On September 12, 1996, the Senate voted (57-42) to keep an anti-gun amendment off of the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill (H.R. 3756). The Kerry amendment — which Thompson voted for– would have made funds available for a study of tagging explosive materials, including black and smokeless powders (thus setting the stage for registering ammunition). The amendment also sought to further demonize firearms by selectively examining the misuse of firearms by criminals. The study would not examine the number of times firearms are used to save the lives of decent citizens.
If you're relying on the laughable GOA "report" on Thompson, you should know they've corrected this (hit-tip ellery):
The most egregious problem in GOA's report on Thompson was their report on Thompson's vote on gunpowder taggants. The Kerry gunpowder taggant amendment that Thompson voted on was a vote to table, i.e., kill the amendment. That is a pro-gun vote -- but until recently, they reported that his vote was in favor of gunpowder taggants. I just discovered they've updated it, which is fine -- but according to the Internet Wayback Machine, GOA was spreading wrong and very damning information for at least four months. Considering the stakes here, it's shameful that GOA was so negligent on such an important issue, and it calls into question their reliability on everything else. Here is a link to the actual vote, followed by a link to GOA's original bad information:http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=104&session=2&vote=00287
http://web.archive.org/web/20070701133707/http://gunowners.org/pres08/thompson2.htm
Looks like Hiskingdomwillciteoutdatedandunreliablesourcestobashfred is at it again. Good catch!
Thanks for posting that. I’d just finished researching it myself and was going to post, and see that you beat me to it.
Bears repeating here and wherever people like HisKingdomEtc do their spamming: The “fact” that Thompson cast a vote for the Kerry Amendment is false.
Thompson voted to kill that amendment. Thompson voted yea on a motion to table Kerry’s amendment #5279 to HR 3756, which would have diverted $21.3M from tax law enforcement appropriations to the study of taggants. So in this case, as in many others, a “yea” vote is a NO vote on the bill itself.
Link to the vote: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=104&session=2&vote=00287