Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
| |
Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
|
 National Elections and Problems
Close to Home Tom Shafer speaking at 2/04/08
SCRA meeting March 2008
GunNews
On the National Scene . . . I got a call from Sauerberg, two recorded calls from McCain, a recorded call from McCain's wife, an automated dialing call for a poll that said what are the issues that you should run on if you're going to vote for McCain which was the button I pushed in. The caller said Iraq, the economy, etc., they didn't mention guns at all. But then they mentioned who would you vote for as his running mate. The first button to push was Ron Paul. So they're polling McCain's strength in Illinois, number one, and the issues that he should run on in Illinois, number two. If by some miracle which sounds more true than not right now that he is the nominee of the republicans for November, he's got to pick a running mate who is going to help him win enough states to get enough electoral college votes obviously to win the presidency. So I punched in Ron Paul. Clearly Ron Paul is not going to win the nomination himself. I think the media sabotaged his campaign tremendously. However, he is a well funded, popular candidate as well as a Texas republican and that's good enough for me. I think he would be a dream candidate to run beside McCain whose conservative credentials are at best questionable. With his illegal immigration stand, his McCain-Feingold silencing of the public populace vote in politics just before elections and the McCain-Kennedy bill which was a nightmare for the conservative movement, McCain clearly has issues as a national candidate. So the phone polls are going on. I don't follow the national stuff as closely as I do the local stuff. Nor do I follow issues like immigration and taxes closely as I do gun issues. The democrats aren't speaking about firearms at all. If you read any of the polls that appear in the major newspapers, they question the candidates on gays, God, abortion, illegal immigration, and the war but they don't mention firearms at all. I have followed that issue for twenty years through the thick and the thin of every national candidate and the first question they were always asked was, "What's your position on guns?" It appears now as a great big blank space where before it was headline news. It's now off the radar screen totally. Of course you don't hear Obama, Hillary Clinton or the conservative candidates like McCain touching it at all. Someone in our group gave me a flyer of Romney's quotes when they put in the assault weapons ban while he was governor of Massachusetts. He said some things that were pretty horrendous, basically the fallacy, the slur of saying that assault weapons were responsible for crime. He's way off on firearms. There is zero discussion on this issue, not in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, not in the statewide papers in Illinois or LA, they just don't talk about it which tells me a couple of things. They still hate us tremendously and if they get in they're going to hammer us relentlessly. And they're going to get in by not speaking about it while they're trying to get in. Al Gore didn't get elected because he took a big public stand trying to succeed Clinton by saying he was publicly opposed to it and he lost. John Kerry took a big high profile public stand against it and he lost. So now they have decided this gun issue could cost you a national election. Again, you don't hear about it, they don't editorialize about it, and it will never be editorialized about. We're winning. They respect us to say the gun culture people. I look on that not as a slur but as a badge of honor that I'm a member of the pro-gun culture, and that we're winning. They respect us at the national level because they realize if they talk against us, whoever their candidate is doesn't win. They're losers, it's a loser issue for them. I read some articles in some national publications that called it just that, a loser issue at the national level which heartens me tremendously. Remember, we've got the Supreme Court decision coming out in June which is midway between the February primary and the November general election, a major Supreme Court decision on guns that we have been waiting for most of our lives, at least I have been for the twenty years that I have been in the pro-gun struggle. Remembrance for a fallen trooper About three weeks ago I bought a wreath for fallen state trooper Brian McMillen. I called up all the media. and you can call it a media stunt if you want to but it was actually just a press conference. I had went to the revocation hearing for the 3 a.m. tavern at which the drunk driver had a blood alcohol content above the law, ecstasy, and special K, kedamine, an animal tranquilizer in his blood. This bar is clearly out of control. I don't see how you could continue to serve somebody who was that intoxicated on that many illegal substances and at 3 a.m. say, "Well he looked okay to me." So I attended the revocation hearing to find out who the tavern owner actually was because you could never find out the real owner. They are supposed to apply under oath to the county to get their 3 a.m. license. The owner was a twenty-five year old blonde woman. Her husband, the guy who actually ran the bar, was an ex-felon from Decatur. They didn't find that out at the county level. After the bar began operation, there were 142 calls for service before the revocation hearing, stabbing's, DUI's, car wrecks, bar riots, bar fights, calls for assistance, etc. All the top brass from the Illinois State were at the revocation hearing and they had taken the time to make up a poster the size of this wall which showed every one of the 142 calls for service at this tavern, every single one of them. The State Police have one thing down pat, they keep records, they write it down. Of course as in most things, to try to make this kind of change there is a dead guy behind it. They had buried a twenty-four year old state trooper who had already been in the war. I stood in the line for his wake over at the funeral home on Sixth Street while his high school coach and one of his high school teachers stood behind me crying at at the terrible tragedy of this kid's death. This bar was clearly out of control. The county has a liquor committee and they haven't a clue. They are so in the pocket of these tavern owners that they couldn't get this license suspended, let alone investigated until after this young state trooper's tragic death. Then all of a sudden they put on a sham revocation hearing like they were on top of things. I was shocked by it. So I bought the wreath and I called up all the media and I laid the wreath right at the sign that says "Sangamon County Complex". All the media that I invited showed up except one, the Illinois Times. Bernie Schoenberg was courteous enough to write up a story about it in the Illinois State Journal that actually only covered what was spoken about at the press conference. Channel 20 TV filmed the entire press conference but never aired a second of it. When I called up their news director she refused to give me a reason why. The talk radio guys hashed it out and took the 3 a.m. tavern license deal about it. The taverns as you know with the bar scene and the band scene provide tremendous revenue streams for the radio stations. So the radio stations always come to the defense of any tavern owner, anytime, anywhere. So they're not really as tuned in to this issue as I wish they had been. Celebratory Gun Fire, Part II Mr. Wells, the guy who shot his pistol off up into the air on January 1st has been released from the hospital and he said that his arm was a little bit sore. He was hit five times from five shots. I don't know if it goes to the stopping power of the side arms that are issued to the city police but he wasn't even knocked off his feet. It seems like there is something wrong there where if they thought they really had to shoot and they really felt their lives were in jeopardy and they shot this guy five times, not only did it not knock him down but it really didn't do him much damage. He was released from the hospital a little less than three weeks later where he was being kept under guard and he said that his arm was a little bit sore. I had said last month that I was going to speak to the guy but I really don't know what could be said. He did what he did and the police did what they did. It's not a dead horse because the guy is alive. Of course he's going to say that he did nothing wrong and that he didn't point his gun at them. He'd be foolish to say that he did because he's going to try to sue. He doesn't know why everybody's mad. He did it for good luck. It's probably going to get ugly even trying to speak to somebody like that so we're probably just going to cover that one from afar and see if he files a lawsuit. I don't know whether he has a leg to stand on. From the Capitol Index Return to SCRA Home Page |