Posted on 10/02/2008 12:45:27 PM PDT by neverdem
www.gunowners.org/a092208.htm
Sep 2008
Your hard work is reaping benefits once again!
Last week, we told you how the U.S. House of Representatives had overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill repealing the D.C. gun ban (HR 6842).
But we also warned you that there was not much time left in the legislative session, and that Majority Leader Harry Reid might try to kill the bill.
That's why we asked you to petition your Senators to urge Reid for a vote in the Senate.
Well, the good news is that 47 Senators have listened to you and have cosigned a letter addressed to the Majority Leader from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. These signatures were obtained in two short days with Senators getting ready to leave town.
The bad news is that our predictions have come true. Sen. Reid is trying to use procedural maneuvers to keep the bill from coming to the Senate floor for a vote.
Without a vote in the Senate, it becomes clear that the House vote was an election year ploy... a deal cut by two anti-gunners: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Put another way, the House vote merely provides "cover" for many "F" rated Democrats.
After all, 47 congressmen who voted in favor of the bill are rated "F" by Gun Owners of America. Included in this number are three Democrats who are running statewide for open U.S. Senate seats (Tom Udall in New Mexico, Mark Udall in Colorado and Tom Allen in Maine).
Four congressmen who voted to repeal D.C.'s gun laws also cosponsored a bill to ban so-called assault weapons!
So after giving "F" rated Democrats in the House a chance to vote pro-gun, the Democrat leadership is keeping their party members in the Senate from voting on the bill (to prevent the bill from being signed into law by the President).
It is vital that more Senators support the Hutchison effort. Her letter states that, "For more than thirty years, the District of Columbia has subjected residents to the most prohibitive gun control laws of any city in the nation, requiring rifles and shotguns to be registered, stored unloaded, and either locked or disassembled. Despite the Court's ruling in June, the District of Columbia city council has continued to exact onerous and unconstitutional firearm regulations on law-abiding residents."
That's why HR 6842 is needed. Time is of the essence.
ACTION:
1) Please contact your Senators again and make sure they continue to put pressure on Majority Leader Harry Reid, to force him to bring up HR 6842 (the D.C. gun ban repeal) for a vote.
2) GOA is the only national group that both has a plan for pushing this bill through the Senate and is actively working to get cosignatories on the Hutchison letter. Please ask other groups to join this effort to get signatures on the letter and, ultimately, to get Reid to schedule a vote in the Senate on repealing the D.C. gun ban.
CONTACT INFORMATION: You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center to send your Senators the pre-written e-mail message below. And, you can call your Senators at 202-224-3121 or toll-free at 1-877-762-8762.
Dear Senator:
If you have already signed on to the Kay Bailey Hutchison letter -- directed to Sen. Harry Reid -- then I want to thank you. If you have done that, then please keep urging him to bring up the D.C. gun ban repeal (HR 6842) for a vote.
If you have not joined on to this letter yet, I urge you to cosign it right away. This important letter urges Reid "to ensure that D.C. residents do not have to wait any longer to realize their constitutional rights by allowing the full Senate to consider H.R. 6842 before the 110th Congress concludes."
This is an issue that I strongly believe in, and if you support the Second Amendment, then you should support the rights of D.C. residents by signing on to this letter, as well.
Gun Owners of America will score the signing of this letter in its upcoming congressional rating. Please let me know how you intend to act.
Sincerely,
I’d almost prefer that they NOT act and let Heller II go forward.
Let us know when they get to 5 dozen.
Maybe the House could add it to the bailout bill and send it back to the Senate.
Tack it on to some bill the democrats want - I sometimes have to pass through DC and don’t like leaving my .45 at home. It’d be nice if Maryland woke up to.
IIRC, DC has already repealed most of what this bill would, and Heller II has already been deflated.
I don’t understand. I thought the US Supreme Court decided that the DC ban was unconstitutional. What does this bill do that the Court’s decision didn’t?
The GOA needs to spend more time and money on this election. If obama wins, the ban in Washington won’t mean a thing.
After the election, DC can go back to sneering at the court and fiddling around the edges to turn DC back into a law abiding gun owners nightmare.
With this bill, the power to do that is taken out of DC’s hands, and the bill is made much, much better than the DC’s best attempt.
Another advantage is that it puts the choice to *really* support the Second Amendment right before a national election.
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