Don’t let this stop you from contacting your Critters, but this is welcome news:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tossed cold water on the prospect of reinstating the assault weapons ban, highlighting Democrats’ reluctance to take on gun issues.
Attorney General Eric Holder raised the prospect Wednesday that the administration would push to bring back the ban. But Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on Thursday that he never talked to her. The Speaker gave a flat “no†when asked if she had talked to administration officials about the ban.
“On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,†Pelosi said at her weekly news conference. “I think it’s clear the Bush administration didn’t do that.â€
That’s not a clear “we’re not going to do it,” but it’s about as close as you’ll get from Pelosi. Keep pressure on Congress. I will be doing a more detailed analysis later to see which critters should be targeted for calls, letters, etc. That’s not to say all them shouldn’t be, but some are more important than others. If the “blue dog” dems get hounded (no pun intended) with calls just from Holder opening his yap, it gives them a reason to remind the White House and leadership not to put them in a difficult spot. It makes it less likely we’ll have to fight a bill.
Hat Tip to Blog o Stuff
Peter & Paul must be really miffed to hear that come out of Pelosi’s mouth……. not that I trust her one bit.
She’s not to be trusted, but she also has a majority to keep together. I have no doubt that Pelosi is a yet vote if the issue comes up, but I also have no doubt that she’ll be pissing off a lot of members of her own party if she lets something hit the floor.
I will look forward to this list of critters who are “somewhere between” those who will certainly vote NO and those who will certainly vote YES.
And I will send my letter to all of them.
“On that score, I think we need to enforce the laws we have right now,â€
Words I never thought I’d hear from someone like her.
I’m also looking forward to the list.
Be very wary of them. I doubt she means what you think she does. I interpret this as “last time we did it that way, we got our asses handed to us, so we’re going to do it via a different route this time.” Consider that one congresscritter (I forget his name right now) saying that ATF wasn’t enforcing the law banning imports of “non-sporting” guns. That’s what she means by enforcing the laws we have now. Keep your eyes open for a bait-and-switch. If we’re busy fighting any possibility of an assault weapons ban, they might flank us with nationalized health-care.
Right now the Obama administration severely over-played their hand. I think they look at their approval numbers and think that it is a license to do whatever they want. Politics does not work that way- EVER!
There are bunch of mistakes with this. One, they failed to coordinate their message with congress. Two, they failed to read the trends concerning today and what happened to Congress. Three, they used the issue of border violence as a pretense to disarm Americans. This is their most crucial mistake because:
1. It focuses attention on the unstable situation below the border. This will only serve to ratcheting up calls to secure the border- something which Obama does not want to start doing at all.
2. It places partial blame on that situation on the American people (Our gun shows and Americans are sending evil assault weapons across the border) which will not play well at all (especially with people in Arizona, N.M., and Texas).
3. It gets the administration off message from the focus on economic restoration.
This is only bad for the Obama administration, so we should be hopeful they continue along this route. ;-)
Indeed. I still think this whole thing was a “whoops” statement by Holder. He likely violated the cardinal rule of politics … tell them what you think they want to hear, not what you really believe.
Holder would love to ban semiauto firearms. So would Obama. So would Pelosi. So would Emanuel. So would Biden. But somewhere among those three there is likely one neuron screaming “DON’T GO THERE YOU FOOLS!”
And I think that neuron wasn’t in Holder’s head the day he made that statement.
For all the worry and paranoia … I truly believe that if the liberal dems push to federally ban a whole bunch of commonly owned semiauto firearms … they will have their asses handed to them.