Gun Owners’ Frustrations Communicated to the Bush Campaign

by Sam Cohen
Sam.Cohen@comcast.net
www.thespiritof76.com/rkba.html

March 21, 2004

KeepAndBearArms.com -- On Saturday, March 20, the executive director of the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign for New Hampshire hosted the second meeting of “conservative coalition” spokespeople. Twelve of us sat around the table — leaders of the Coalition of NH Taxpayers, NH Right to Life, Gun Owners of NH, and a high-profile group of conservative politicians for Bush — plus a local NRA-ILA official, a state representative, and others. When the meeting began, I gave the NH campaign director a print-out of Angel Shamaya’s article, “A Gun Rights Reply to the Bush-Cheney 2004 Fundraising Letter,” published on KABA at http://KeepAndBearArms.com/information/Item.asp?ID=3660; I included Shamaya’s signed version of his letter to Marc Racicot, the national campaign chairman, and she promised to get the package to him.

The meeting continued with a speakerphone conference call with Gary Marx, an official at the Bush national campaign headquarters, and Ralph Reed, in charge of campaign efforts in the Southeast. Unfortunately, both Marx and Reed chose to make one-way speeches — earning criticism from most of us — and Reed had to end his call before any of us could respond. Then it was my turn. I introduced myself to Marx as both a director of Gun Owners of New Hampshire, the NRA state affiliate, and the New Hampshire spokesman for the national gun-rights organization KeepAndBearArms.com.

Repeating the message I delivered at the first meeting two weeks ago, I told him that there were 80 or 90 million gun owners in this country, that many of that number are single-issue voters, and that many thousands of us — both in New Hampshire and nationally — are so angered by Bush’s support for renewing the Clinton/Feinstein “Assault Weapons” Ban that we won’t vote for him.

I emphasized that the point wasn’t that people in the room were angry (or susceptible to being mollified by speeches not backed by action); the point was that (1) ordinary gun owners throughout the country, beyond our “control,” are angry; (2) they’re angry enough to withhold their votes for President Bush this November; (3) so many people feel this way that the loss of their votes may well cost him the election; and (4) the only way for him to reclaim those votes is for him to publicly reverse his anti-Second-Amendment positions.

Just as in the March 6 meeting, the rest of the group chimed in with their vocal support, and their agreement that this message had to be passed up the chain to campaign headquarters and to Bush himself. 

The NRA-ILA representative told the campaign: “New Hampshire will rise or fall on this issue.” (Note that four years ago, Bush won New Hampshire’s Electoral College votes — critical to his election — by only 7,211 popular votes.)

We restated that meeting’s consensus: with his moves to the left, Bush is losing far more conservative votes than he is gaining liberal votes.

One specific complaint, indicative of our frustration, was politicians’ insistence on referring to gun owners as “sportsmen”; everyone in the room understood that “the Second Amendment ain’t about duck hunting,” and we’re insulted that the fundamental rights of self-protection (in particular, self-protection for women) and true constitutional militia capability, are ignored, dismissed, disguised, or dumbed down.

We also pointed out the groundswell of resentment for Judd Gregg, one of New Hampshire’s U.S. Senators, because although he’s a Republican, he voted for Dianne Feinstein’s amendment, on March 2, to extend the “Assault Weapons” Ban. Gregg is up for reelection this fall, and Republican officials in the state are concerned that with many gun owners not voting for him because of his betrayal, they may stay home or at least not vote a “straight ticket,” thereby indirectly costing votes for other Republican office-seekers, including George Bush. 

The most telling statement of the whole meeting came from the chairman of the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers, a man universally admired and respected. He noted that the people in the room represented different organizations, and not everyone fully supported the causes of the others — but EVERYONE, in ALL the conservative organizations, shared the common cause of supporting the Second Amendment.

If there are any parts of this report that you may find useful in discussions with Bush campaign officials in your state, I hope you’ll pass them on.

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