GOA just made a mis-step AFAIAC

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

Like many of you, I am a (life) member of GOA, and I religously send my pre-prepared postcards to politicians that they send me (thank you GOA). But I just threw this month's in the trash; not sending it, because the pre-prepared post-card says in essence "Oppose Obama's socialized health care plan", without mention ONE SINGLE WORD as to why Obama's plan is bad for gun owners. It reads like a purely health-care-debate political statement, and creates no nexus to gun ownership.

Yes, it's true that Obama's health care plan IS bad for gun owners (BATFE perusing medical records etc etc etc), AND it's true that the literature accompanying the pre-created postcards this month clearly spelled it out (thanks again GOA), but no mention is made in the postcards to the critters themselves of the tie in to gun ownerhship.

So sorry, GOA, please always make this connection, as not all of us gun owners are going to appear to our representatives as being general "conservative shill" limbaugh-heads in the correspondence we send.

So I will just create my own letter instead this month to the critters; but get with the program, please, GOA!

That is all.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

wait they send you prefilled out post cards?! thats gotta make an impression on the receiving end what you pay for that?

 

[MikeS.]

I never send my congress critters the GOA postcards. I send them a personalized note on the subject. I want them to know I care enough about the subject to take my own time to write.

 

[Mags]

Well right now rumor has it they are trying to associate gun ownership with health probelms. So I can see the link.

 

[kda]

Yes, I have seen where the current administration is linking gun ownership to increased risk of accidents and / or lead poisoning and whatever else they can think of ... all to allow them to clamp down on it for "health reasons" and to control "medical expenses".

 

[JohnBT]

The point being that the postcard doesn't list ANY tie-in, evidence, rebuttal, whatever. John


"the pre-prepared post-card says in essence "Oppose Obama's socialized health care plan", without mention ONE SINGLE WORD as to why Obama's plan is bad"

 

[Craig_AR]

GOA has as much business holding a position on health care reform as AARP has in holding a position on gun ownership.

 

[ArmedBear]

Look, I think GOA should take a flying leap, in general.

But... Tad, why are people with "liberal" beliefs just "liberals", but people who happen to fall on the same side as Rush Limbaugh on some issue are automatically "schills"? Don't buy into that. It's a propaganda ploy designed to hobble the opposition. Don't buy into it.

And besides, do you think that the ranting idiots on MSNBC won't throw any of us who think Obama's (not really a) plan for health "insurance" is a bad idea in with the Klan, Timothy McVeigh and Hitler anyway, no matter what GOA says or doesn't say?

I think that one point to be made here is that GOA has no real influence over anything or anybody in American politics, hasn't ever done a thing for gun rights in the real world, and exists just to send out letters soliciting money. They're the corrupt televangelists of the gun issue.

 

[Fremmer]

Limbaugh is more effective than GOA at protecting the Second Amendment.
Because, well, people (and Congress) actually listen to Limbaugh.

But to each his own. If GOA is your cup of tea, you might want to hand-write a letter to your congressional representative, and add some reasons to your opposition.

 

[bdickens]

I'm sorry, but those pre-printed post cards are worthless.

 

[Tommygunn]

The cards themselves are probably worthless, but you can get the adresses off them and write your own letter -- even use the information on the cards.
That will possibly be more effective.

I love how we have to jump through the right hoops to get attention, though. While the politicians probably toss those cards away, do they really think that just because someone sent in a postcard, their opinions don't count?

 

[psyopspec]

Their xenophobic article on so-called Sudden Jihad Syndrome a couple years back was enough for me to make up my mind about them. No thanks.

 

[Shawn Dodson]

Health care implications with respect to gun ownership is obvious - shootings are a "public health problem", which are expensive and unfair for the public to have to pay for.

It's back door gun control.

Environmental laws and universal health care provide the government power to regulate (i.e., control) most aspects of your private life.

 

[Kimber45acp]

Where is the "mis step?"

A central registry of medical records will facilitate disarming people if they have PTSD.

A central registry of medical records will give rise to taking people's guns who are a "threat to themselves or others," as a "precaution" of course (this happened a lot in the U.K.

The "health" care bill forces Americans to purchase something, under threat of a huge fine. Disobeying government has become an excuse to take people's guns (by making them a "prohibited person").

So again I ask, how did GOA "mis step" here? A federal takeover of something we all need, and something that is frequently used as an excuse to disarm people, is DEFINITELY something gun owners should oppose.

 

[TexasRifleman]

So again I ask, how did GOA "mis step" here? A federal takeover of something we all need, and something that is frequently used as an excuse to disarm people, is DEFINITELY something gun owners should oppose.

I think the OP means that GOA didn't really explain WHY they were against the healthcare proposal.

One of the things that we see all the time in complaints against NRA in particular is that they are "partisan" since they seemingly endorse Republicans but not Democrats. Turns out that isn't the case, but it's the standard anti NRA argument, used on occasion even by GOA.

