White House Gun Control Infighting May be Family Affair

Politico had this article yesterday that White House infighting is holding up movement on gun control, and it isn't just infighting among political advisers, it appears to also involve family:

Competing factions inside the White House have stymied efforts to unite behind gun legislation, further delaying President Donald Trump from getting behind any plan.

On one side is Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, and Attorney General William Barr. Both are urging the president to back new firearms restrictions — including expanded background checks for gun sales — insisting he can be the leader who succeeds on an intractable issue that has bedeviled his predecessors and that he can win back moderate suburban voters in the process, according to people involved in the discussions.

On the other side, a group that includes Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son and an avid hunter, and a top aide to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, is telling Trump he risks losing support from his conservative base if he pushes too aggressively on new gun control legislation, they say.

Then there’s Trump, who has heard all of these arguments privately but publicly hasn’t committed to any plan. For weeks, he’s left Washington guessing on whether he’d support any gun control legislation and what form the legislation would take.

After the story was original posted, the White House refuted the claim and said they were "united" in developing what the President wants, which is a solution that will make America safer while protecting Second Amendment rights.

It is important to continue to contact the White House and make your voice heard.  Politely tell the President that you oppose all of the gun control that is being proposed, including so-called "red flag" laws, so-called "universal background checks" that will criminalize the sale of private property, and banning standard capacity magazines and modern sporting rifles commonly referred to inaccurately as "assault weapons".

Hat tip to Cam Edwards.

Pressure Mounts on President Trump to "Do Something"

NBC News reported yesterday that the President is expected to make a decision this week on what gun control measures he will support.

"So we're looking at background checks and we are looking at putting everything together in a unified way so that we can have something that’s meaningful at the same time," the president said."So we're looking at background checks and we are looking at putting everything together in a unified way so that we can have something that’s meaningful at the same time," the president said.

Following a 40-minute call with Trump and his staff Wednesday, Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., said they were told to expect something from the White House on Thursday, though the president had not specifically signaled what bills he was likely to support.

"It was a very engaging conversation for quite a period of time and everybody was able to have their back-and-forths on this and the president is still very encouraging," Manchin said. "I believe he sincerely wants to move forward and do something. We're going to know, hopefully by tomorrow, if there's something that we can all agree on, and once we agree on something we're going to hold to it and fight for it, so we'll see what happens."

Then this morning the New York Times reported that 145 CEOs sent a letter to the Senate urging it to "pass stronger gun control laws."

The letter signers on Thursday include the leaders of Airbnb, the Gap, Pinterest, Lyft, the Brookfield Property Group and Royal Caribbean.

Missing from the list, however, are some of America’s biggest financial and technology companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, some of which debated internally whether to sign the letter.

Two companies that signed may raise eyebrows in Washington: Thrive Capital, whose founder, Joshua Kushner, is the brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, and Bain Capital, the private equity firm co-founded by Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah.

The Times article mentioned Walmart's decision a week ago that it would stop selling handgun ammunition and "short barrel rifle" ammunition.  Tom Gresham revealed on his radio program last Sunday that Bloomberg's Every Town for Gun Safety was behind that move.  Walmart is a Charter Member of Bloomberg's "Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership."  It is possible that this letter is a similar effort by Bloomberg's group.

This is all hands on deck time.  We need our voices to be louder than the gun ban crowd's voices.  Tell every gun owner you know to contact their congressman and senators, even if they know the legislator is anti-gun because then need to know their constituents don't support their position on the issue, and tell them you don't support criminalizing private sales and that you oppose stripping away our due process rights on unsubstantiated claims that can be made by an angry neighbor, ex-spouse or significant other.

Show President Trump that The NRA is 5 Million Individual Gun Owners, Not the Building in Fairfax

Bloomberg's anti-rights mouthpiece, The Trace, is using a Washington Post article posted yesterday afternoon to show that President Trump is gauging his support for gun control based on how far he thinks he can get away with without the NRA turning on him.  From the Trace:

Trump appears to be gauging whether he can get away with defying the NRA. More from the Post: "A White House official said Trump had asked some advisers and lawmakers this week about whether the NRA had enduring clout amid an internal leadership battle and allegations of improper spending" uncovered by The Trace and other journalists. The president and NRA leader Wayne LaPierre reportedly spoke several times by phone on Wednesday, with LaPierre warning that enacting universal background checks would not play well with Trump's base.

That passage about the NRA's clout is in the Post article but this part of the Post article is important too:

Manchin said he told Trump that he would need to back any gun-control legislation or it would fail again. Those comments were mirrored by almost a dozen GOP and White House aides.

“If you don’t stand up and say, ‘This is a piece of legislation I support,’ we’re not going to get enough cover to have Republicans stand tall. They won’t be able to do it,” Manchin said.

On Tuesday, Trump outlined some NRA concerns in a second call with Manchin. “We talked about that,” Manchin said. “I told him, we don’t expect the NRA to be supportive. Mr. President, in all honesty, when you did the bump stocks, they weren’t for you. They were against that, too. You didn’t take any hit on that.”

Gun owners need to show the White House that the NRA is made up of America's gun owners and we are the one that determine if he gets re-elected, not the staff in Fairfax HQ.  Contact the White House at:

www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Select "Contact the President" then complete the rest of the form.  In your message, politely let him know that you oppose any new restrictions on your right to keep and bear arms, especially so-called "Red Flag" laws and so-called "universal" background checks.  Let him know that an emotional response to "do something" is the wrong way to make policy and instead we should do what works, and that none of the gun control proposals being discussed would stop the mass shootings that have occurred recently and would likely not stop them in the future.

It is important that the President knows that gun owners put him in office and without our support, he will not be re-elected.

Please contact the President today!