Sent to my House member, Steve Austria (I had to look him up, being new to Ohio and this district). Curiously, when submitted, all the paragraphing was removed, turning my prose into a wall of text, the kind I hate reading and won't read. I suspect no one at Austria's office (let alone him) will actually read it. They will likely check for some key words, determine that I am a gun-nut, and send me a canned reply that will tell me that Austria "fully supports the Second Amendment." We'll see.
Here is the text:
If you vote for any bill that further restricts the already too restricted Right to Keep and Bear Arms, I will vote against you in 2014. I am a new voter to Ohio, but I have the same high expectations for my representatives to respect my Liberty that I had when I lived in Alabama.
Our one-time Republic, now just a nation, has strayed from the Liberty-minded, bottom-up structure that the Founders and Framers sought. Instead, we now have a top-down, all-powerful federal government over which the average citizen feels he exerts no influence.
There are a lot more fixes that are necessary to restore the Republic to its proper balance, where the People and the States are sovereign over a federal government operating within its tiny constitutional box, having a tiny influence on our day-to-day lives, but the absolute WRONG step is to expand the federal government's reach and diminish personal Liberty!
I expect you not only to vote against Feinstein's bill, but to actively work against it and any other bills that will further restrict the ability of law-abiding citizens to Keep and Bear Arms.
This is a must even viewed solely from the standpoint of protecting Liberty. However, if you need a practical reason for dismantling most gun-control legislation, look at where the mass shootings almost always occur--gun-free zones! These shooters are looking for the defenseless. This last time, he found our most precious resources, our children, left totally defenseless.
Instead of further restricting the Right, we should be removing restrictions that don't make sense, like gun-free school zones. Regulating the carry within school buildings makes sense. We want staff members who carry to be well-trained and to be able to keep their firearm secure from little hands. Banning carry within the building does not make sense. And banning carry within 1000 feet is just moronic and oppressive.
Either way, where one is restricted from carry is NOT a federal issue. Let the States do what the Founders and Framers intended. Let them create a marketplace of governments (that will range from tyrannical to near-total Liberty) from which the People can choose. That is true Liberty: the ability to vote with one's feet.
Like I said, I expect you to actively advance the Right to Keep and Bear Arms--and Liberty in general. Anything less is unacceptable and will cause me to vote for anyone but you. This current effort to increase federal interference with the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a make-or-break issue. Work hard on the correct side of it.
ON EDIT: I also sent this same email to my two senators. Curiously, only one offered the topic "Gun Control." You guessed it! The Democrat, Brown. I was disappointed to see that neither of the Republicans offered "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms" as a possible topic, although Portman did offer "Civil Rights/Humanities" and the opportunity to further add a subject line of my choosing, which I filled with the RKBA. Damned Democrats. When they think of guns, they automatically think to "control" them, like they try to control everything and all of us.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.