Yes, and on this score, Bush is mildly more anti-gun than Dean.
And you base this on what?
When are you guys going to draw a line in the sand and say "no farther!"????
This is exactly where GOA and the no compromise crowd is a little too full of themselves. In a Republic, if you have the power to draw lines in the sand, then you won't have to. If you don't have the power, then you can draw lines in the sand until you are exhausted and the only thing will happen is that sand will be kicked in your face.
I think the "no compromise" group needs to wake up out of whatever fantasy world they are living in and accept that the entire GOA membership numbers less than 10% of NRA members, who in turn number less than 10% of gun owners. We are a minority group - if we were a majority, we wouldn't have to compromise.
A "no compromise" organization of 4.2 million isn't going to be powerful - it is going to be powerless because in a nation of 274 million it is still a tiny minority and politics is built around compromise. If you have to adopt a position that 250 million people hate (mostly because those 250 million people are ignorant) just to get the votes of the 4.2 million, you are going to find that is a losing deal real quick and abandon the small group. The only way the small group serves as an effective political force is if they COMPROMISE on their goals enough to give you political cover.
Until we can educate the ignorant, all this talk of "lines in the sand" is foolish; because we are not in a position to be drawing lines anywhere - and that is with a relatively "strong" RKBA movement.
Bush signs a renewal of it, and he should totally lose your support.
If he does, he will.
Hell, really, you should stick to your principles and Bush should have lost your support when he pledged to sign the renewal.
You mean when he stated his support for the ban back during his 2000 campaign? Where would the "no-compromise" position have gotten us then? It would have put Al "handgun licensing and registration" Gore in the driver's seat. That would have showed them for not accepting our "no compromise" position.
Remember, George Bush Senior started this AWB business ,and Bush junior has ALREADY expanded the band.
George Bush Sr. allowed the ATF to monkey with the definition of "sporting purposes" to use the already passed 1968 GCA to stop the import of many weapons - a practice that practically every one of the domestic gun manufacturers endorsed and enjoyed. There is a difference between protectionism and anti-gun.
The Republicans and Bush I also helped to kill
12 assault weapon ban bills in 1989 alone and continued to help us out until they were voted out of power in the White House and Congress both.
If you have a bit of evidence that Bush II has supported an expansion of the ban with concrete actions then please share it, a link - a news story - anything.
Obedient voting blocks have no power.
Neither do "no compromise" voting blocks for the reasons I've already outlined.
Right now, you are demanding we punish Bush for an action that he hasn't even carried out yet and all common sense suggests he never will carry out. Consider how following this advice in the past would have affected us and our cause. Now please explain how this advice is going to help our cause in the future.
