TAKE NOTE

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Gene Buchholz
Posts: 1163
Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 5:18 am

TAKE NOTE

Post by Gene Buchholz »

Dear Bay Area FFL:

The juggernaut of gun control big dollar donors accounts for recent successes of gun control initiatives across the US. As small as the Measure C that passed in 2013 in Sunnyvale California, to as large as the 2014 state-wide Washington Initiative 594, the combination of large money media buys and direct mail containing complete falsehoods ( never mentioned by media in the area nor large membership gun rights groups) resulted in both elections where ‘we’ lost but with local gun owner’s claimed they ‘never knew’ the initiatives was gun control aimed at directly them. How did that happen?

Michael Bloomberg has billions (with a B), he is the 7th richest man on earth. And he wants to buy all the grassroots gun control movements he can.

He spent only a few thousand in Sunnyvale, but managed a 2 to 1 ratio of votes cast for his local Measure C in Sunnyvale that has had a dastardly effect on the gun stores in that town. The one independent FFL did fight as best he could, but few gun owners in Sunnyvale contacted even knew the Measure C was gun control on their ballot, to say nothing of how it directly impacts them with misdemeanor and felony possible charges for violations of those unknown new ordinances affecting all Sunnyvale citizen and anyone passing through that jurisdiction. Chuck Michel’s 80 guide to complying with Measure C is at:
http://www.calgunlaws.com/legal-resourc ... nce-guide/

In Sunnyvale and one other bay area city the FFLs at least have no cost for attempting lawsuits to overturn these local ordinances now being passed at will by placing them on the ballot and ‘letting the voters decide’. Lawsuits that a best that will take years to win, but are being done and paid for by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and their ‘deeper’ pockets, as the stores could never afford these now 6 (and by the time they are over likely 7 figure) lawsuits.

Lawsuits are not the only costs, others effects are impacting these businesses now, daily. The stores involved are being crushed by the loss of business from folks who read of the local restrictions and never stop in to buy anything. Folks who will take their ammunition purchases a few miles elsewhere to a store in an adjacent city not under the effect of a Measure C type ordinance (at least for now) or never come in to purchase anything at all.

The case in Washington State is worse. The gun owners are just now finding out that a full federal background check is required for the “transfer” of a firearm to a friend or family member when teaching them to shoot, then another full price and waiting period transfer to hand it back.

No advertising or widely distributed editorials reached out to tell gun owners that they were under attack by ‘sensible gun safety measures’ on the statewide ballot during the $10,000,000 campaign blitz by Bloomberg and others with millions, including founders and past CEOs of Microsoft.

So successful in the Washington I-594 initiative that Bloomberg now is hiring dozens of media consultants and registering his new Everytown For Gun Safety Action Committee’s new lobbying firms in 11 more states now targeted for this and next year. They are starting with Nevada, to again prove that their methods work anywhere, no matter local gun rights beliefs.

Do not think their move to take on whole states somehow cancels their program to pas Measure C and Pleasant Hill type zoning restrictions. In Feb of 2014 they held a public forum in Mountain View to push for their views in initiative form in more cities. They tried to put such an initiative on the Mountain View ballot last November, but so far have failed. After their staged Feb ‘forum’ local media responded and identified the list of cities in the bay area that were next on their target list. That list was basically a list of every bay area city with a gun store. We tried to organize meetings among gun store owners, but the logistics so far fail us. You are receiving this as we are canceling the meeting we planned for next Monday, February 16th. We have received few RSVPs, and the facility asked us to move the time/date, so our volunteer team has decided to cancel this third attempt to put bay area FFLs in a private room to discuss what they will do, individually or as a group when the next store is threatened.

We will be sending out a survey on alternate communication methods, including video conferencing, webinars and recorded background information articles and related training on our website which will be password accessible only to you. We may post discussions of possibilities and background information on this issue for you to choose when and what you care to look at.

From that we hope to then take communications from all of you, as to what we might try, that you would partake in so that date, time and content is what you want, as we seem unable to figure that out ourselves and don’t see any benefit to using our resources to plan another un-responded to offering.

Realize that when such a problem comes to your town we’ll hear from you and gun owners there. We are unfunded volunteers and need resources to act upon any more than our current volunteer efforts.

We are refocusing on building our City Watch team of investigators that watch their city for legislation or ballot measures pushing gun control. We notify Chuck Michel’s legal team so they can put into play the “Local Ordinance Project (LOP)” that NRA pays for to be able to respond to such issues without having to wait for ‘chain of command’ permissions when the window to reach from discovery can be as short as a couple of days. Information about the LOP would be an example of an FFLs only section article on our website. (See www.scccffs.org for our public content)

For those of you who want to be better informed and prepared here are some sources you may want to check, we watch them for pertinent tools and warnings of things to come:

Chuck Michel of Michel and Associates does much of his own advocacy for us (in addition to his work for NRA and CRPA) in his books and regularly explains items affecting our rights with depth to understand the problem and be able to intelligently reach out to others with information they can understand. His calgunlaws.com blogs includes his Legal Frontlines column, an invaluable source of insight and possible tactics. Please check out or subscribe to:
http://www.calgunlaws.com/calgunlaws-bl ... frontlines

An informative article on how Bloomberg and his groups succeeded in Washington State in passing I-594. Informative as it parallels what was done in Sunnyvale in 2013 and what was promised in the gun control ‘forum’ last February, with a few less dollars. For an after action view of the I-594 please see:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/1 ... ton-state/

Within the article listed just above is a link to what “NRA Vote No 594” author David Kopel warned prior to the passage of I-594, is worth a separate listing. It is all common sense information but did not succeed. The message was correct, the distribution unsatisfactory. See: https://www.voteno594.com/blog-posts/ho ... ashing-con

The one project for FFLs we continue on is how to build the contact lists and create content to keep their attention to be ready to prevent or beat a gun control local legislative attempt, or a local ballot measure vote. How will you rally your customers against a local ordinance if you
mark poulson
Posts: 10370
Joined: Sun May 08, 2005 4:16 am
Location: Antioch, CA

Re: TAKE NOTE

Post by mark poulson »

"A well-informed electorate is our best defense against tyranny" Thomas Jefferson
Read up on everything, and VOTE! Otherwise, small, well funded groups with their own agendas will continue to have dis-proportionate influence on our public elections, and our lives.
Attitude plus effort equal success
CLEAN AND DRY
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