Watching this new Obama video for gun control, we learn that Obama is very, very willing to flex Bloomberg’s muscle for his cause. He’s also relying upon Bloomberg’s money by seeing to it that he had more than 100 gun control advocates flown in to DC and to state capitals to push for his gun control agenda.
They highlight the importance of being seen by lawmakers. This is a reminder that if you can get out to a lawmaker town hall meeting or even just stop in their local district office, do it. Put a normal, reasonable face on gun owners. Invite them to speak at your local gun club and get people to turn out.
“Put a normal, reasonable face on gun owners.”
I always wince when I hear that.
Acknowledging there is a fine line between being passionate, and being raving nuts, I think a little passion directed at our issue never hurts.
I once had the experience of getting so angry at the BS being laid down at a local meeting (not about guns — unfortunately) that I spontaneously jumped up on a table and orated over the heads of the crowd, as the officials sat stunned. Then I was cheered by the crowd, which “reopened the meeting,” so to speak, and expressed the sentiments they had been holding in, oh-so-reasonably. The people holding the meeting eventually arrived at a different conclusion than the one they had settled on, once the “spirit of the debate” had been redirected.
To generalize, I have seen better and quicker responses to the fear that the grassroots may move beyond control, than to any alleged “respect” for the reasonableness of their positions or behavior, when they are under the control of “leaders.”
A question for the accountants and lawyers out there: If it is true that someone “had more than 100 gun control advocates flown in to DC and to state capitals”, would those 100 people be liable for income tax on the cost of that travel? Might be an interesting way to discourage some of this BS.
That explains what Joan Peterson was doing in DC recently, and who was paying her.
Just so no one gets too self-righteous, when I first started doing some extremely petty and local (right-leaning) ideological writing, I was offered things like free vacations by industry lobbies, and friends only a bit more accomplished than I was were offered free trips to Israel. I declined such offers, fool that I was. As a True Believer, I was willing to shill for free.
(If you aren’t getting such offers, maybe you aren’t as important as you think.) :-)
Free trips to buy you into the fold seem to be a basic currency of the business, independent of ideology. Though the Republican Party seems to lean toward getting people to work or travel for nothing. Probably the Democrats are the same, but I don’t have the personal experiences with them, to be able to comment.