E-BOOK REVIEW: DIRTY POLITICS OF GUN CONTROL-The Oregon massacre sparked national fury and a renewed debate over how the NRA has stymied all national gun control measures. Author and Nationally Syndicated Columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson details the NRA's massive two decade long campaign to intimidate Congress to torpedo any and every gun control bill. In his ebook, “How the NRA Terrorizes Congress: The NRAs Subversion of the Gun Control Debate,” Hutchinson gives a penetrating inside look at the inner workings of the NRA's public and covert political, lobbying and funding operation that has held Congress hostage while enabling it to thumb its nose at the Obama Administration and public opinion on guns.
Hutchinson notes: “Since Congress's failure to reauthorize the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban which expired in 2004 it has been virtually mute on any gun curbs in the years since then. Since then more than 20 gun control bills and amendments have been written and introduced. Not one of them has made it to the Senate or House floor.”
He tells how the NRA routinely buys, bullies, hectors, and harasses congresspersons, ignores and holds in contempt the Obama Administration, gun control advocates, and the general public that clamors for tough gun control measures with one singular goal: to kill passage of any new gun laws.
Hutchinson writes: “This was plainly evident when the power behind the congressional throne, specifically the NRA's top congressional lobbyist, Chris W. Cox virtually ordered that Congress "reject" the tougher gun curb provisions. The dust had barely settled on the Senate’s vote to shortstop a failed attempt at a GOP filibuster against the compromise deal that the GOP and conservative Democratic Senators brokered on the gun control bill before other GOP and conservative Democratic Senators began pecking away at it.”
Even when it appeared that the NRA’s formidable arsenal of weapons might not be enough to stave off the public clamor for tough gun control laws, the NRA still has had enough overt and covert money and muscle to get its way and kill gun curbs. Hutchinson lays out the NRA’s chilling and wildly successful blueprint to hold Congress hostage in the following chapters.• The NRA’s Post Sandy School Massacre Offensive
• The NRA’s Congressional Intimidation Report Card
• The NRA’s Election Subversion Campaign
• The NRA’s Big Mean Congressional Money Machine
• The NRA’s Game Plan for Future Victories, And How to Combat It
Hutchinson notes: "The NRA is not invincible. Though Congress turned thumbs down on the two provisions that the overwhelming majority of Americans want to become law: a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks, this in no way means that gun control curbs are dead in perpetuity in Congress. Obama has called tougher gun control laws "common sense." This signals that if there is a relentless and determined public outcry and push that a meaningful gun control bill could one day pass.(Earl Ofari Hutchinson is President of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 82
Pub: Oct 9, 2015
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