Good News
We’ve also been seeing an increase in hysterical speculation on the
internet – stated as fact – that NRA and “the Republicans” have cut a
deal to sell out gunowners.It ain’t so.
I worried out loud back in 2002 that there would be efforts to combine
NRA’s “No. 1 Priority” – S. 659 – with the Clinton gun ban reenactment. In January 2003 I buttonholed some people who would know. As I reported at the time, they flatly denied any deal had been made, or would be made “because as important as 659 is, it’s not worth a gun ban.”In April, at the annual meetings at Orlando, all the NRA brass, from President Kayne Robinson and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre on down, at every opportunity, put equal emphasis on passing S. 659 and preventing reenactment of the ban. (I was delighted to see they were even using my description, “reenactment” – which is what a new law would be.)
Last September, again as I reported, I obtained a memo from turncoat
Robert Ricker to his anti-gun handlers excitedly describing the enthusiasm of a “moderate” Republican Senator’s staffer for combining S. 659 with an “assault weapon”; reenactment.The Senator himself said “No deal.”
This week, after the hysterical reports of a sellout started bouncing around the internet, I had a chat with someone in NRA who knows: “We seek to pass S. 659 as a clean bill and will not accept a Clinton gun ban extension – for ten years or ten minutes — or the McCain-Reed ‘gun show loophole’ as the price for its passage.”
I am confident that there is no deal, and won’t be one – not from NRA at least.
I wonder who they could be talking about? Regardless, if this is true, it is excellent news.
