First off, I really want to thank the guys who contacted me on Facebook and VAGunTrader.com to carpool down to Richmond to support the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL).
If every single gun owner in Virginia came to Richmond on Lobby Day, we wouldn’t have to worry as much about our rights being stepped on.
Recap
I spoke with Delegate Kaye Kory and the conversation was rather civil.
I introduced myself as a constituent and opened up the conversation by thanking her for position on certain social issues (that are not related to this blog) and then asked that she support HB1118 and that she oppose HB964 on due process grounds.
I signed the guestbook of Senator Marsden and asked that he support HB1118 (NICS exemption for Concealed Handgun Permit holders) and oppose HB964 (which denies people their rights without due process of law).
In terms of attendance, I saw about 400+ people wearing GUNS SAVE LIVES stickers and I saw Josh Horwitz of the CSGV doing an interview and counted just under 20 people cloistered in a conference room wearing BACKGROUND CHECKS SAVE LIVES stickers.
Lessons
- If you are talking to a delegate who is not known for being VCDL-friendly…
- Be polite.
- Avoid non gun rights related topics that you are going to have ZERO common ground with them on…
- If you have a point of common ground on their platform (traffic issues, marriage equality, marijuana decriminalization, etc.) thank them for their support of that common ground you share and then move into your gun rights advocacy points.
- In terms of asking them to oppose bills, use reasons that appeal to “Liberal ACLU” sensibilities.
- I found Delegate Surovell’s Terrorist Watch List bill to be something that you could easily convince a Liberal to oppose
About HB964
HB964 and other bills like it (including one in New Jersey that Chris Christie signed…) state that a person’s basic rights can be denied without a conviction, trial, indictment, an arrest, or even an open investigation.
All it takes is for their name (or a permutation of their name) to be placed in any one of the myriad databases that the US intelligence community keeps.
It is not far fetched to argue that an innocent person being “Google-Bombed” or having a similar name to a person of interest to an intelligence agency could have their name placed in one of the myriad databases kept by security and intelligence agencies and dropped onto a watch list.
Just recently 48 year old Rahinah Ibrahim’s pro bono legal team spent $3.8 Million for 11,000 hours of legal work just to remove her name from the no-fly list.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/no-fly-ruling/
A person’s rights should not be contingent on the size of their bank account.
How to Argue Against Gun Control Laws Like a Leftist
- You’d be surprised how many people do not know about Warren v. District of Columbia
- People are not legally entitled to police protection.
- “Gun Control is a Form of Class Warfare.”
- Emphasize the fact that gun control laws always include special carve outs for people that the Occupy Wall Street crowd would refer to as the “1%”
- Whether it is discretionary carry permits for celebrities or private bodyguards for people like Mike Bloomberg, gun control laws declare that some people are “more equal than others”.
- The phrase “someone like Mitt Romney” has an impact
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