My mother recently retired to Tennessee, and her first political activism in her new home state was to write her Congresswoman, her two Senators, her State Representative, her State Senator, and her Governor to oppose gun control. She faxed all of her letters early last month, and today she got her first response.
It was from the Governor who went from being a MAIG mayor to publicly opposing Bloomberg’s views to leaving the organization to indicating he supported constitutional carry. He’s the only one who has been willing to respond after several weeks. I don’t have a copy of the text, but she said it’s a good letter and favorable response.
It would be great if my family would get with the program. Maybe I could send them some emails like “Write your legislators, otherwise, I am going to commit a felony (and own a semi-automatic rifle!)
This is good news, hopefully lots of people are writing letters out there who normally wouldn’t.
–Matt R.
Are any of your family members generally sympathetic to the cause, even if they aren’t really “gun people”? I ask because you could always write some suggested letters for them. I know it’s more work, but it’s what I did for my mom. I wrote her letter for her. She’s probably going to pass the language on to other family members. For many folks, they just don’t feel like they know where to start a letter or what they should really say.
While many people cite the Ruger & S&W form letter sites are getting lots of attention for being “so easy” to use, some people might say it’s because you can write all three federal representatives with one click. However, the real reason that the vast majority of users find it easy to use is because the letter is pre-written.
I might be able to write some letters, maybe use the ones you guys sent me. I have to send a few feelers out and find out if they’ll pony up. Cool.
–Matt R.
I actually meant commit a felony BY owning a semi-automatic rifle….
–Matt R.
This was somewhat unexpected too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTdhVxva5KU&feature=player_embedded
Personally, I’m more interested in what politicians DO than I am in what they say.
Sent letters thru S&W, but couldn’t personalize the letter, it looked like you should be able to edit the letter before sending but I couldn’t for some reason.
Otherwise it works well, sent to fed and state reps, gov, and pres all at one shot. Nice tool to use!
link
[Edited by Bitter so it doesn’t screw up the blog anymore.]
The reason I don’t push those types of sites heavily is because politicians do not give much weight to form letters that are so easily sent in large quantities without any thought or effort. I’ve made passing mention of them here before just to note what the industry is doing, but I strongly suggest that people write their own letters or do their own form community-based form letters. (An example would be members of a family sending in similar letters, especially if they are to different lawmakers. It could also be a form letter effort for shooting club members where it is a true form letter, but the language emphasizes that they are members of the gun club in the lawmaker’s district.)
I, too, live in Tennessee, and I sent letters via snail mail about three and one-half weeks ago to both senators and my congressman. I am still waiting for the congressman, but both senators have now responded. Bob Corker’s letter was very disappointing. It was an overt form letter that could have easily been sent as a response to either a pro-gun or anti-gun letter. And it referenced an enclosure regarding the Second Amendment that it did not include. Its only saving grace was that it states support for the ownership of firearms for self-protection, without offering specifics. Lamar Alexander’s letter was much, much more overtly supportive of our position. This surprised me because he has such a reputation of being an obsessive moderate. He highlighted his support for Heller and McDonald and vowed to fight any further encroachment on the rights of the law abiding (again, he did not offer specifics). He did reference actual statements I had made in my letter, which makes me assume that at some point, some set of human eyes actually read and digested my letter. If the subject matter wasn’t so critical and in need of every single vote, I would make a copy of Alexander’s letter and send it to Corker, along with a note saying, “This is how you placate a constituent.”