The Lobby That “Has No Equal”

I promise I’m not going to turn this blog into “all GOA criticism all the time,” but I think it’s important to point out to folks in our community just what charlatans they are.  GOA is correct to raise alarm bells over the Federal Lands Bill, but then you see stuff like this, from their e-mail alert dated today:

The final attempt to protect the Second Amendment from NPS bureaucrats came on a procedural vote in the House that would have made in order an amendment, sponsored by pro-gun Reps. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Rob Bishop (R-UT), to repeal the gun ban.  That motion failed by a vote of 242-180.

What caught my attention was the fact that the Lands Act passed under a suspension of rules, which means there could be no amendments voted on.  So how could it be there was a 242-180 vote on an amendment?  Where is this mysterious vote?  The answer is here.

This vote is on the resolution to consider the Senate amendments to the original House Bill 146, which tacked on the federal lands omnibus.  It is not even the final vote that passed, not defeated the resolution which suspended the rules.

What did happen, however, was that there was a vote in the Committee on Rules that would have made an exception for the consideration of the pro-gun amendment by Rep. Hastings.  You can find it here.  The motion to create the exception for pro-gun amendments was defeated in the Rules Committee 2-9.  The representatives who voted against it were:

  1. James P. McGovern (D-MA)
  2. Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL)
  3. Doris O. Matsui (D-CA)
  4. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
  5. Michael Arcuri (D-NY)
  6. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO)
  7. Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
  8. Jared Polis (D-CO)
  9. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY)

These are the villains.  These are the people we need to, as GOA says, “remember in November.”  This is where we lost the battle.  We were not “sold out by compromisers this time,” as GOA claims in the same alert.  If they want to play with the big boys, they need to get this stuff right.

The Democrats control the House and Senate.  The leadership in the House, and the Rules Committee, are especially anti-gun.  This has consequences.  As much as GOA would like to look for demon “compromisers” they missed our real anti-gun enemies on the Rules Committee, and let them off the hook.

Gun Owners of America — sniping at other pro-gun groups and missing the real enemy since 1975!

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Dems Looking For a Way Forward on DC Voting
  2. How Unconstitutional is the Slaughter Solution?
  3. More Ineffectiveness from NRA

4 thoughts on “The Lobby That “Has No Equal””

  1. Rules is the speakers committee. controlled totally by the Speaker (though she doesn’t serve on it or as chair). Its all her deputies. In the same sense Whip is.

  2. When Texas was on the verge of passing the concealed handgun law, Larry Pratt was urging Texans to call and OPPOSE the law. Reason? It was a “license” and we should hold out for what Alaska has now. 14 years later, no bill has come up that would even allow open carry. In short, I don’t listen to GOA at all.

  3. There were GOA affiliated groups doing that for a while. I’ve heard, though I can’t confirm, that the reason Colorado took so long to get concealed carry was because of opposition by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.

    In my experience, these types of guys can do a great job of sabotaging pro-gun efforts in the name of perfection, even if they can’t get anything legislative accomplished themselves.

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