Work for Change!
Working for Change, which is some sort of “progressive” organization, has a page where you can ask your Senators and Representative to Renew the Assault Weapons Ban. They’re nice enough to let you customize the message:
I urge you NOT to support S. 2109/H.R. 3831, a piece of un-Constitutional legislation that would reauthorize the so-called
“assault weapons” law.Fortunately, the law will expire in September 2004 unless Congress and the President renew it. One of the most important outcomes of this is that high-capacity ammunition clips will once again be legal; the ban on their manufacture has crippled our armed forces, because of the scarcity of these magazines, making them more vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Anti-rights lobbyists such as the VPC, notorious for its lies and distortions, led the fight for the original assault weapons ban because the guns “look scary,” and they hoped this law would become the precursor to additional gun bans. Of course, the law was useless, because it banned guns based solely on how they looked.
S. 2109 is identical to the amendment offered by Senators Feinstein and Warner that passed the Senate by a vote of 52-47 on March 2. Although that amendment died when the underlying legislation was defeated, Senators Feinstein and Warner will soon try again to renew the assault weapons ban. We must fight this bill also.
If you have already cosponsored S. 2109/H.R. 3831, you are supporting legislation that abrogates our Constitutional rights, but if you have not, we thank you. Please vote AGAINST this anti-rights, anti-military legislation when it comes up for a vote.
Please let me know how you intend to proceed on this issue.
I’ll be the blue guy holding his breath…
UPDATE: In the comments, XRLQ points out that this will probably backfire (no pun intended). Doh. Well, my intentions were, and that’s all that counts, right?
June 30th, 2004 at 1:59 pm
Bad idea. I tried that on MoveOn.ORG, back in the prehistoric days when their agenda really was about “moving on.” I edited the message to clarify that I wanted Congress to throw Bill Clinton out of office, and then move on. I got a form letter back from my “Represenative” thanking me for my steadfast support of the President against this partisan witch hunt.
June 30th, 2004 at 2:09 pm
Aw crap. You know, right after I clicked the button, I thought, “Hm…I wonder what the subject line of that email is going to be?” Now I know.
Not that it matters. One of my Senators is John “I don’t show up for votes, either” Edwards. And my Rep lives in Chapel Hill (’nuff said, if you’re from around here).
June 30th, 2004 at 4:24 pm
I thought DiFi’s latest incarnation of evil was SB 2498.
I’m confused.
You know, we can all just cut and paste from here into the webforms on the various Congresscritters’ official sites. The letter is quite good.
Not that it’ll help with my Senators-Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. But oh well.
June 30th, 2004 at 9:12 pm
I don’t think that they actually read what you write them anyways…I think they have some way of knowing that its from a given group (i.e. NRA, Brady, etc.) and then deduce what side your on.