Posted on 01/24/2013 10:51:29 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Remember the summer of 2009? Members of Congress came home to hold town-hall meetings as usual in August, part of their annual listening-tour strategy to keep incumbents in favor back in home states and districts. When voters started showing up in droves to berate these Senators and Representatives over ObamaCare, however, the town-hall meetings started getting canceled, and those that did continue made for great moments on YouTube --- especially the declaration from former US Representative Baron Hill (D-IN), who declared that no one could tape the meeting because he didn't want it to end up on YouTube [update: video fixed]:
This is my town hall meeting, and I set the rules. I’ve had these rules — [booing] — Uh, let me repeat that one more time. This is my town-hall meeting for you. And you’re not going to tell me how to run my Congressional office. Now, the reason why I don’t allow filming is because usually the films that are done end up on YouTube in a compromising position.
The town-hall scolding has come back in style, at least in West Virginia, according to the New York Times. Senator Joe Manchin visited the home folks last week in a forum that should have been more friendly — a meeting of “businessmen and community leaders” in Beckley. Nevertheless, the group gave Manchin an earful over his professed support for Barack Obama’s gun-control legislation:
Despite his best attempts to reassure them — “I see no movement, no talk, no bills, no nothing” — they remained skeptical. “We give up our rights one piece at a time,” a banker named Charlie Houck told the senator. …
And on the afternoon the 15 residents met with Mr. Manchin in the conference room of a local arts center, they told him that going after guns and ammunition capacity would be much like banning box cutters after the Sept. 11 attacks, or limiting whiskey and six-pack sales to cure alcoholism.
“It takes about a second and a half to change a clip,” said Frank Jezioro, a former special agent with the Office of Naval Intelligence and now director of the state Division of Natural Resources.
Mr. Jezioro likened gunmen in mass shootings to suicide bombers: they will always find a way. “A guy can walk through this door right here with your Beretta five-shot automatic, and cut the barrel off at 16 inches, and put five double-ought buckshots in there and kill everybody in here in a matter of seconds,” he said. “And you don’t have to aim it.”
And it had its intended impact:
As a hunter with an A rating from the National Rifle Association, Mr. Manchin gave advocates for new weapons laws reason for optimism after he said last month that gun firepower and magazine capacity might need to be limited.
But now, Mr. Manchin, who affirmed his support for gun rights by running a campaign commercial in 2010 showing him firing a rifle into an environmental bill, says he is not so sure. One of his local offices has been picketed, and even some of his most thoughtful supporters are cautioning him that stronger background checks are about all the gun control they can stomach.
And Manchin doesn’t have to run for re-election next year, like a number of Democrats in the Senate do. The NYT mentions Jean Shaheen (D-NH), whose state produces Rugers and Sig Sauers. There’s also Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who has to be rather cognizant of the Democratic collapse in her state last November. Survey USA polled voters in North Carolina on the gun-control issue, and found that 54% believe it’s more important to protect the right to own weapons than to restrict access to them. While there is some support for limiting magazine capacities, almost two-thirds (63%) want better enforcement of existing legislation rather than new laws. In a multi-answer question, a large plurality said that better security (41%) would better address school shootings, while only 18% chose making access to guns more difficult. Almost the same percentage (16%) chose better access to mental-health resources.
The Obama gun-control package will go nowhere, especially if these red-state Democrats go home and start talking to constituents.
The lesson to be learned here is that if you elect a dumbocrat, no matter if he/she has a AAA+++++++ rating from the NRA, he/she will always be suspect, because in the end they are still Democrats.
Are there any town halls anymore or are all of the Senators and Congressmen too afraid of the serfs?
We are talking about this because Benghazi and F&F have dead bodies attached to them and the blood goes right up the the Presidents chair in the Oval Office.
Obama wants us to talk gun-control, which isn’t going anywhere, but not talk Benghazi and F&F or the rest of his corruptions with TARP, et al.
Let’s put those stories into news and breaking news and change the beat, eh? Stop letting them wag us.
So it is HIS town hall meeting? Hmmm, did he build that?
These are the arrogant politicians who need to face their Thomas Jefferson moment.
He is a public SERVANT.
People, everything about this government is upside down from what the Founders created and we are letting them get away with it.
The definition of arrogance & entitlement. YOU work of US,douche.
That, and the NRA needs to quit kissing these guys’ asses, licking their boots, and bending over for them.
My brave representatives have virtual town hall meetings, now. All are Dems and all, apparently, fear the traditional tow hall meetings.
We had a nice protest outside his office in Martinsburg on Saturday.
FIRST YOUR MONEY THEN YOUR GUNS
THAT’S THE WAY THEY THE GOVERNMENT RUN
ALL DEMOCRATS ARE
GOD DENIERS AND CONGENITAL LIARS
Ultimately, I think this will turn out in favor of Liberty loving Patriots. Self-defense is not a partisan issue. Equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans believe self-defense is a right. I am hoping this will be a good reminder to those who voted for Obama’s big government agenda that any government big enough to provide you with everything is big enough to take it all away.
In short, I hope Democrats push “gun control” relentlessly, fail spectacularly and in doing so mobilize a pro-2A voter turnout in 2014 that sends every last Dem up for re-election home. Then we can get on with throwing Biden and Obama out on their gun grabbing asses.
Optimistic to be sure, but gun control is a big loser at the ballot box IMO. May it always remain so.
WTH?
That ceased to be true today. I'm popping corn and watching this Rat.
Yep, DemoRats are pure evil, and if ya elect 'em, ya will eventually live in a Socialist tyrannical Hell hole that ya can't leave except by death.
My guys have heard from me. Their own views on the topic are well-known and one of them at least made it his principal issue. But it doesn't hurt to remind them, because it makes them feel better about bucking the Beltway tide.
The Democrates I know talk against racism and what not, but, guess what, each time we drive through a ghetto they lock their doors and speed up like cowards.
I tell them: come on, slow down, let’s talk to your culture and your people.
They are full of garbage.
They all talk of support of Trayvon, but none of them would walk in the dark street with him.
Same thing at the State Department whining Bush sent them to missions in Iraq, but now they support Hillary’s Move On?
This is the typical coward who will take the life of the unborn for political convenient points at parties, but then will cower in fear when they meet their “maker” about to take their useless lives away.
I hate the Democrate coward rhetoric.
“... because in the end they are still Democrats....”
No. In the end, they are ALL communists.
The “His” to whom you refer is Baron Hill (D-IN), and he was thrown out of office for that. So he learned the hard way that he did not, in fact, build that.
Manchin ran as a conservative but so far as I can tell hasn’t cast a single vote that could be construed conservative. His votes on everything money related make him just another big spender. He’s had numerous chances to oppose Dingy Harry’s krap but has failed to lift a lip never mind a finger. You folks in WV are on your own but had best take Manchin to a series or proper “schools” because it’s obvious from here that he’s just itchin’to sell you out.
Manchin said in part that he’s seen “——no bills-—” How about if some of you WV’s ask him now if he’s seen Foonsteen’s really BIG BILL? Don’t see how he could be missing that one or has he taken up lying thru his teeth just to keep up his demo membership?
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