Posted on 07/13/2004 7:52:14 AM PDT by neverdem
www.gunowners.org
Jul 2004
Monday, July 12, 2004
Congratulations!
Through your efforts, you have succeeded in killing the best opportunity that anti-gunners had to extend the ban on roughly two hundred semiautomatic firearms.
Liberals had intended to offer the semi-auto ban as a "killer amendment" to class action reform legislation which was considered by the Senate last week. At first, there was every indication that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was going to allow anti-gunners like Sen. Feinstein to offer the gun ban amendment.
But after you bombarded Frist's office with demands that he prevent the semi-auto amendment, Frist -- in a parliamentary move that we suggested -- took steps to procedurally block all "killer amendments," including the semi-auto ban.
Liberal anti-gunners whined and screamed on the Senate floor, and threatened to kill the class action bill in retaliation. But we appear to have won the battle for now, as the class action bill has been pulled from the floor.
This victory is huge. Compared to the ill-fated strategy used on the gun makers' protection act (S. 1805) earlier in the year, the outcome on the class action bill was as good as could be expected in the poisoned environment on the Hill. Consider the following:
* The best chance for reenacting the semi-auto ban prior to its September 13 expiration is now dead;
* Unlike the gun liability bill -- defeated 8-to-90 in March after it was loaded down with "killer amendments" -- pro-business Senators can still bring the class action bill back up at some later point during this session;
* Unlike with the gun liability bill, the class action bill did not offer anti-gun Democrats a week of Senate floor time to promote their agenda; and
* Those anti-gunners who cynically pretended to support the class action bill were forced to make a choice between politically powerful constituencies -- between the pro-business community and the trial lawyers.
ACTION: Write Senator Frist. Congratulate him on his use of the rules in connection with the class action bill, and thank him for preventing consideration of the semiautomatic ban.
You can call Senator Frist at 202-224-3344, or go to http://www.frist.senate.gov and select "Contact Senator Frist" under the "About Senator Frist" heading to send a message similar to the one below.
Dear Senator Frist:
Congratulations!
Your use of the Senate rules in connection with the class action bill blocked the prime opportunity of anti-gun liberals to force consideration of the semi-automatic ban.
You also saved the class action bill from the same 8-to-90 defeat experienced by the gun liability bill, and kept it alive to fight another day.
Finally, you prevented the Senate floor from being used as a campaign platform for issues designed to defeat you and your party.
In the politically poisoned environment on the Hill, this is as good as was possible under the circumstances.
Sincerely,
GOA Website News
If you haven't visited the GOA website recently, perhaps you should spend some time at http://www.gunowners.org today.
One reason is that the prices of three influential videos dealing with the Waco tragedy have been slashed to an average of half their original costs. At $9.95 each, no freedom video library would be complete without copies of Waco: The Rules Of Engagement; Waco: A New Revelation, and, The F.L.I.R. Project.
Also, you may not be aware the GOA has added streaming video to our website this year. Numerous television interviews of GOA spokesmen are available free of charge. Of course, additional streamed interviews will be added in the future.
Finally, a very common question received over and over again at GOA deals with how to convince fence-sitting friends and relatives that we are right and the gungrabbers are wrong. Answers can be found in the highly detailed Just For Skeptics section.
I think we want to keep that one, as it provides immunity from prosecution for transporting guns across state lines, when the guns are legal between the starting and ending destinations. For example, suppose you are transporting class III weapons from Texas to New Hampshire. The McClure-Volker Act would prevent you from being prosecuted by anti-gun prosecutors in New York and Massachusetts.
I just sent an electronic mail to Bill Frist thanking him for his support of our 2nd Amendment liberties.
After a quick scan of the web, it turns out that my reverse chronological reversal left out other affronts like the 1996 Domestic Violence law, and of course the Brady bill.
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