Hawkeye
The Leatherstocking
- Jan 29, 2009
- 3,972
And now it’s about punishing those who voted for it
Fine, but can you take that to another thread, please?
This one was initially very useful for actually tracking what was going on with the bill, and now there are page after page of "omg I hate these faketraitorassholejerkfacenotrealrepublicans" type ranting that is, frankly, useless.
And it hurts our cause.
I have spent hours on the phone with elected officials this week, talking with them and educating them about the issues surrounding both this and the bump stock bill. You'd be surprised what you can get done when you approach them like people instead of ranting.
In fact, you know what got said a bunch of times? "I am sick of being called a traitor and being yelled at. I wish more people would just talk to me, because then I'd be more wiling to listen." Guys, a certain amount of anger about stuff like this is fine and useful. Acting on that is fine and useful. But when you go off the hook and cuss people out, it hurts our cause.
The facts of the matter are that these (mainly Republicans, I'm speaking of) folks are elected office holders in a state that is mainly hostile to them. They also have moire constituents to serve than just you and I and other gun people. One guy I spoke to this week said "hey, if I'd known there were more people like you out there I might have voted differently" because he had gotten a sum total of two phone calls about it from our side, and a flood from the other side.
But if we work with them and act like normal, mature, responsible people who can speak sensibly about the issues instead of frothing at the mouth and hurling insults, we can get a lot more done.
I actually had one of the members of the house ask me to please write up some proposed amendments to fix this POS Red Flag bill and send them to him so he can propose them if it gets bounced back. See how that works?