According to this article, freshman Rep. Tom Cotton from Arkansas’s 4th district is getting phone calls in about a 9-to-1 ratio calling for him to stand up against gun control.
You might wonder why I say that I hope he’s exaggerating since that sounds like winning. I hope he’s exaggerating downward. If you click through and look at that district, this guy should be seeing pro-Second Amendment phone calls and letters from constituents outnumber anti-gun supporters by at least 15-to-1.
For those who say we don’t need to worry because the GOP has the House of Representatives, well, the fact that any House office could be hearing from us in ratios that are lower than 9-to-1, that makes me nervous. If every person who walked into a gun show since the middle of December wrote to their Congressman, we’d be in a much better position.
Yeah, it looks like we are in it for the Long Haul again. BTW, Gen. McChrystal (the guy Obama fired if Afghanistan for telling the Truth?) just decided to Jump on the Anti-Gun Bandwagon a few short hours ago.
Jump on?
For all we know he was always there – he’s a General, not a politician, so it’s not like we had any reason to find out.
(As pointed out various places, “military” and “gunnie” are not synonyms.
I do want to see McChrystal’s face when someone explains to him that granddad’s .30-30 is more powerful than the “too powerful” .223…)
Apathy is at an all time high. Not because people don’t care, but because they don’t think they can make an impact. They don’t think that Congress cares.
Or maybe with this Congresscriter they’re not worried he’s going to vote for gun control?
I’m not worried about two of mine, who are from my corner of the state. The Democratic Senator is pretty hopeless, but I have contacted all of them, and will some more in the future.
You may be onto something there. Both my state Sen. and Rep. are pretty solid pro-gun. I certainly contact them for things coming down the pike, but I really consider that more of a formality.
There are not bills. Only the promise of bills.
Those calls are spontaneous calls. They are not organized calls. You are seeing a 9-1 ratio in people who have nothing to complain about yet.
Keep the energy in check. Outside of a few bloggers, nobody has called on a massive touch of Congress. It’s not time for that yet. Don’t be worried. Wait until the battle starts. These are noises from early people looking to get their point across early.
We will see more action Monday. That is when Bloomberg and MD Governor O’Malley open doors on the next round…
I hate to tell you, but there already are gun control bills introduced in the House of Representatives.
How many of those are introduced every year, year in and year out?
Some are, some aren’t. I realize that Patrick’s point is that there’s not a clearly defined push for action from any organization yet, but the bills are out there. If you want to write an informed letter or email to your Congressman, you should acknowledge that there are bills being circulated – and that’s just the legislation we know about.
I acknowledge that and din’t mean to imply differently. But the meat of the issue will come from Obama’s task force. That is pending.
My overall point is that the number of calls going to COtton is reassuring, considering I have not seen in my email a trove of NRA-ILA action alerts telling to call ASAP. If we are already seeing people spun up before the real fight, I have confidence they will come out in greater numbers when asked to do so.
I spoke with several state groups today. I will say that even groups who have say out previous fights are in this one. The so-called sportsman split is not happening in my neck of the woods. They are telling me an attack on one is an attack on all. They are saying they will not be split from the herd this time. And they are working in ways they have not done before.
Time will tell. But right now I am concerned and heartened at the same time. There is no guarantee we will win. But there is a guarantee we will make them take what we have. We won’t give up rights willingly. We won’t compromise our rights.
Yeah, that IS a tad low… and we DO need to ramp up and keep the pressure on. Letters to the state offices (not DC, they’ll never see it in time), calls and emails. And KEEP doing them!
without reading the article or even to whom he was speaking, I would imagine he was just making a point about how opposed to gun control his constituents are. This is Arkansas people, not Pennsylvania. It is almost friggin mandatory every male capable of walking own a gun. But hey, i guess it is possible that Arkansas sudenly became a hot bed of liberalism.
Depending on how you define liberalism, it is worth noting that this is a historically Democratic seat that only went GOP when the previous Democrat retired and made it an open battle.
I probably define it pretty much the same as u partner. I repeat, this is Arkansas, and a district that gave Mccain nearly 60% of the vote if i am not mistaken.
Arkansas was Democrat because Abraham Lincoln was Republican.
Republicans took control of state leg this year for 1st time since
Reconstruction. Liberals are a non-factor in his district. Sebastian and Bitter forget not everywhere is a northern blue state.
It still helps to communicate with lawmakers. We have no idea how this is going to play out, and if Boehner goes weak kneed, your reps, even your very conservative reps, might need the political courage to take on the boss, and every letter they get from us will add to that.
I also made sure to write (as in snail mail) the leadership heads in both House and Senate, majority and minority, in addition to our elected officials representing PA. Consider adding them to your list as well. I phrased those a little differently considering they don’t represent me, but I did make it clear I didn’t even want to see them up for a floor vote.
Okay, so I didn’t write Pelosi a letter but I truly think she is hopeless anyway.
I’ve not closely followed Team Boehner until recently, but based on my current incomplete and perhaps unfair impression of him—except that I gather no one can reasonably deny he’s a deal maker first and foremost—I think we should assume he’s going go “weak kneed” and be pleasantly surprised if this turns out to be an exception.
Agree with that. Already sent a strongly worded email to my congresswoman, I will most likely follow that up with a phone call today.
But But But that Bloomberg Survey says that gun owners support “sensible control” and any push-back against these “common sense” laws is largely done by the NRA and the Gun industry!!!!!
Keep in mind that ANYTHING you read in politicrap can be pretty much figured to be comm/soc propaganda. If the article is about anything they oppose(which is pretty much everything this country used to stand for) then it will be phrased so as to put the worst spin/lie to the subject.
Yeah, and it’s quite disappointing because they started out being pretty even handed and stating that was part of their mission. But following Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing“, they soon enough went hard Left with e.g. leading light Ben Smith being a card carrying member of JournoList (pretty telling when even Wikipedia dared not airbrush the latter out of existence).