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25 thoughts on “Make Yourselves Heard”
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The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Hope/Change is soliciting feedback. Be sure to give them some. Polite, reasonable, feedback.
Comments are closed.
Submitted:
+ Do not repeal the Tiahrt Amendment
+ Do not prohibit private sales at gun shows
+ Do not mandate or dictate firearm or ammunition designs
+ Do not ban “Assault Weapons” or any other weapons, especially those essential to preserving a nation of riflemen such as AR-pattern rifles
+ Do support concealed carry
+ Do prevent gun manufacturers from being sued for the use of their products, which the manufacturers have no control over
+ Do recognize that the Second Amendment protects the right of self-defense
DO NOT just limit it to “guns.” There is a hell of a lot of anti-freedom sewage spewing forth that needs fought.
Looks like it might be an unofficial registration form to let them know who might have guns, that is, IF you give them your real address. But then again, they might be able to find out who you are via your email address alone.
They can already find out who has guns.
If you do talk about the Gun Thing, make sure and check “Civil Rights” as the category.
Done
I think I wil be polite and courteous, these people can’t take a joke.
I said:
We’d love for you to do a good job and spend your political capital getting the government out of its spendaholic ways. The economy will fix itself. I know that rhetoric and the need to be seen as doing something is one thing, but we both know that the quickest route to recovery is for you to get out of the way. Although I didn’t vote for you, I would vote to reelect you if you governed well by doing this.
However, I’d like you to give serious consideration to not spending that political capital on certain counterproductive pet projects of the left that I’m sure many will be demanding of this administration:
-gun control. You fooled a lot of people on this topic but they won’t stay fooled if you go after Tiahart or start playing the same sort of games Clinton did. Gun control doesn’t help anyone and it’s going to make you a lot of dedicated enemies. And they won’t just come after you, they’ll come after house and senate democrats in 2010. You won’t always be on the ticket to help protect them. Learn from Clinton’s mistakes.
-new entitlements. We can barely pay for the ones we have. Most people may not care that deeply in the abstract about paying a little extra tax to support some pleasant sounding government program, but they will start to care a lot when their employer starts cutting back on their jobs so they can afford to pay the tax man.
-global warming related changes to automobile and power generation rules. The ice caps are expanding. We haven’t been hit by a hurricane in years. There is every bit of evidence that lower solar activity is producing significant drops in global temperature these past few years. And even if this weren’t the case, implementing the measures you’ve publicly suggested will cause real pain to real people who have to buy the things made with this super expensive clean power and gasoline.
You have an opportunity to take the national debt and entitlement burdens off the backs of the American people and implement real reform. The American people want you to fix the federal government, not go on a crusade to reshape our culture or redistribute our wealth. Do this and we will prosper and you will serve two terms with a continuing majority. Spend your political capital in ways that piss people off without actually making things better and you’re falling into the same trap that Bush and Clinton both did. And it will end the same way.
Here’s what I wrote:
“You Democrats got us all into this financial mess, let’s see you get us out of it now, without raising our taxes, and without trampling all over our civil rights, pushing your anti-gun agenda and dealing us a bigger crap sandwich than was already dealt. Make good on your promises to the Americans and leave your nanny-state out of our lives. And leave our guns, our self defense, our rights to keep and bear arms and our hunting traditions alone. We don’t need you to tell us how we can protect ourselves when the Supreme Court already ruled that it is not the police’s duty to protect us as individuals. We don’t need bigger government and if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem.”
Generally speaking, I would avoid using the term “crap sandwich” when dealing with government officials :)
Call me a wuss, or not soldier enough, or whatever, but something is nagging me not to provide another bit of data for the government to record on me…
Linoge, who do you think controls the pipes that EVERYTHING you do online goes through? Nothing is unseen. Period.
Have you never emaild a congress critter or senator?
Do you fear writing to them on paper because they’ll have a return address?
Have you never called them?
Well, that helps explain WHY we’re where we are.
I was gonna ask them to please not come in the middle of the night on the West Coast when all the Easterners and Midwesterners are asleep, and knock down my door with Obama’s Civilian SA Corps doing a Kristallnacht dance – but I didn’t want to give them any ideas.
I figure when they do it they will start out West here – while you East-Coast guys are asleep, because we are weakest already: no NFA stuff, 10-round mags only, mostly a bunch of Fudd hunters, surrounded by moonbats with torches and pitchforks, etc…
I am with Linoge on this one.
@Tom: This is about trust and the goons on the president-elect’s team proved they can’t be trusted the day the used public computers to find dirt of poor Joe the Plumber for asking a simple question.
We are where we are because of two things, uninformed/lazy voters and lack of real Conservative candidates for whom to vote.
Claude:
Believe me, the government can already find out whether you’re a gun owner.
Claude hit the nail on the head.
