This might be a good chance to pick up a used Beretta at a very good price.
That was a small joke. I do not own any Nomex undergarments, so please don't flame me....
I am reminded of when the cover story of the May 2011 issue of America's First Freedom (an NRA publication) was about the death of former Senator James A. McClure of Idaho. I'm going to take a chance on the NRA not minding, and I'm going to quote a significant chunk of that article because it speaks
DIRECTLY to how to handle this type of issue. The part in red is the crux of it:
http://www.nrapublications.org/index.ph ... -a-legend/
by James O.E. Norell,
Contributing Editor:
If McClure’s effectiveness is to be understood, a single phrase is critical to why his presence made the difference: victorious turning points.
In addition to the McClure-Volkmer Act, two others come to mind. Both were very early in his career.
The first came with a 1975 legislative battle over the power of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to regulate any aspect of firearms and ammunition. To this day, regulation of firearms and ammunition by bureaucratic “consumer” edict is a key element in the modern gun-ban movement’s arsenal. The McClure doctrine on that score has held the line to this day.
What McClure and his Senate allies did in that battle left his opponents shell-shocked and changed
the political landscape.
It began with a petition before the CPSC filed Feb. 14, 1975, by the Committee for Hand Gun Control Inc. demanding that the commission adopt “a rule banning the sale of bullets for handguns. The rule would except such sales to police, licensed security guards, the military and licensed pistol clubs.”
The group—which later became Handgun Control, Inc., and now the Brady Campaign—claimed that handgun ammunition constituted “hazardous substances” and “present[ed] an unreasonable risk of injury and no feasible standard would protect the public.”
The petition received widespread publicity and put the fledgling gun-ban vultures of hci/Brady Campaign on the media map.
As part of the regulatory process, the CPSC asked for public comments. An outraged McClure issued a single press release attacking the proposed “bullet-ban” rule, and listed the CPSC’s address for public comment.
The Associated Press ran McClure’s release on the national “a” wire (the ap’s most significant news stories of the day). The result was almost universal ridicule by hundreds of media outlets, led by The New York Times—all calling the “bullet-ban” a national referendum on gun control. In their circus effort to create a new avenue for gun control, the media published the CPSC address in editorial comment that reached millions of homes.
The ridicule heaped on McClure greatly amused the senator. He knew something the scribblers at The New York Times couldn’t understand—and still don’t understand. This was purely a consumer issue, and the consumers were the tens of millions of gun owners who since 1968 had paid the price for criminals and assassins with their rights.
This was an “enough is enough” moment.
When the comments were counted, the media’s crowing about this being a national referendum on gun control was right on the money.
More than 400,000 Americans wrote individual letters against the ban. And some of those letters contained petitions with additional tens of thousands of signatures. That response was the biggest in the history of federal regulations. That avalanche of letters and calls to CPSC generated by NRA and McClure’s press release produced this result and energized the nation’s beleaguered gun owners for future battles.
Conversely, even with near total media support and the loud backing of every anti-gun politician and gun-control group in the country, support for the ban totaled a mere 500 letters!
With the final score at 400,000 to 500, Jim McClure termed it a “political spontaneous combustion.”
But the turning point didn’t end there.
In the spring of 1975 at the NRA Annual Meetings in San Diego, Calif., the NRA Board of Directors formalized the Executive Committee’s earlier decision to create the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, headed by Harlon B. Carter, whose life’s ambition was to see NRA take its place as the most powerful voice for the Second Amendment.
NRA-ILA was created at a time when NRA members and gun owners across the country faced imminent disaster on all fronts from anti-gun groups, their congressional allies and a hostile national media. All were on the march after enacting the 1968 Gun Control Act, pushing seemingly unstoppable “Saturday Night Special” legislation that would have banned most handguns, as well as CPSC’s ban on handguns and handgun ammunition.
Building on the modest capabilities of the existing Office of Legislative Affairs, NRA-ILA’s leadership team began the arduous task of recruiting and training new staff, developing grassroots member communications, and busting shoe-leather developing relationships with Senators, Congressmen, and their staffs.
At the time, I was McClure’s press secretary and handled the senator’s Second Amendment issues.
In one of those events which changed the course of history, Sen. McClure and his staff were approached by three young men from NRA—Richard L. Corrigan, head of the new ILA-Federal Affairs Division; Michael J. Parker, ILA general counsel; and Russell Wisor, Corrigan’s deputy. They asked a simple question, “What can we do?” With that meeting, a bond was formed that lasted until McClure’s retirement.
ILA wasted no time stirring the grassroots with a series of legislative mailings and a heavy, direct lobbying presence in the Senate and House. Those efforts were matched in the U.S. House to support U.S. Rep. John Dingell’s, D-Mich., companion CPSC bill.
Dick Corrigan observed, “While we didn’t know it at the time, in retrospect, the other side made a serious miscalculation. Sen. McClure in his leadership, teaming with ILA and the nation’s gun owners, enlisted friends and allies on both sides of the aisle and recast the issue in terms of consumers’ rights. Victory on this issue broke the anti-gun momentum and laid the basis for victories way into the future. It gave gun owners hope and the will to fight.”
