Bartholomew Roberts
Member
Reprint of TSRA Alert I received in email. I know a lot of you abandoned Dallas long ago; but for those who did not, let's make sure we don't get a repeat of the Laura Miller mess.
To: Dallas TSRA Members and all Dallas area gun owners
From: James Dark, Executive Director, TSRA
The Texas State Rifle Association offers the following information regarding the eleven candidates for the office of Mayor of the City of Dallas. Candidate questionnaires were sent to all candidates. Of the eleven candidates, five responded. All five candidates responded with favorable questionnaires, while six candidates chose to ignore the questionnaire. This shows a possible indifference to your Second Amendment rights, and TSRA members, and any other gun owner, are urged to consider this issue in light of the City of Dallas’ recent participation in New York City Michael Bloomberg’s Coalition of Mayors.
The Bloomberg coalition, ostensibly created to target illegal gun trafficking, has denigrated to a Bloomberg led circus which targets legal gun owners, legal gun dealers, and simple law-abiding citizens. Recently, Bloomberg sent several private detectives to make “simulated” gun purchases in Southern states, presenting false identifications, and lying on Federal Firearms forms to make these “simulated” purchases. When Bloomberg presented his “evidence” to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, he was told (in a scathing letter) that the only prosecutable crimes had been committed by his private detectives, who were hired with New York City tax dollars to annual salaries totaling $800,000.
The City of Dallas doesn’t need to ally itself with a New York City billionaire Mayor with presidential aspirations who conspires to commit Federal felonies to advance a political agenda outside of his own city.
After outrage from their constituents, several mayors have already withdrawn from the Bloomberg coalition, and the Texas State Rifle Association encourages Mayor Laura Miller’s successor to do the same. All five candidates who returned favorable questionnaires indicated that they would not ally themselves with this elitist group of mayors who selectively read the Constitution.
Early Voting in the Dallas Election begins on April 30, 2007. The election is on May 12th, 2007.
The results of the questionnaire are as follows (candidates in alphabetical order):
John C. Cappello A
David S. Coats ?
Jennifer L. Gale ?
Gary E. Griffith A
Roger Herrera A
Donald Wayne Hill ?
Darrell Eddy Jordan ?
Thomas C. Leppert A
Edward P. Oakley ?
Ejike E. Okpa A
Max W. Wells ?
Legend:
Letter Grade from A to F indicates degree of dedication to the Second Amendment and Texas Law.
?” indicates an indifference to the issue of firearms and the Second Amendment that should be carefully evaluated before supporting the candidate.
The questions on the questionnaire were as follows :
1. Article 1, Section 23 of the Texas Constitution states, “Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms in the lawful defense of himself or the State, but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.” Do you agree that the Texas Constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms?
_____A. Yes
_____B. No (Explain if necessary)
2. Texas law contains a firearms preemption provision, which guarantees that the state occupies the entire field of firearms regulations. Preemption provides for a uniform set of state firearm laws and prevents municipalities from enacting a patchwork of confusing and arbitrary local restrictions across the state. In 2003, the Legislature overwhelmingly passed, and Governor Perry signed, SB 501, closing a loophole in the state criminal trespass law that city and county governments were using to post signs banning CHLs from certain governmental buildings and properties. Most of these locations were never off-limits under the state’s carry law and the practice clearly conflicted with the state firearms preemption law, the state’s carry law, and the State Constitution. Would you, as Mayor of Dallas, seek to manipulate or distort state law to prohibit CHLs from additional city buildings or city properties?
______A. Yes
______B. No
______C. Undecided
3. New York’s mayor, Mike Bloomberg, has instituted a nationwide coalition, Mayors against Illegal Guns. The group was founded in 2006 by Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino with stated goals to curb gun violence. However Bloomberg has moved beyond public safety saying that people who want to carry concealed weapons on the streets are a very small number of extremists. There are currently 258,162 citizens of Texas licensed to carry a concealed handgun and 40 states have concealed handgun laws. As Mayor of Dallas, would you align yourself with this group of elitist gun control mayors out of touch with what’s important to Texas and Texans?
______A. Yes
______B. No
______C. Undecided
4. Are you a member of TSRA or NRA?
______Yes #_________________
______No
5. Do you have a Texas Concealed Handgun License?
______Yes
______No
6. What public offices have you held?________________________
Note: We are publishing the questions for information purposes. All five candidates returning questionnaires gave favorable answers on questions 1-3. We are not publishing all of the answers for confidentiality reasons. For example, we cannot release the membership question, since our bylaws forbid release of member's data, and the question dealing with whether or not the candidate has a Concealed Handgun License is a principle we feel strongly enough about to try to get a confidentiality law passed forbidding release of this data to the media.
