To sell such changes, the White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses.
I would have no problem utterly boycotting Wal-Mart. I’m already more of a Target man these days anyway. And then there’s Amazon. Bloomberg is going to be running the public relations campaign once the effort is announced. Fingers on a chalkboard, if you ask me.
The vice president said the White House group would consider a variety of proposals — from requiring background checks for all gun buyers to creating a new database that would allow the ATF to track all gun sales, according to participants.
That’s code word for “registration” folks.
The administration is quietly talking with a diverse array of interest groups, including religious leaders, mental-health professionals and hunters, to build as broad a coalition as possible, those involved in the discussions said.
The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. They are also not talking to the NRA. They are not talking to gun owners. We are going to be dictated to, apparently. That’s what “conversation” means to them.
Already, three weeks after the Newtown shooting, gun-control advocates are growing impatient with a legislative process that is just beginning.
You know, we’re just beginning too. I hope all you folks in Illinois are fighting hard still, because your performance so far has been stellar. In the end, if we get through this, we will owe a lot to you. We all will. The anti-gun strategy is to throw everything at the wall, and see what can stick. Then, they will come at us with those parts that look like they have some adhesion, after they have worn us down and broken us. But will we agree to be broken? I have already heard stories from readers who suggest they are running into people who believe the political process is no longer relevant, and are preparing for civil war. I think there is no better way than this to make civil war an inevitability. We must not let it get to that point, and we absolutely can still avert if we fight the political fight hard, and make ourselves heard. We all just have to follow the Illinoisans example.
Would anybody be surprised if this “diverse array of interest groups” turns out to be led by Josh Horwitz?
I’d be very surprised. Horwitz is a clown. He’s not serious. It’ll be lead by Bloomberg.
Keep up the good fight. We must do everything we can to win this battle peacefully
Si Vis Paceum Para Bellum
Pray for peace, prepare for war.
I would have no problem utterly boycotting Wal-Mart.
Unfortunately a lot of us don’t really have that option. My home town, after the tornado totaled our Krogers, doesn’t have any even vaguely affordable alternative for food (our Target is way too small). Wal-Mart is winning in general and royally p***ing off the unions because it’s total hard line against them, plus their skill at things retail, can save the average family of 4 $100/month as I recall.
Which is not to say I and my father couldn’t shift a lot of other types of purchases to other firms.
As for guns and ammo, they aren’t a really big player here.
Coming from the Land of Lincoln of the Chicago side, this is just the warm up. Expect the Illinois attempt to reappear in another form. I expect this might be “dictated” through Executive Order, which wouldn’t be voided through law because the Reid in the Senate wouldn’t let it happen. I am all for peaceful resolution, but familiarity with Chicago makes me wary. Very.
The what-you-can-do thread is pages back now, so I’ll ask Bitter an OT but relevant question here.
How blatant should political threats be when we write our letters? I’m hesitant to outright tell our Democrat representative
“vote our way or we will run a pro-gun Democrat against you in the next (open) primary, and all our Republican friends will vote for him”
But… that’s the message I want to send him. :D
Finally, I’ve been noticing that because of how fast things are moving right now, most gun rights blogs have important articles buried several pages back.
Have you considered making a sticky with links to posts organized by topic? Like “click here for our ‘what you can do’ post series’.”
One solution is to turn the message around. “We won’t forget your gun-rights support. We’ll be there next time you need volunteers, contributions, and votes.”
Maybe a “what can you do” tag would be helpful…. those were some very helpful posts.
And I like larryarnold’s strategy there. We are watching, and we are more involved in the political process than any other group.
Again thinking out loud, but, what I’ve done:
Don’t exactly “threaten.” But tell Republican legislators, without going into any details, “I’m just about fed up with your party, and if you sell us out on the gun issue that will be the last straw.”
Tell Democratic reps “You don’t know how close I was coming to supporting your party, but so far this gun issue has been driving me back to the Republicans.”
And for yourself, think “I’d dance on the graves of all you bastards.”
What I have said is “A candidate’s record on gun rights is the single most important factor that I consider when I decide whom to support for public office.”