So fast forward to this, where GOA is coming out against a proposal that has VERY strong partisan politics involved, without making it EXTREMELY clear what pieces of the healthcare proposal are anti gun, and you get now GOA doing the same thing.... giving the appearance of being against the healthcare deal simply because it's a Democrat item.

That's my take away from the OP's statement, and I don't disagree with it.

The healthcare bill has lots to worry about, but when an organization like GOA wants to come out against it they need to be very specific in explaining EXACTLY what the problem is for gun owners.

 

[Kimber45acp]

The healthcare bill has lots to worry about, but when an organization like GOA wants to come out against it they need to be very specific in explaining EXACTLY what the problem is for gun owners.

Maybe I missed something, I thought they had.

 

[ServiceSoon]

As much as I appreciate GOA I never send their letters. They are too, in your face and generally short on facts.

 

[psyopspec]

Health care implications with respect to gun ownership is obvious - shootings are a "public health problem", which are expensive and unfair for the public to have to pay for.

It's back door gun control.

Calling it obvious doesn't necessarily make it so. For those of us to whom it's not obvious, would you mind citing a source?

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

Where is the "mis step?"

A central registry of medical records will facilitate disarming people if they have PTSD.

A central registry of medical records will give rise to taking people's guns who are a "threat to themselves or others," as a "precaution" of course (this happened a lot in the U.K.

[...]

It is not farfetched to believe that such things could be snuck in the back door, as it were. That could and should have been explained better.

 

[JohnBT]

"Maybe I missed something, I thought they had."

Not on the postcard. Do you think the folks in D.C. who receive the postcards are going to research the issue on the GOA site?

JT

 

[kd7nqb]

I have worked on political campaigns for quite a while now and I can tell you that when we tally support / opposition to a topic the form letters / pre done post cards are often counted as MORE weightily than a hand letters because we know there is an organization (likely) with money behind it.

 

[benEzra]

To me, it looks more like GOA is taking an a priori position on health care reform and is shouting "GUNZ!" without specifics to rally support for it.

Pointing to actual text of proposed legislation, and offering suggestions for fixing said proposed legislation to prevent infringements on RKBA, would be welcome. Hand-waving just makes them look like they're trying to corral the faithful into supporting issues unrelated to RKBA.

Since they're taking a position on health care reform, I'd like to see what their suggestions to fixing known problems with the status quo are. How do they feel about retroactive takebacks by insurance companies, or their practice of booting those who truly need coverage into Medicaid so they don't have to spend their profits paying for their care (let the taxpayers cover the sick people, we'll just take the premiums of the healthy), and so on? Fixing those problems is completely unrelated to Second Amendment issues.

GOA's position that any attempts to fix the problems with the current system are an attack on gun rights is quite an oversimplification. Something is going to be done; the present trajectory ends at a brick wall. GOA would be better served getting down to specifics and saying what in particular they oppose, rather than speaking in broad generalities with no specifics.

 

[TexasRifleman]

Maybe I missed something, I thought they had.

Not from their press releases anyway:

http://gunowners.org/a102309.htm

Pretty vague stuff as to exactly why this is dangerous to gun owners. It may very well be, but GOA needs to be very specific.

This reads like plain old partisan politics that the GOA has railed against the NRA for supposedly engaging in.

Everything in here is true I'm sure, but the GOA needs to focus on the gun ownership angle only, getting into the weeds on cost etc appears to be partisan.

Congratulations!

You have stymied the shady tactics used by Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi to try to pass the ObamaCare bill and -- in the opening salvo of the battle -- you blew them out of the water.

Gun Owners won a huge vote Wednesday in the Senate.

As you remember, the ObamaCare bill would dump your gun-related health data into a federal database. It would also put your (government mandated) insurance at risk if you keep a loaded gun for self-defense.

But there was a problem: The anti-gun health bills cost too much, and Obama had promised to pass a bill which would not raise the deficit by “one penny.”

So what Obama, Reid, and Pelosi did was to try to pass a separate bill (S. 1776) which would fund the anti-gun ObamaCare bill by raising the deficit another $247 billion dollars.

But, they would argue, because S. 1776 was a “separate bill,” the ObamaCare bill itself would not raise the deficit.

In a Senate not known for morality, this rose to a level of sleaze and corruption that embarrassed many Democrats, in addition to all Republicans.

With gun owners responding vigorously to our alerts on this issue, the motion to invoke “cloture” (or shut off debate) on the bill failed by a 47-53 vote -- 13 votes short of the 60 votes the anti-gun socialists needed.

The victory on S. 1776 means that it will be much harder for Obama, Reid and Pelosi to pick up the somewhat fiscally-minded Blue Dog Democrats they so desperately need to get their anti-gun ObamaCare legislation passed.

So congratulations! It is true that this is only the first battle... but, if we continue battering Congress as we have, it will be the first of many victories.

To see the official listing of how each Senator voted, you can go to http://tinyurl.com/ykb6kjb.

But in the meantime, pat yourself on the back for a job well done... and have a great weekend!

 

[benEzra]

The parable of the Boy who Cried Wolf comes to mind.