PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
NRA fundraising email contradicted by group's grade for key Senate Democrat :: 10/17/2014
"I've never seen it this close," an "Emergency Election Alert" email fundraising solicitation from National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Chris W. Cox begins. "Every poll shows us within striking distance of knocking anti-gun Senator Harry Reid out of his Majority Leadership position - and replacing him, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin with a pro-Second Amendment majority.
"But it will all come down to just a few percentage points in a handful of races on November 4," the plea continues. "[Y]our response to this request will decide whether your Second Amendment rights have a fighting chance to survive the final two years of Barack Obama's presidency. I'm asking YOU to help elect a Congress that will STAND AND FIGHT against Barack Obama's anti-gun, anti-freedom agenda..."
Those are fine words. They ring true, like something gun owners can believe in. Or at least they would were NRA not helping Reid, Schumer and Durbin hold on to power by declining to endorse AQ-rated Republican Dan Sullivan in one of the key races needed to flip the Senate. They would were NRA not giving an inflated grade to Democrat Mark Begich that fails to hold him fully accountable for two Supreme Court betrayals and a host of other bad votes on gun-related issues. They would were NRA not otherwise singing Begich's praises in the press to give him cover.
It's not like we haven't seen precisely this cynical pattern before.
It's curious Cox should mention "true champion of the Second Amendment" Harry Reid, because no less a source than Bloomberg News has some interesting observations about his interests in the Begich race. According to them, Reid's fingerprints are all over it.
"A state-based super-PAC that's raised and spent about $8 million boosting Begich and attacking Republican challenger Dan Sullivan is almost entirely underwritten by another super-PAC run by the Senate Majority Leader's political brain trust," Greg Giroux reports. "The pro-Begich outfit, Put Alaska First PAC, raised $2.5 million in August and September, according to a filing it made Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission. The Reid-aligned PAC, Senate Majority PAC, provided $2.4 million of that in 15 different installments."
What more does the Vulcan chessmaster need to realize (assuming he doesn't already understand perfectly) that his -- and his masters' -- decisions in this race are jeopardizing the Senate turnover, and with that they are jeopardizing everything else, all the way up to the composition of the Supreme Court and the future rulings it will make? What more does it take for Fairfax über alles "loyalists" to understand their blind defense of NRA paid staff can lead to exactly the dire conditions Cox is warning us of as he asks for more money so he can keep the scares coming?
"I'm asking YOU to help elect a Congress that will STAND AND FIGHT against Barack Obama's anti-gun, anti-freedom agenda," Cox continues. "I'm asking YOU to help strip Obama of his ability to pass one more freedom-crushing unconstitutional edict."
That's what I'm doing right now, Mr. Cox, no doubt to the outrage of every member who treats concerns expressed over management performance as "NRA bashing." Hell, employee, like the slogan says, I'M the NRA. And I'm asking YOU to stop telling me it's raining and to start doing those things yourself.
