This just might lead you to believe that an election is coming up, because there were plans for a gun rights group to protest Pat Toomey’s office, but they were cancelled when apparently, “a Toomey staffer promised the senator would not reintroduce the high-profile gun control bill known as the Toomey-Manchin proposal that stalled in the Senate two years ago.” The article notes Democrats are exploiting this weakness:
A spokesman for Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty […] accused Toomey of telling gun-control advocates one thing and gun rights advocates another and said he is “playing politics with the issue of gun safety instead of being honest with the people of Pennsylvania.â€
The truth hurts, don’t it Pat? She’s got your number. My impression that Toomey still has a pretty good chance of winning the election. Pennsylvania likes dull, bland politicians, and he fits that role like a glove. We will almost certainly be able to get a number of pro-gun votes out of him if he stays in office that we would not from any potential Democratic challenger. Personally, I’d rather have Casey and Manchin’s seats than Toomey’s, even though I’m still angry at his concessions on this issue.
Correction… that quote was made by a McGinty staffer, not Tom Wolf, who has been pretty silent on the issue of guns as a whole…
“A spokesman for Democratic Senate candidate Katie McGinty, a former official with the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, accused Toomey of telling gun-control advocates one thing and gun rights advocates another and said he is ‘playing politics with the issue of gun safety instead of being honest with the people of Pennsylvania.'”
Yes… I have fixed the quote.
Yesterday a guy named John Fetterman, the Democratic mayor of Braddock, PA, announced for the race. I haven’t spent a lot of time researching him, but I find him interesting. He’s a mayor of a blue-collar town who has managed to get reelected since 2006 and is credited with having actually accomplished some things. But most interesting for gun owners, he chased down and held with a shotgun someone he had reason to suspect was a criminal shooter. The shotgun was under the seat of the mayor’s truck. It turned out the guy he held was innocent, but the point is, he was armed, and did not act in a totally irresponsible manner, from our viewpoint. Sort of a money-where-the-mouth-is demonstration in terms of “The Armed Citizen.” It’s too early to make any pronouncements about him, but so far I find him interesting.
I’d love it if a pro-gun Dem ended up challenging Toomey. I’d certainly be willing to either “stay home” or actively vote for him. The only thing that would make we wary is I got burned on Bob Casey Jr. when I voted for him to help oust that asshole Santorum, believing that Casey was still AQ rated, so I wasn’t really losing anything.
But Casey never held anyone at gunpoint, that I’m aware of. So that would certainly help buy some creds that he may be the genuine article.
I voted for the guy once. A little later, Sandy Hook happened and the Senate tried to push gun control, but it wasn’t happening. Then just as everyone was hours away from giving up and moving on, Toomey decided to buddy up with Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer (and the 2nd Amendment Foundation btw) to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and resurrect the gun control push. With friends like these..
This clown thought he’d come out looking like some kind of hero: “Look, I did what they said couldn’t be done! Yay me!” Instead, he helped Obama sell guns and helped the NRA recruit more dues-paying members than ever.
It’s unlikely I’ll be able to vote for his Democratic opponent, but I sure as hell will never vote for Pat Toomey again.
I don’t blame you.
This guy is one suburban mass shooting away from throwing all of us back under that bus. We’ll see if he has a change of heart on the trail but it will be hard to vote for him. It’s a shame PA has one of the most rigged systems when it comes to challenging the two annointed candidates.