Here is the “contact your congress” link:
http://www.nraila.org/get-involved-locally/grassroots/write-your-reps.aspx
We need to wait and see which way WalMart jumps before writing them off. Their bringing back long guns might mean they’ve learned something about us.
Hopefully NSSF will be reminding newer dealers about Smith & Wesson.
I don’t think they ever stopped selling long guns, they just decided to drop them from stores where they were facing stiff competition. That was originally planned for my local store, but for whatever reason they reversed course; don’t know or remember if they rebuilt the gun counter after the tornado. They really aren’t in a position to compete well with a good Academy Sports a few hundred yards away and one or more really good independent gun stores, plus they don’t sell handguns outside of Alaska.
Don’t forget they cut some sort of deal with Bloomberg to be stricter about gun sales, or recording who bought them or whatever. From various accounts and direct observation their leadership has at least in part been captured by liberals in the post-Sam Walton era.
i agree. personally I don’t see Walmart touching this one. wishful thinking from the rumor mill? I’m not sure…
I’m with LarryArnold on Walmart. Let’s wait and see what they end up doing, if anything, company wide. Over the holidays, we were back in the Promised Land of Indiana and Walmart was still doing a brisk business in firearms and ammo – there just wasn’t anything to be had.
And thanks for the kudos for the turnout in Illinois. We’re still fighting, which is one reason why I’m up at 3am going through email, blogs, and twitter. Today will be interesting in the house – we’re pretty solid there but every battle counts. Again I have to mention that ISRA and NRA are really doing a good job of keeping us up-to-date, along with some good bloggers like Sebastian and Bitter.
Forwarding press releases this arund to all out firearms owning friends allows us to get fired up. I know I have been writing letters and using all avenues to fight this outrage.
Snail mail, Fax, E mail and Snail mail a hand written letter.
Send 8, 4 of the above to their Washington/State Capital Address and 4 more to their home office location. Load em up!!
As previously noted, while personalized snail mail shows a great deal of commitment, after the anthrax attack on the Congress snail mail takes a very long route to get to them and is no longer a favored method of contact.
Don’t know about snail mail to local offices, though.
I didn’t think that snail mail sent to district offices faced the same delay, and a quick Google search indicates that is the case. I can’t find anything that officially says, “We don’t have squat for security at district offices” for obvious reasons, but several members suggest contacting their district offices with mailed items and something posted by a state government site said that mail would not be delayed going to district offices.
That said, there’s always the option of mailing a hard copy to the district office, but faxing a copy to the DC office for immediate acknowledgement. Even though so many people point out that snail mail isn’t what it used to be because of the delays, it still speaks volumes that you’ve taken the time to write it.
I think as long as we keep the pressure up most of this will go no where. I think they (by they I mean the politicos and media) are making a big miscalculation. The media is trying to push Bloomberg as some person the entire country can rally around, mainly because he has an “I” after his name. They believe that since he is an “independent” that automically he will be able to form a broad coalition on both sides. What they fail to understand is that it’s not only about party identification, but regional identification. Bloomberg is a “big city rich liberal” and the truth of the matter is, most of the country south of washington D.C. and between the 2 coasts really don’t like New Yorkers’ telling them what to do. And worst for Bloomberg, he has an actual record of meddling in other states affairs (all those sting operations in Virginia). I say, once again the media has mis-judged the situation and fails to understand its basics.
I really wonder how much they expect to use Bloomberg, he of the “3 round magazines ought to be enough” voice of moderation. I’d bet even inside the Bos-Wash (Boston to Washington, D.C.) megalopolis he’s widely viewed with derision due to his heavy handed extreme nannyism, the latest well known example WRT large sugary drinks.
Those who follow more closely know about more of this (e.g. requiring city hospitals to give new born mothers the third degree every time they want to feed their babies formula) as well as his gross incompetence when people’s lives are immediately on the line, like in the snowstorm and the recent not technically a hurricane by the time it hit the city.
Despite the under-reporting because a Democrat is in the White House from beginning to date the latter has been a debacle, and I’m sure at least some remember e.g. his insistence on holding the marathon while bodies were will still be pulled out of the outer boroughs.
Bottom line: he’s still got lots of money and the willingness to spend it, but his “brand” is ever more tarnished. And of course as you note most of the nation doesn’t particularly care for rich Northeastern liberals, no doubt a significant factor in Romney’s loss.
