Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
www.gunowners.org

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Thank you for your activism last week on the budget resolution,
especially given the short notice.
(Please realize that GOA has no
control over when votes are scheduled, so sometimes we have to alert you
with little time before the vote takes place!)

While the budget resolution for fiscal year 2010 has now passed the
Senate and the House in different forms, we were able to secure some
significant victories in the Senate.

First, with 64 favorable votes, the Senate passed an amendment by Sen.

Roger Wicker (R-MS) to force the federally subsidized Amtrak to allow
passengers to carry firearms in checked bags.

In addition, the Senate adopted an amendment offered by Senator James
DeMint (R-SC) to prohibit any system of nationalized health care which
would prevent Americans from being able to select their doctors and
insurance companies.

This amendment could make it more difficult to institute either
socialized medicine or a Massachusetts-style insurance that requires
everyone to purchase [government approved?] insurance.

This is good news for gun owners.
A "mandated" insurance system could
not only cost you up to $1,000 month, but could also result in your most
sensitive personal information being placed in a medical database --
information that could easily be used to put more names on the gun
prohibition list (NICS).

The budget resolution now goes to conference committee, where
anti-gunners are expected to strip out both of our pro-gun amendments.

But these amendments did pin senators down on important issues early in
the budget war, which was an important strategic objective.

It is unclear when the conference report on the budget resolution will
be sent back to the Senate and the House.
One possibility is that the
resolution will be held in conference until September.

The Democrat leadership has ominously threatened to produce a bill that
would require mandatory health insurance.

They are not talking about this openly, but as a recent editorial in The
Washington Post confessed: "Though only some of the players [on Capitol
Hill] will say so now, the [health care] plan will ultimately include a
mandate requiring everyone to have insurance.
" (April 6, 2009)

You see, the power players on Capitol Hill are not admitting this openly
because the American people oppose it.
But if they set in motion a
process to help sneak such a "mandate" into law, then gun owners will
only have a few weeks to stop it in September.

This is why we need to keep the pressure on liberty-leaning Senators
during the ensuing months. Please stay tuned.