Says Mark Kelly in an interview:
“If we don’t have a Congress that can pass some reasonable gun legislation, which I think the public is asking for, overwhelmingly in some cases, with an expanded background check, if Congress won’t pass that legislation, we’ll find some new members,†Kelly told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, according to a transcript provided by the network on Monday.
As if we’re not thinking about the 2014 election cycle as well.
The antis ability to influence elections is negligible at best which is why Congress didn’t move their agenda. There is a reason groups like Brady and their affiliates pretty much gave up on electioneering years ago.
I don’t worry about Kelly and Giffords. Bloomberg I worry about. There are plenty of people who support gun control out there. What the antis have failed at is getting them to vote on the issue. Bloomberg has a lot of money to spend, and even if he ends up failing, perception matters. Toomey didn’t cave because of the raw politics of the issue, he caved on perception. The anti-gun folks have never had much backing up their game, but they have been far better at driving perception, and money helps with that.
“The antis ability to influence elections is negligible at best. . .”
That is true if they are naive and delusional about the power of their own issue. But if they got smart and recognized that some of our best “friends” are much more vulnerable on other issues, they would join coalitions and focus their money on those issues, instead.
We of course should be doing the same thing, in districts where the pro-gun vote doesn’t have a lot of power.
You know I can’t resist old anecdotes: One election year someone prevailed on GOA to do a mailing on behalf of a RINO state rep candidate in a district near me that is safe for Democrats. The RINO got like 27 percent of the vote. He ran again two years later, and having decided being pro-gun had not helped him, turned anti-gun. He then got 25 percent of the vote.
I cite that as an anecdotal example of two things; a district where the pro-gun vote was not significant enough to make any difference; and that it demonstrated that the anti-gun vote carried no weight at all, even in a predominantly D district.
The Obama/Cuomo machine have been trying that here in NY, hoping to get the unions upset. It hasn’t worked. Unions care about their issues, not gun control.
Just for clarity (on both our parts): I wasn’t talking about (for example) trying to get the unions on board for or against gun control. I was saying, if the unions are upset with one of our enemies, over an issue important to them, then help them with their attempt to oust our enemy, on their terms. Of course we have to make sure their effort is sincere.
Problem is the antis don’t bring anything to the table in terms of resources or a voting bloc. That is why they failed in the first place.
I think his bio mixed up the terms “astronaut” and “space case”.