With all of our coverage of Mayor Bloomberg’s work with the Brady Campaign to protect and promote anti-gun local politicians, it’s time to keep up the pressure. Last month I made a donation to NRA that was designated for their media programs to turn up the heat through the media. I guess you could say that heat has been appropriately raised. Bloomberg’s numbers are down, mayors are giving us dirt on his questionable practices of how they were unknowingly signed up for the campaign, and his professional staff have been outed as Brady Campaign representatives.
But it’s clear that Bloomberg is digging in, and we need to do the same. So with that I’ve picked two programs for donations to help NRA keep fighting this battle.
The first is obvious, it’s the Institute for Legislative Action in recognition of their postcard mailing and political work on the effort to get more mayors to leave the coalition. This is fundamentally a political fight because these mayors may be the next crop of regional, statewide, and federal gun control leaders.
The second donation goes to the Freedom Action Foundation. This new Foundation fund is focused on non-partisan and non-political fundamental outreach that can ultimately support the other fights. The money donated to the fund will help identify those who aren’t registered to vote and show them why it’s important. If we’re going to oust these mayors from office, keep them from climbing to higher political office, or swaying federal and state lawmakers, we need to make sure more gun owners are registered to vote. You’d be surprised if you checked voter registration records how many gun owners are not registered to vote. But, once registered, the likely voter rate is quite high. So if we can get these men and women signed up, we can hope they get involved with ILA to find out what’s going on in their districts.
If you want to turn up the heat on these mayors and other politicians, I hope you’ll choose to give to one of these funds. Donations to ILA are not deductible, but donations to the Freedom Action Fund are.
Whoa. Just did a count of MAIG members. They’ve dropped to 388. That’s 62 of 450.
Actually, they haven’t pulled everyone off of their list yet. There are several mayors (at least 2 in PA alone) who have notified NRA that they are trying to quit, but MAIG hasn’t taken them off the list. One PA mayor said he kept calling them, but they wouldn’t pick up the phone and it took a while for them to check voicemail apparently.