Well, we finished with our last gun show before the election. Overall, I think the Allentown show was pretty successful for us. I managed to keep my second day haul down to a few cleaning tools, some more beef jerky, some ammo, and a second Nagant bayonet — only about 40 more dollars.
We got a few more names for our list, many of them from Pennsylvania’s fifteenth district, which has no EVC currently. That gives us a good start if we decide to take it over, or help someone get started up there. Charlie Dent is the endorsed Congressional incumbent up there, and they have some good state reps, so it’s an easier district than ours.
We handed out all our McCain/Palin bumper stickers, which was quite a few of them. A Lehigh County GOP volunteer stopped by and dropped off a whole big stack of them, which we ran out of an hour before the show ended. I had one guy stop by looking for Palin stuff, and offered him a bumper stickers that were just McCain, and he said he’d stop by later when we had one with Palin on it. Can’t say I blame him.
I do appreciate the irony of shilling for McCain at a gun show. If you had told me even a year ago that would be the case, I wouldn’t have believed it possible. More than a few people I talked to were aware of his record on the issue, but were scared to death of Obama. We all are. For me it was Obama’s threatning to pull the licenses of TV and radio stations that really got me fired up to hand out McCain stuff. If NRA wants to jump on board later, that’s great, but we have to defeat Obama in Pennsylvania. We just have to.
What I’m learning from this is that people aren’t as well informed as you might think they are. To a large degree, I think a lot of gun owners wouldn’t pay much attention to politics if it were not for this issue, and that explains a lot of NRA’s electoral muscle. I was happy to inform more than a few gun owners about Attorney General Corbett (A+ rated and endorsed), and more importantly about his opponent. Corbett is the reason I can travel to Florida and be armed 90% of the way, and in Florida, after years of Pennsylvania having reciprocity with hardly anyone. Corbett also quickly handled the mess a year or so ago when local and state police were suggesting that they wouldn’t fully recognize reciprical permits. So for guns, he’s a good guy. I’m happy to help get his name out there.
Bitter and I have plenty of Tom Manion signs left over, since that show only got a few people from our district. A few places of public property in our area got tagged by Murphy drones, we’re going to go counter attack, and get the remaining out to gun stores, gun ranges, and gun clubs.
This week is going to be busy. I’m speaking at Branch Valley Fish, Game and Forestry Assocation on Tuesday, my own club on Wednesday, Silhouette match again on Thursday, and hopefully speaking to my club’s archers on Friday. Saturday we have the ANJRPC Annual Banquet, which Stephen Halbrook will be keynoting at, and Sunday will be the Sportsmen for McCain Rally in Oley. I will find time for blogging in there, I promise.