Posted on 09/15/2007 3:04:58 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
NEW PORT RICHEY - Fred Thompson got a strong endorsement from gun control opponent Bill Bunting, who's also chairman of the Pasco County Republican Party, during a campaign stop Friday.
Thompson spoke at the county party's Reagan Day fundraising dinner to a packed room at Spartan Manor in New Port Richey.
Thompson, just starting out as an announced candidate in the GOP primary, appears likely to find strong support in Pasco County, some local GOP leaders said.
Attorney General Bill McCollum, the Florida chairman for Thompson's competitor, Rudy Giuliani, was planned to be keynote speaker at the dinner for months, said state Committeewoman Shari Kotsch, who planned the dinner. After Thompson finally announced last week he'll be a candidate, though, Bunting and Kotsch, also a gun rights advocate, added Thompson to the agenda.
Both will support Thompson, generally considered the strongest gun rights supporter among the leaders in the Republican field, Bunting said.
"I'm a life member of the NRA" - National Rifle Association - "but he's an endowment member," Bunting said of Thompson.
Thompson will attend the Lakeland Gun Show today, at Bunting's behest, and he'll have banners and a table with campaign information there, Bunting said.
Bunting said he has arranged for Thompson to have exclusive rights to advertise and display campaign materials at gun shows in Florida run by the two companies that sponsor most of the shows, Southern Classic Gun Shows and Suncoast Gun Shows.
At the dinner, Thompson got an endorsement from John DiGaetano of Wesley Chapel, president of a Florida-based gun rights group, the Second Amendment Club of America.
Thompson said during his speech that when he was in the Senate, he "stood tall for the Second Amendment, when a lot of people wouldn't do that" - a line in his standard stump speech.
When Thompson visited Miami earlier in the day Friday, though, it turned out not to be the best day for his Second Amendment pitch. On Thursday, a Miami-Dade police officer was shot to death while making a traffic stop, and three other officers were wounded, by a man wearing body armor and firing an assault rifle.
Thompson didn't waiver from his stand when asked about the shooting.
"I do not think that abridging Second Amendment rights is the answer to street crime in America," he told reporters in Miami. "To disarm law-abiding citizens" won't help, he said.
The term "assault weapon" was made up to create confusion in the minds of the ignorant.
I believe that "assault rifle" is the correct technical term for a light weight rifle which allows automatic or semi-automatic fire [termed "select fire"] using an intermediate power cartridge. The cartridge power is traded off to permit carrying of more ammunition. The M16 is an example of such a rifle.
"Assault weapon" is a completely invented term used to outlaw black, ugly, military-looking semi-automatic rifles that frighten liberal anti-gunners.
"Assault weapons" are now legal in most states, because the unConstitutional federal "assault weapons" ban expired at the end of its ten year term.
Also, despite the efforts of anti-gunners to outlaw "assault rifles", they have only succeeded in outlawing their manufacture for civilian sale and in requiring burdensome federal licensing of such arms. Some states, perhaps most, also have tight controls on who can possess "assault rifles" or other machineguns.
[Sometimes it seems like I am talking to myself.]
Then you're probably in luck. According to the anti-gunners, you, and I, and probably most pro-gun people already have such a rifle in their gun safe. It just looks like a .22 caliber single-shot bolt action.
“[Sometimes it seems like I am talking to myself.]”
Nope. Thanks for the info!
I wonder if that will make a difference?
“Fred will get the gun vote but there are only 100 million of them and they all vote.
I wonder if that will make a difference?”
ROTFLMAO!!!!!
Abso-ferkin'-lutely!
A good day to speak out about the importance of the 2nd Amendment is the SAME day when "journalists", hoplophobes and freedom-haters are doing their best to discredit it.
We don't need any more politicians who are fair-weather friends of the 2nd. Standing up for the Constitution WHEN IT IS UNDER ATTACK is what separates good men and women from weasels and weasel-ettes.
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