ending of the DC gun ban and the end of the National Park gun ban. ANd an important lesson for Democratic leadership (Pelosi and Reid), who stand to gain a significant political boost from being receptive to the gun community – far far more of a boost than they could ever imagine the Brady Campaign supplying – and don’t think that fact has been lost on them.
Damn, I missed you and Bitter on Cam & Company tonight. I’ll catch you on rerun right afterwards. I tried sending you link to a story about the NYPD blaming banks for bank robberies, but that email bounced back to me for some reason.