The CPSC fight came to a head in the Senate on July 18, 1975. In the floor debate, the McClure forces were opposed by Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, the gun-ban powerhouse, who pushed for an amendment to give the CPSC power to regulate firearms and ammunition.
He lost on a voice vote. Upon demanding a roll-call vote, Kennedy sat stunned as, one by one, senators voted against him—among them many Democrats whom he believed to be in his pocket. When all was said and done, Kennedy was handed a stinging defeat. He lost by a vote of 75 to 11.
For the gun-ban crowd, it was a turning point all right—a point of no return. It was the loss of losses.
For those who voted with McClure, especially Democrats, there was something remarkable—a grateful, heartfelt response encouraged by the new NRA-ILA consisting of countless thanks from the real gun lobby, the millions of consumers whose rights were endangered by the CPSC regulation. Gratitude felt good.
If this first critical turning point came in a very public forum, the second has remained private and untold—until now. It involved the establishment of McClure’s ultimately trusting relationship with the firearm industry and his personal intervention in what could have been a lasting disaster for gun owners.
More than anything else about gun control, McClure understood that there would never be an end to the demands by the Kennedy-led cabal. For him, compromise on the Second Amendment was not an option.
Shortly after the CPSC vote, I received a visit from a personal friend who was also an industry representative in Washington, D.C. He was sounding an alarm that could have cost him his job.
He said that as a matter of conscience, he was bound to give McClure some documents with respect to agreements between a few handgun manufacturers and New Jersey U.S. Rep. Peter Rodino, then the most powerful anti-gun member of the U.S. House.
The package included correspondence between industry officials and Rodino, then chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Rodino had already announced his intention to push a new ban on so-called “Saturday Night Specials.” It was a serious threat.
The package delivered was deeply alarming. In addition to correspondence, there was a draft of legislation prepared by industry lawyers—Washington insiders—that would have banned many models of handguns. It was very well crafted.
McClure saw it as a blatant restraint of trade. It cut out many innovative small companies by specifically requiring patented safety features that existed only on handgun models produced by a handful of companies.
McClure was as angry as his staff had ever seen him. He drafted a letter to the CEOs of those companies. Each paragraph began, “Tell me it ain’t so.”
Allowing time for his message to sink in, McClure called a meeting with the companies’ CEOs, who were ushered into the senator’s office.
McClure’s intent was to lay out the political realities of the new Senate. With none of the usual small talk, he spoke directly and gravely. After the CPSC victory, he said, it is clear that your consumers are the real power. Trust them. Everything has changed, and there is neither reason nor room for any compromise.
He told them with certainty that the line would be held in the Senate; that Kennedy’s gun control forces simply did not have the votes for a gun bill. But, he warned, there was one element that could change that dynamic—an industry intervention.
Brandishing the industry letters, he said softly, “I know everything—all of it.”
As he started to explain his plans for positive action in the Senate, McClure was interrupted with:
“Senator, you don’t understand. We believe that unless we act, our enemies in Congress will put us out of business within five years.”
McClure’s response was quiet and measured.
“No. You’re the one who doesn’t understand. You do this, and I will put you out of business a lot quicker than your enemies will.”
At that point, one CEO stood, and with gravity said, “Thank you very much, senator. We get the message. We trust you.”
That was that. The meeting ended, and ultimately so did the deal with Rep. Rodino.
Without that event, there is no doubt that an industry-supported partial handgun ban might well have become reality. Perhaps the ce0s’ position was understandable. In the face of a Senate-passed ban in 1972, a compromise option might have made sense.
But not after the CPSC fight—the winds had changed.
Furthermore, because of this pivotal see-the-light moment, the industry ultimately joined its consumers in fighting the so-called Saturday Night Special issue. As a result of that united front, the handgun ban never happened.
And that, gentlemen, is how you handle Beretta here in the U.S., if they show any signs of such perfidy either here or abroad. You get get the most powerful, most 2nd Amendment friendly members of Congress, regardless of party affiliation (the Volkmer of McClure-Volkmer was a democrat), and you call the offending gun maker or makers into some senator's office and tell them, "if you persist in this foolishness, I'll make sure you're out of business in 5 years" just like McClure did. There are other makers of 9mm pistols and shotguns who would like nothing better than to have a chance to unseat Beretta as the (nearly) sole supplier of 9mm pistols for military use. I'm thinking Glock, S&W M&P, Springfield XDm, H&K USP just to name five off the top of my head. There are others. It's a pretty safe bet that polymer framed pistols have come a long way, and would certainly be up to the rigors of military use. Plus, they are lighter.
Beretta doesn't want to lose those future contracts. You and I individually might buy a half dozen pistols in the space of 3 or 4 years. The U.S. Army and the Marine Corps buy them by the hundreds of thousands. If you or I threaten to never buy another Beretta again, that's fine as a personal protest, but it isn't going to have much more effect on their bottom line that threatening to hold your breath until your face turns blue. But have their single biggest customer, the U.S. Department of Defense, threaten to stop buying their products, that's when you'll see them "come to Jesus." And the way to do that is to get powerful 2nd Amendment supporters in Congress (and they do exist) to get involved.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