If the administration has the votes to pass some sort of gun control legislation why is any of the end around coliltion building needed?
They obviously don’t. Harry Reid hasn’t said anything concrete, even Manchin back tracked a bit as well.
As astute of a politician Pres Obama is I’m surprised he is making this mistake. My feelings are they will fail miserably in their gun control endevour- yes I do think something is going to pass but it won’t be anything like they expected. My feelings are the most they are going to get is a opening up the NICS system for private transfers and some more money for mental health information record keeping.
As astute of a politician Pres Obama is I’m surprised he is making this mistake.
Obama is showing strong motivation to trashing the Republican party, and with the help of the Republican Congressional leadership is being pretty successful.
If he succeeds in this as a mandate:
My feelings are the most they are going to get is a opening up the NICS system for private transfers….
Or anything stronger he’ll be quite successful.
Also … simply “an opening” is difficult, there’s serious privacy issues. They’d need to do things like ensure people don’t use it for employment screening.
So what was the purpose of this press release? To prop up the hopes of the anti second crowd?
Walmart will hide the EBR’s from public view because that’s the kind of PR reactive beast that they are.
And they might agree to non-legislative things themselves as they have in the past.
But that will do nothing but marginalize them out of the firearms business, we shouldn’t focus much attention on Walmart.
Focus on the legislative side, because that’s where the Obama administration has shown weakness in the past. They are incompetent at organizing Congressional support for their proposals.
If we push really hard, we can stop this. The White House isn’t very good at these kind of real Congressional whip stuff. That’s the lesson of the last four years.
“If we push really hard, we can stop this. The White House isn’t very good at these kind of real Congressional whip stuff. That’s the lesson of the last four years.”
Obamacare says otherwise. That said, I don’t think he’s willing to burn all of his political capital for the term on this.
Actually Obamacare is an example that “The White House isn’t very good” at this sort of thing. Good enough to get to the top of the hill and plant a almost universally loathed flag, but the process was so bad as well as uniquely for these sorts of bills partisan there was and remains massive resistance.
By a greater margin that it voted for Romney, my Purple perhaps trending Red home state of Missouri put a spike in any possible state executive attempts to set up a healthcare exchange by itself. Also note that margin detail: Romney was uniquely the only Republican presidential candidate who couldn’t effectively run against Obamacare.
Anyway, one thing to point out here is that post-2010 Obama needs Republican House support to pass anything, even to have it come to a vote (the House rules allow the majority leadership to prevent that). His extreme, nasty partisanship isn’t going to help him on gun control, especially when he doesn’t have a big club like a big tax increase on everyone (fiscal cliff), spending cuts (sequestration) or the debt limit (government “shutdown”, threats to default, etc.).
Which is not to say I have all that much confidence in the House in stopping or ameliorating this; we’ll see.
Another example, which the Instapundit is highlighting right now: appointing Chuck Hagel to head the DoD. He’s a Republican to the left of the public, post-2008 election Obama on the relevant issues.
Quoting a Washington Post article, there’s this relevant gem:
Here’s a thought: Unless we’re effective with Dick’s, we aren’t going to accomplish a thing with Walmart.
I’m going to digress from where this thread appears to be going, and address the reflections on “civil war.”
I used to be a huge fan of the concept. Then, several years ago I began asking myself whether authoritarians of The Right would offer anything to be preferred over authoritarians of The Left; and, where were the non-authoritarians who had positioned themselves to hold sway after a civil war?
The RKBA issue might be a catalyst for a civil war, but it would not long remain the only issue. What would I be fighting for, in total?
It was after appreciating my own question that I began to comprehend how people were torn in their loyalties, back in 1861. I had known that many were, as a historical fact, but I don’t think I had ever comprehended how they could be; the choices looked so clear from the vantage point of over a century.
Now I get it. Where are the genuine lovers of liberty (as opposed to those who just command and often pervert the word) who have positioned themselves to take advantage of an upheaval? Nowhere that I’ve stumbled over.
