Will You Continue to Support the SAF After Their Involvment in ManchinToomey ?

[Bartholomew Roberts]

PPP is not a non-partisan polling group by any stretch of the imagination.

That poll wants me to believe Murkowski in Alaska is down 16 points for not supporting gun control. Nonsense!

 

[OilyPablo]

Of course I will continue to support SAF.

 

[itsa pain]

gottlieb is a member of the same tribe as schumer Feinstein bloomberg Lautenberg etc. lennin said the best way to fight the opposition is to lead it

 

[CoRoMo]

I'm okay with the UBC.

...

When I sell guns privately I go through FFL.

So why do you want a federal law enacted that would force you to do something that you are already doing voluntarily?

 

[roadcoder]

To clarify:

I don't WANT the UBC, but I'm OK with it if it were to pass.

I pick my battles and the UBC fight isn't one I would engage in.

Just my opinion.

 

[roadcoder]

You're right, it is a partisan polling group.

That said, it's not impossible that Murkowski is down when you see in the polling that almost 100% of the drop came amongst Democratic voters:

"...Murkowski has lost most of her appeal to Democrats in the wake of her vote, with her numbers with them going from 59/25 to 44/44...."

And I don't believe politicians should vote the polls every time. I'm just saying that UBC in and of itself is not that egregious compared to some other things the gun control nuts want. It all comes down to the philosophy of whether or not you give ground. It's a hard call, and, like I said earlier, only time will tell what the right decision is.

 

[DeepSouth]

So why do you want a federal law enacted that would force you to do something that you are already doing voluntarily?

He doesn't. He wants to force YOU (and everyone else) to do what he's doing voluntarily.

 

[Ed Ames]

Which is the essence of the problem. Forcing others to do what you want. If the people involved were less authoritarian they would be pushing for something very different and probably far more acceptable. Except of course they wouldn't be pushing for anything then.

Imagine this....

Allow everyone to run background checks on themselves. The background check generates a code that is good for 24 hours.

Allow sellers to validate those codes online or via telephone.

Now give the seller an incentive to encourage the system to be used. E.g. waive civil and criminal liability for the seller if she validates a code on sale.

The system would provide background checks for far more sales than are checked today. It would probably reach 99% of the compliance of a more authoritarian system with transfers done through ffls. Remember: You will never get compliance of people who are willing to break the law. Drug sales are against the law, have been for generations, yet drugs are still sold without government oversight.

Would that bother you? I'd be OK with it myself, especially if it let me follow up with a push to change the dealer checks to follow the same form.

As for push-back and polling, the problem is that most people don't know the current laws. E.g. many people still think the "assault weapon" issue is about full-auto machine guns. In that context, how can anyone take a poll seriously?

 

[CoRoMo]

He doesn't. He wants to force YOU (and everyone else) to do what he's doing voluntarily.

To be fair, you'll notice that he doesn't actually WANT the government to force me to follow his example.

But he's 'okay with it' if our government forced you and I to do something we've never been forced to do in the history of this free nation.

Which is the essence of the problem. Forcing others to do what you want.

Yeah, we've heard/read this many, many times... Gun control is not about guns. It's about control.

 

[DeepSouth]

To be fair, you'll notice that he doesn't actually WANT the government to force me to follow his example.

But he's 'okay with it' if our government forced you and I to do something we've never been forced to do in the history of this free nation.

Fair enough, I stand corrected. I am however reminded of a saying that goes something like. --All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing---

My paraphrase




I blame all typos on the iPhone auto correct!!

 

[Bruno2]

I recommend everyone read this article. It is about 3 pages , but it gives a very in depth perception of Alan Gura. I think it may surprise many of his supporters:http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticleALD.jsp?id=1202586287375&thepage=1&slreturn=20130403180028

I would post some quotes from it , but I believe it is better read in its entire form.

 

[Cosmoline]

I'm still not sure what the heck that was even about, or if it was an attempt to muddy the waters and help block the bill.

 

[Bruno2]

The reason why I made this poll thread was to see if what I was thinking is accurate. I felt like this move was going to hurt the SAF. It looks like I was correct. It's sad , but as gun owners we need to vote with our feet. This is the best way to show politicians and organizations just how convicted we are about what we believe in. I hope the SAF will do whatever it takes to make a run at gaining our support. I know this will hurt their pocketbook for sure.

 

[Bruno2]

Personally, I'd like to see a much stronger show of committment from them that this really is the core of their mission, but I do agree with many others that the good they have indeed done grants them a lot of benefit of the doubt from me.

Undoubtedly, the T-M debacle is a serious, shining, oozey, inflamed black eye that will take a long period of untainted and stellar efforts from them to overcome.

Heck, there's still people who HATE the NRA even now for supporting FOPA back in 1986, and that bill was about 80% positive!

Put me down in that category that still hates the NRA over the FOPA. I am sure you know though. Seems like we have had that conversation before Sam.

I view what the SAF did here was like a girlfriend cheating on us. It was very embarrassing and done in front of everybody that we knew. We were involved and committed to her. Now we either have to swallow are pride and try again or we have to wash our hands of her. I don't know if we can ever trust her again. Should we take her back and she runs around on us again then that will surely make for a bitter hatred.

 

[BullfrogKen]

Poll needs a "wait and see what they do next" button.


'cause that's where I am.


I feel like SAF and Toomey sold us out. The gun control debate was DEAD until they got down on their hands and knees over top of it; pounded on it's chest; placed their lips around it and blew some oxygen into it's lungs.

