Prometheus 6

Whose Senate Is This?

The gun lobby and its all-too-willing political accomplices have struck again. The Senate’s version of urgently needed legislation to protect credit card users has been saddled with a dangerous and utterly nongermane amendment allowing visitors to openly carry loaded firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges.

A disappointing 27 Senate Democrats, whose party once led the fight for gun control, eagerly signed on with 39 Republicans — fawning together before the lobby’s lethal diktat.

None of that 66 dared to ask: What on earth does laissez-faire gun toting have to do with credit card fairness? And why should the national parks, which are supposed to be peaceful preserves, be filled with loaded AK-47s and other war weapons?

The House has passed a gun-free credit card measure, and members must muster the courage to strip this amendment from the Senate’s version.

Dear Senate Democrats:

Grow some balls.

Mr. Henigan also points to the stunning defeat four years later, in 2000, of prominent Republican senators running with strong N.R.A. backing, including John Ashcroft in Missouri, Spencer Abraham in Michigan, and Slade Gorton in Washington....

Largely obscured by the 2000 presidential drama was the loss in Florida’s Senate race of an N.R.A. stalwart, Bill McCollum, to a consistent Democratic supporter of gun control, Bill Nelson.

Today, there’s ample reassurance for the Democratic Congress and White House in the N.R.A.’s unsuccessful crusade against Barack Obama in 2008, and the poor showing of its favored House and Senate candidates against hopefuls running with backing from the pro-gun-control Brady Campaign.

And check this chart, published by Public Agenda.

66% of the population...a veto-proof majority, as it were, will give you no grief whatsoever...will, in fact, support your testicular growth.

If you have any, that is.

If you feel the need to launch a campaign of some sort, let me describe the commercial for you.

• Open with red text on a black background: Republicans want to to allow loaded weapons in national parks.
• Switch to "Harry and Louise" having a picnic in the park with their kids.
• Play gunfire in the background and show the children's fear at every burst

If you really want to get deep, show Bambi getting shot. Or a couple of animals running through the picnic area to get away from the gunfire.

You can do this, and free both yourself and us from this irrationality.

If you grow some balls.