I think I can hazard a guess that this is one place, albeit digital. Start working your community, if you haven’t already. No civil war ever has a promise of a good outcome. Look at Egypt, Syria’s current issues, and even our own after the war 150 years ago. That is why you want to avoid war if at all possible. In the end though, if you aren’t willing to fight and die for your beliefs…
In the words of Virginia’s Motto: Sic Semper Tyrannis!
If Walmart wants to write off millions and millions of gun owners and their families by siding with the leftists who hate capitalism and Walmart, they can do that.
Maybe Walmart can get their stock price up by having the 400 members of MAIG shop there.
There is a Walmart 18 miles away that stocks Colt and Sig AR15 rifles. I don’t see Target or Amazon stocking them. Leftist will still see Walmart as evil with or without guns, but the lesson of Dick’s Sporting Goods PR debacle isn’t lost on Walmart’s management.
The best defense is a good offense.
I’d introduce a repeal of the NFA. Get their attention focused on that.
Why must we always play defense?
Sorry, but we’re a long ways away from changing the culture enough to reverse an 8 decade old law like that. We will be, however, getting an idea of how long away we are from the reaction to the Newtown shooting.
Because the circumstances demand it. It takes a lawmaker willing to draft and introduce legislation, and given that the Senate is controlled by Democrats, it would be a lot of effort for naught. We ultimately play defense because that’s the consequence of re-electing Barack Obama, and not being able to protect blue dog Democrats on the gun issue.
So, ‘national registration’, seems gun info is already on the 4473’s, seems this ‘national registration’ is already here, it’s simply that the ATF doesn’t collect those unless needed. I can see operating standards changing and these forms having to start going to the ATF on a timely basis…..
….as for closing the ‘gunshow loophole’ and ending ‘private sales’….4473’s and a FFL would be required, which would end up at the ATF…ending private sales is about getting guns on paper, not preventing people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them….that’s just fancy talk to scare John and Jane Public.
4473’s going to the ATF on a regular basis? That means more manpower, and more payroll….which means more funding from the Fed’s….Jobs Jobs Jobs….
How is Target any kind of alternative to Walmart? Target is every bit as anti-gun as any company in America. They quit selling guns and ammunition so long ago that many people don’t know they ever did so. If you want to boycott companies for not serving gun owners, you might want to find an alternative that does serve gun owners.
Having contributed to the RNC in the past, I get regular mailings; the most recent (a few days ago) included my 2013 Membership card for the Republican party. I nearly threw it into the trash, then thought better:
I sent ’em a contribution of $100.00, along with a short letter saying “NO to gun control” and “Get serious on the debt/deficit”, then adding, “If you go all wobbly on the above, then you truly ARE just ‘Democrat Lite’, and you’ll never see another penny from me”.
Dunno if it’ll do any good, but I can’t think of anything potentially more effective.
“Dunno if it’ll do any good, but I can’t think of anything potentially more effective.”
What might have worked better would have been to write an even bigger check, cut it in half, and send it to them with your letter saying, “deliver on what’s important to me and you’ll get the other half.”
I’m pretty sure doing that would never have cost you a cent beyond your postage and envelope.
Just like your vote, once they have your money, why should they care what you want or think?
Well, there’s an implicit promise for more….
The thing I wonder is if there’s any or enough of a feedback path from the people who process these contributions.
Andy,
It’s easy to make a promise that you know you won’t be called upon to uphold. I showed good faith up front, they know I’m good for it, IF they uphold their end. That’s the idea.
It’s the same as someone who isn’t an NRA Member bitching about them and saying, “if they change in such & so a manner, then I might join”. That’s crap. However, when an actual Member suggests changes, they’re much more likely to listen.
You obviously have never been involved with groups that raise money from people like us. What they know pretty precisely is, the probability that if you came up with money once, the probability that you’ll come up with it again; and, how much additional you can be wheedled out of. You are a very predictable statistic to those people. It is likely you were the last person to read your good-faith letter, and that it fluttered into a bin as the monkeys who open envelopes for them sorted the wheat (checks) from the chaff (your opinions.)
They are not unlike the politicians who, I observed, would often answer my long, thoughtful, good-faith letters with form responses on entirely unrelated subjects.
AndyB,
You’re right that I have no experience in fund-raising, but I did what I could. If the Republicans do go all wobbly, I’ll send back their next letter with “DECEASED” scrawled across it.