Posted on 02/27/2007 11:33:50 PM PST by NormsRevenge
A little-noticed oddity of the 2008 presidential election field is that the three leading candidates for the Republican nomination have, at one time or another, gone to war with the NRA and its allies on the gun issue.
After six years of thumb-twiddling boredom – the issue has been off the radar in elections and in Congress – the gun lobby must have been a bit shocked when they realized what they faced: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, all once proud champions of sensible gun laws, are the odds-on favorites to carry the GOP banner.
Consider their histories:
McCain was the lead sponsor of federal legislation to close the gun show loophole. In 2000, he appeared in television ads in Colorado urging voters to pass a ballot initiative closing the loophole there.
Romney signed a state ban on assault weapons into law as Governor of Massachusetts. And as the Boston Globe has reported, he said during a debate in 2002 that he supported his state’s tough gun laws and vowed that he would not “chip away at them” because they “protect us and provide for our safety”
Giuliani aggressively went after illegal gun traffickers when he was mayor, and he filed a lawsuit against a bunch of major gun manufactures and dealers. He’s on record supporting tougher gun laws, including the assault weapons ban.
Now, the gun lobby is not subtle in responding to perceived threats. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre gave a speech six months after 9-11 comparing our old organization, Americans for Gun Safety, to al Qaeda and our founder to Osama bin Laden. LaPierre concluded, not without some hyperbole, that we were “a far greater threat to your freedom than any foreign force”.
So it’s no surprise that the NRA responded to this problem with overwhelming firepower.
First, they attacked John McCain, slathering his caricature on their magazine covers and calling him “one of the premier flag-carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment.” McCain buckled like he was gut-shot – he has stopped talking about guns (despite the fact that the gun show loophole remains open in most states), and he just brought on James Jay Baker, once the NRA’s lead man in Washington, as a strategist for his “kitchen cabinet.”
Then they took on Mitt Romney. After getting peppered with criticism for his gun positions, Romney, who does not own a gun, now calls himself a “proud” NRA member. He even toured a gun show with the NRA’s chief lobbyist Chris Cox, (the guy who took over for McCain’s kitchen-mate Baker).
Most recently, they trained their sights on Rudy Giuliani. In a press release this week, an NRA ally called the National Shooting Sports Federation warned: “Giuliani No Friend to Gun Owners.”
How Giuliani will respond is not yet clear – as the NSSF notes, there are conflicting signals out of his camp about where he stands today on guns.
But if Rudy Giuliani is anything, he’s tough. We hope that he treats these thugs the way he treated them back when he was cleaning up New York one turnstile-jumper at a time.
Our advice to Rudy: tell the NRA and its minions that you will not be cowed, and stick to your guns: you are a strong supporter of the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms. But rights come with responsibilities. And anyone who isn’t responsible about owning, selling, or using their guns should lose those rights.
$3.65 per $100 of assessed valuation in my nabe, and the median house is valued at $650,000. Do the math.
90 of republican congresscritters surveyed last year said man mad global warming was a fraud. I'd appreciate something along those lines from our nominee. Even the ever genteel Bush refuses to go after industry and rejects the Kyoto nonsense.
Lots of non-political gun owners that crawl out of the woodwork each time the issue comes up
Yeah, but I'm going to blue trail this weekend to dust off my .306
look I typed that one quicker than I should have and have been pummeled for it.
I speak more to the cops I know who are underpaid and scared about the volume of large caliber pistols they pick up. You can defend yourself fine with a 9....they worry about the 10s because the vests don't hold up as well and a shot outside the vest is lethal all the time.
gun banner == liberal.
Liberal == No freedoms.
Sorry I don't understand labels. First someone needs to define conservative. I don't care to get into an argument, with extremists.
Well well well. The fourth grade has spoken! Bwahahaha
Well, MOLON LAVE to them. No Republican will ever get elected that doesn't strongly support it. The 2nd Amendment lobby is just too strong and Amen for that!
Yes.
An equivalent sort of thought would be if the state of Oregon banned all stainless steel weapons because someone used one in a crime. Under the new rule, owners of stainless steel weapons must turn them in at the nearest police station or face prosecution as a felon. No compensation will be provided.
You would be forced to turn in your revolver, and get one that isn't stainless steel but does EXACTLY the same thing.
All this drama about what the media calls assault weapons is exactly the same as that. They have chosen purely cosmetic features of semiautomatic rifles and said that those features make them "killing machines". But they don't actually effect the use of the gun any more than making it in stainless steel would.
So what exactly are you so steadfast against again? Is it semiautomatic weapons like those currently being called "assault weapons" in the media, or something else?
Please let us know how selling out for a liberal pubbie pushes the conservative values you claim you have yet show so little understanding of.
Politicians' opinions vs scientists' studies are a losing proposition. Rudy's approach is much more intelligent. And that says more or less "We do not know if man is causing some of the warming but we do know that pollution from oil products is a problem otherwise and we know that we need to reduce our dependence on the Middle East." So even if there is NO contribution from man we need to develop alternative energy sources such as Nuclear. If the is some contribution then this is even more imperiative.
Why get in an argument you cannot win? We cannot PROVE that man is having no impact anymore than the opposition can PROVE that he is. We can show that 95%+ of the Greenhouse gases are natural but they just counter with another fact, that CO2 levels have increased significantly.
BTW South Park had a new episode last night which had an environmental theme. Very funny.
I don't trust Rudy not to implement some democrat nonsense/regulations. Bush rejected Kyoto. Does Rudy?
In other words, where minorities live.
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