Gun Owners of America Alert-- June 14, 2007

After all, if there were such a thing as a single issue Member of Congress, it would have to be McCarthy. Rep. McCarthy ran for office to ban guns; Hollywood made a movie about her efforts to ban guns; and she is currently the lead sponsor of a bill that makes the old Clinton gun ban pale by comparison.

Even many Democrats wouldn't go near a McCarthy gun bill. They have learned that supporting gun control is a losing issue. Enter Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the so-called Dean of the House, having served since the Eisenhower administration. Dingell is also a former NRA Board member, and was in that capacity tapped to bring the NRA leadership to the table.

The end result of the negotiations was that this small clique among the NRA leadership gave this bill the support it needed to pass.

But why was it necessary to pass the bill in such an underhanded fashion? If this is such a victory for the Second Amendment, why all the secrecy? Why was a deal forged with the anti-gun Democrat House leadership, keeping most pro-gun representatives in the dark? Why was the bill rammed through on the Suspension Calendar with no recorded vote with which to identify those who are against us?

I don't care how many reassurances I hear from the NRA (pardon me while I sarcastically genuflect for a moment), anything that gets backed up by McCarthy and the Brady Campaign is an automatic NO WAY for me.

And on the topic of these unrecorded votes:  in my opinion they should not exist, because they sidestep the principle of our allegedly representative government.

UPDATE:  Yuri Orlov comments.  Note that the email from the Brady bunch said, "Victory for Gun Control in House. NRA Sees the Light."  That light must be pretty dim, considering where they apparently have their heads.

At KMVT (Twin Falls, Idaho):

As a democracy we respect and honor our constitutional rights and therefore protect them when someone abuses them. Red's Trading Post sees the ATF abusing these rights and wants to show the world their side of the story.

Owner Ryan Horsley says, “I've began speaking out. Other people have refused to speak out in hopes that if they stay quiet, they hope that the ATF will find favor with them or just let them go and not revoke their license. But as we've seen in so many instances -- that's not the case."

For several years now -- the gun shop and the ATF have had their share of battles.

From being given a temporary stay to additional violations – Horsley claimed that beyond all that -- Red's Trading Post’s record is very clean.

He says, "In the 2005 audit they went through 10,000 forms and all they could manage to find were four-percent errors in our record keeping. I remind people that these are not laws nor ordinances. These are policies set up by the ATF and those are policies that continue to change."

The KMVT report also states: "We tried to contact the ATF -- but they couldn't be reached for comment."  I'll bet Mr. Horsely gets some "comments" from them pretty soon.

Via JPFO, which has a web site about the movie at http://www.thegangmovie.com/.

The Texas Citizens Defense League has a new Yahoo forum/discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txopencarry.

TCDL is an organization whose purpose is to promote decriminalization of open carry in the state of Texas.