And, indeed they can, Sebastian. But I see no reason to provoke them at the moment. Write me off as “one who is just hoping to be eaten last”, that is fine. However, past history of the Obama administration has shown that they collectively do not give a flying squirrel’s left nut about firearm rights or firearm owners… What, exactly, do you hope to gain by writing them? And is it worth the attention you may suddenly receive?
I don’t know what I have to lose either. Considering stories have run in national newspapers about my treachery lately, I figure the have my number if they are up for some malfeasance. We are still a country of laws, and as long as we are, I will participate like that’s the case. If we’re not, well, I have bigger problems than worry about my comment on the Lightworker Elect’s web site.
Oh, and Tom, you can politely back the fuck off. A year ago, when I still lived in the People’s Republik of Kalifornistan, I took it upon myself to educate the Governator and my specific representatives concerning the futility and uselessness of microstamping, and the inherently flawed science involved in the lead ammunition ban in condor areas. For me, this involved emails (from my main, personal-name-based account) as well as snail mail… and you know what came of all of it?
Jack fucking diddly.
They still signed the microstamping and lead ammunition ban.
The fact is, the Obamamessiah is in power for the next four years, and he does not give a rat’s ass about gun owners or their opinions. Try and appease to his better nature all you want, but I will be spending my time on more useful pursuits, like trying to find the money to stock up on pre-ban items.
And laws or not, Sebastian, you saw what happened to Joe the Plumber when he dared to ask an inconvenient question of the Glorious One… Some of the destructive things the media and Democratic Party did to him was within the realm of the law, some… who knows? I would venture to say you have more to lose than you realize, but not knowing you or your situation, that would be rather presumptive of me.
None of those things are a reason to give up on trying to wield influence. Your individual efforts amount to little, but collectively, if, say 30% of Obama’s comments say to leave our gun rights alone, do you think he can help but listen? Obama is still a politician, and he can be influenced the same as any politician. Whether he leaves us along out of self-preservation is of little importance to me, so much as that he just leaves us alone. It is possible.
The fatalistic nature of gun owners is one of my continual frustrations. It is not destined that we lose. As a movement, we still wield great political power. Greater than many, if not most, of the constituencies that support Obama. We should not take our ruin to be inevitable. It is not. This will be challenging, but it is not unwinnable.
Self-preservation? What about “the next four years” is so hard to understand? There is no self-preservation involved, whatsoever. Sure, he has to worry four years down the road, but his patently anti-gun stance was not exactly a secret during this election, and, guess what – he got elected anywise. Something tells me he might be able to pull it off again, given similar circumstances.
As for just trying to clog up the inbox of wherever that form goes (if anywhere), that is so easily solved from the other side, it is hardly worth mentioning – set up a filter, hire an intern, or just blackhole the entire exercise. If you think you are going to annoy or flood him into a response or a more moderate stance, you are honestly fooling yourself.
Obama has made his stance on firearms clear. The House has paved the way for him with HR 1022 (not that he would need it, given the powers inherent in executive orders these days) and the whole Dingell thing. And, if nothing else, in the past 3 days, Obama has made it more than clear that the face he was wearing during the elections bears no resemblance to the die-hard, far-left liberal behind it.
And, sure, gun-owners are probably one of the largest cross-sections of America out there. But they are not united, will never be united, and never could be united. We come from such disparate paths, with such massively different priorities, it just is not going to happen. For some people, owning a gun is just one of those things. For some people, it is everything. And the latter group is not as large as you think it is.
There are the midterm elections in 2010, there are blue dog Democrats who’s arms can be twisted. There’s organizing, there’s fundraising, there’s increasing membership in the NRA. There are a lot of things to do over the next two years, let alone four. And yes, there is some showing Obama that we’re a powerful and organized political constituency that can sabotage his other goals in the midterms, as we did with Bill Clinton in 1994. He can choose not to listen, but he does that at his own peril. The gun vote came out for McCain the same as it did for Bush in 2004. In 2010, Obama will not have coattails because he is not running. In 2012, he will no longer be a novelty. He will be part of the status quo, and he will be vulnerable.
I don’t think there’s much alternative than to fight, even if there’s no hope of winning. You won’t be able to move to escape this one. We lose at the federal level, it’s over. We should never accept that as a given.
So maybe sending E-mails to Obama isn’t going to change anything. But there are a lot in Congress that we can contact. I have a strong Republican Representative (Paul Ryan,) and Senators who are kind of middle of the road (Feingold) and much farther left (Kohl) on guns. I have E-mails in to 2 of them, Ryan to encourage him to fight the good fight, and Feingold stating I don’t want any more infringements. I will be writing Kohl as well, just haven’t gotten to it. Will it have much effect? Maybe, maybe not. But I can tell you that after a contacting Feingold this year, he signed the Heller amicus brief, which I doubt he would have done had a group of people not contacted him.
If you are worried about your voice not being enough, get friends and relatives to write in, post something at your club, etc. Make your voice heard. They may realize that there are “better” things to burn political capitol on than gun control.