Yet Another SELLOUT By The NRA!

Old 06-16-2010, 06:11 AM
  #1  
ken0069
Senior Member
MASTER BUILDER
Thread Starter
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Concord, Va
Posts: 208
Default Yet Another SELLOUT By The NRA!

NRA SELLS OUT GUN OWNERS

Three prominent Washington D.C. websites are reporting what many capitol insiders warned of: the National Rifle Association has made a deal with the devil (i.e. anti-gun Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid) to limit the free speech of Americans in exchange for their carved-out exemption.
While some pro-gun rights advocates may think free speech does not matter, the fact is that it is critical.
Without the right to free speech, we are defenseless in the battle to save our Second Amendment rights.
Let me be clear: restricting our First Amendment rights is the first step to stripping us of our Second Amendment rights, and should be resisted at every turn.
We don’t care who you are or what an organization may have done in the past – we only care about whether your actions will promote or harm our rights.
This deal by the NRA will damage our gun rights and our free speech rights. After you read up on the facts, I ask you to give the NRA an earful by calling 1-800-672-3888 and insist they renounce the deal with Pelosi and Reid. Believe me, it is not too late if you will get involved.

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/0...-to-democrats/


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38500.html


http://www.campaignfreedom.org/newsr...-deal-with-nra


Though at first objecting to the DISCLOSE Act, which would radically limit the free speech of organizations and thus, gun owners, the NRA has now agreed to an exemption for their organization (and other mammoth, mostly liberal, organizations like AARP and probably Moveon.org) in exchange for support of the Democrats’ bill.

This legislation would place draconian limitations on the ability of organizations to voice their opinions on politicians, and by extension, their legislation. The chilling effect on free speech would be difficult to overstate.
Along with their tacit endorsement of Senator Harry Reid, the NRA is signaling that they trust the Democrats will spare the Second Amendment from further assaults.

But that’s a strategy of appeasement, and to put it bluntly, it’s insane. It just delays the inevitable.
Winston Churchill addressed this strategy when he said “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

Background:
This is not the only time the NRA has cut a deal to harm gun owners and gun rights in the glare of an anti-gun media frenzy.
Just a three years ago, the NRA joined with arch gun-hater Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) to pass H.R. 2640, the Veteran’s Disarmament Act. When gun control advocates saw the Virginia Tech shootings as an opportunity to pass gun control, the NRA immediately signed the documents of surrender and actively lobbied Congress to pass legislation that will disarm tens of thousands of Americans, including veterans.
Why did they do that? Frankly, they were more concerned with what the media and Washington power-bosses were saying than their loyal-to-a-fault members.
Similarly in 2004 when, desperate to pass the Firearms Manufacturers’ Lawsuits Protection bill, the NRA dangled a re-authorization of the Clinton Assault Weapons ban in front of hungry politicians. The deal was going to be that if anti-gun politicians voted for the Lawsuit Protection bill, the NRA would not oppose re-authorization of the sun-setting Clinton Gun Ban.

Thankfully, a coalition of no-compromise state level gun groups that VGOC helped organize joined together to kill that deal by exposing it to the light of honest gun owners across this nation... just like we are doing now. In that fight, after a few weeks of excuses and covering their tracks, the NRA backed off of the deal, the Lawsuit Protection Bill still passed and the Clinton Gun Ban ended.

What can you do?

Tell the NRA you’ve had enough, and urge them to kill the DISCLOSE Act, not cut a deal to pass it. Call them at 1-800-672-3888 today, as it may be too late tomorrow.

For Liberty,
Mike McHugh
President, VGOC
ken0069 is offline  
Old 06-17-2010, 12:53 PM
  #2  
ken0069
Senior Member
MASTER BUILDER
Thread Starter
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Concord, Va
Posts: 208
Default

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061604221.html

NRA exemption shows campaign disclosure bill's cynical, fatal flaws
By Cleta MitchellThursday, June 17, 2010 (She is a member of the NRA BOARD of DIRECTORS!)