 

[Bruno2]

I agree Ken. I will look into adding one. From what I see most of the people that remain undecided and have said so in the comments didn't vote either way. So I believe that it isn't too late to add the option.

 

[Ed Ames]

As a side note: there are people who refuse to participate in Public polls. That's why there is a warning on them - people don't like 'em. So public poll results are never representative/always skewed.

 

[HKGuns]

To be fair, you'll notice that he doesn't actually WANT the government to force me to follow his example.

....and this is EXACTLY the reason we continue to lose ground. I don't care about it, doesn't affect me.....I don't care, why bother.

In my mind this is worse than the Anti's who actually stand for something.

 

[Texan Scott]

When you dine with the devil, take your own fork, y'all.

SAF thought they could negotiate with the antis... that they would deal in good faith. That they really were interested in dialog and open to compromise.

Well, they got burned. Used. Told "Thanks for the good time, babe... now get outta my truck".

Think about that next time someone starts trolling a 'reasonable compromise' thread.

 

[Bruno2]

Yeah Scott that was the thing that got me. The SAF came out saying a couple weeks before the vote that they were behind it and it would be good for us. Then the morning of the vote they tried to say they no longer backed it. Well I bet a lot of people wrote their congress critters trying to support the bill. So that was bad b/c a couple hrs notice is not enough time to retract what you formerly told your representative. I just didn't like it. I didn't like the trade off part either. It's not a plea bargain.

 

[OilyPablo]

I will talk to the SAF guy at the gunshow tomorrow. I guess that's one thing nice about having SAF nearby.

 

[Bruno2]

Invite them here to defend themselves Pablo. I am willing to listen.

 

[Sam1911]

If you read the THR archives from the January-February 2013 time period you'll see (locked) thread after (locked) thread full of folks desperate to find something we could offer to give up to the other side, because they were utterly certain that we did not have the strength to stonewall new legislation, and they had the oddball misbelief that if WE picked which rights we didn't care about so much that they'd take those juicy morsels and leave the rest of our rights alone.

We probably closed 20 threads just full of that sort of pathetic appeasement.

The very most positive, though probably delusional, of those threads suggested that we could take this opportunity and actually get the anits to the bargaining table. Accept that they were taking something but try to demand something from them in exchange. Maybe they'd give up reopening the MG registry. Maybe they'd take silencer and SBR/SBSs out of Title II of the NFA. Maybe they'd remove the interstate private sales restriction. And so on.

Is that what SAF, Toomey, and Manchin were trying to do?

I can envision a narrative wherein Gottleib & Co. really did set out to do just that. Such an effort would have taken several months to bring to fruition, so the timing seems right. Unfortunately for them (in a way) the inevitable delay meant that their grand proposal came after the strength of the gun-control effort was already too far spent to accomplish anything, so the effect was Ken's CPR-on-the-corpse analogy. Not, "Hey, these guys are trying to get something in exchange for the hit we're about to take..." but [/]"Hey, these guys are trying to make a bad law happen that would have died if they'd just kept their dumb mouths shut!"[/i]

And some of the things he claimed to have inserted into the bill sure are positive -- and the big negative (UBC) does read to most folks as about the weakest strike against us that the antis could ever hope to achieve. (Though the ramifications are indeed very bad.) So that story rings true to me.

Unfortunately, it does really seem that they tried to play political poker with a set of old school car sharps who were happy to bluff them up, sweeten the pot with the good will from the shooting community that their involvement was expected to bring to the table, then pull a little last minute shift to leave them holding a hand of junk.

It does indeed read as though they thought since they were slick in court they must be slick in politics, and they got played hard, and publicly.

 

[Bruno2]

The poll seems to stay constant with 2/3 nay and 1/3 yay. That sucks for SAF if they truly lose 66% of their support.

 

[Bruno2]

his is from the article that I posted in post #36.

Drawing Fire from His Usual Allies

Gura's current docket represents the final phase of a three-step plan that began with establishing via Heller that the Second Amendment affords an individual the right to bear arms, according to Levy. The second step involved ensuring that the right to bear arms applies to the states, which was achieved with the McDonald decision. The final, and most drawn-out, step is geared toward defining the scope of that right. "Everyone understands it isn't absolute and that there should be some restrictions," Levy says.

Maybe not everyone.

Gura has said he is hardly a gun rights absolutist and has expressed support for banning machine guns, preventing felons from acquiring weapons, and allowing instant background checks for prospective gun buyers. Those positions have put him at odds with some of his usual allies. During the Heller oral arguments, he said there was no question that governments could ban certain types of firearms and appeared to endorse not just background checks, but also laws requiring gun owners to store their arms in a safe.

"I received a very negative reaction from the real far-out, anti–gun control crazies, who were really angry with me," author Adam Winkler quotes Gura as saying in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. In the book, Gura recalled being compared to Osama bin Laden and Benedict Arnold, and drawing the ire of both the Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association. "These people are crazy," Gura told Winkler. "I could have [made an absolutist argument before the Court]. And that would have probably made me very popular in some cabin somewhere out there in the woods. Of course I would have lost 9 to 0."

The tension between Gura and the NRA is well documented. He clashed openly with the group during the Heller litigation, accusing it of trying to derail the case out of fear that the Court would deliver an unfavorable decision. Gura also felt the NRA tried to hijack McDonald. He was especially angry when the Supreme Court took some of his allotted time and gave it to the NRA, represented by then–King & Spalding appellate partner Paul Clement.

People should read the article in the link provided. It is very interesting. Interesting in the aspect that the guys whom have been fighting for us may very well end up continuing the fight to an angle that we don't particularly like or want.