The cynical decision this week by House Democrats to exempt the National Rifle Association from the latest campaign finance regulatory scheme is itself a public disclosure. It reveals the true purpose of the perversely named Disclose Act (H.R. 5175): namely, to silence congressional critics in the 2010 elections.

The NRA "carve-out" reaffirms the wisdom of the First Amendment's precise language: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."

Congress can't help itself. Since 1798, with the Alien and Sedition Acts, incumbent politicians have yearned for legal duct tape for their opponents' mouths. The Disclose Act is a doozy of a muzzle.

For its part, the NRA -- on whose board of directors I serve -- rather than holding steadfastly to its historic principles of defending the Constitution and continuing its noble fight against government regulation of political speech instead opted for a political deal borne of self-interest in exchange for "neutrality" from the legislation's requirements. In doing so, the NRA has, sadly, affirmed the notion held by congressional Democrats (and some Republicans), liberal activists, the media establishment and, at least for now, a minority on the Supreme Court that First Amendment protections are subject to negotiation. The Second Amendment surely cannot be far behind.

Since the court's January decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations cannot be constitutionally prohibited from making independent candidate-related expenditures, Democrats have been hyperventilating at the notion that corporations might spend millions of dollars criticizing them. To foreclose that possibility, the Disclose Act would impose onerous and complicated "disclosure" restrictions on organizations that dare to engage in constitutionally protected political speech and on corporations that dare to contribute to such organizations.

Democrats would effectively neuter the court's decision by requiring the names of multiple donors to be recited in ads (thus shrinking the time spent on actual speech), requiring the CEO of a corporate donor to personally appear in campaign-related ads, expanding the coverage period to virtually the entire election year, and including myriad other rules that the NRA described last month as "byzantine" and an "arbitrary patchwork of reporting and disclosure requirements."

The NRA's wheel-squeaking bought it an exemption from those requirements. Tea Party organizations arising spontaneously since 2009? Out of luck. Online organizations with large e-mail followings but perhaps no formal dues structure? Forget it.

Receiving less attention than the NRA "carve-out" but no less cynical is the bill's sop to organized labor: Aggregate contributions of $600 or more would be disclosed. Why start at $600? Why not $200 or, say, $500? Because most union members' dues aggregate less than $600 in a calendar year and thus members' contributions to labor's campaign-related spending wouldn't need to be disclosed . . . even to the union members whose dues are spent for political purposes.

In Citizens United, the court held that the First Amendment doesn't permit Congress to treat different corporations differently; that the protections afforded political speech arise from the Constitution, not Congress. Otherwise, it would be tantamount to a congressional power to license the speech of some while denying it to others.

The NRA carve-out is a clear example of a congressional speech license.
The ostensible purpose of the legislation is benign "disclosure," upheld in Citizens United as permissible under the First Amendment. Even conservative Justice Antonin Scalia has expressed skepticism about the constitutional infirmity of disclosure requirements in another case argued this term; Scalia intoned in oral argument that "running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage."

That's true. Indeed, the law upheld in Citizens United requires all donors to candidate-related expenditures to be publicly disclosed to the FEC in a timely manner.

But the Disclose Act isn't really intended to elicit information not currently required by law. The act serves notice on certain speakers that their involvement in the political process will exact a high price of regulation, penalty and notoriety, using disclosure and reporting as a subterfuge to chill their political speech and association.

It is only disclosure, say the authors. And box-cutters are only handy household tools . . . until they are used by terrorists to crash airplanes.
This is not just "disclosure." It is a scheme hatched by political insiders to eradicate disfavored speech. There is no room under the First Amendment for Congress to make deals on political speech, whether with the NRA or anyone else.

The writer is a partner at Foley & Lardner who works in campaign finance law and is a member of the NRA's board of directors.
ken0069 is offline  

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off


Contact Us - Archive - Advertising - Cookie Policy - Privacy Statement - Terms of Service - Do Not Sell My Personal Information -