RB> JD> Do you have any ideas as to why the traffic is so low here? I mean,
  > JD> it's not like we have won the fight already.
RB>I've been receiving quite a few messages here.
  >It's GUN_CONTROL that I've not received anything in for a month or so.
        I think that I can give you three reasons for a low message
volume.
        First, there's no major confiscatory bill going through Congress
right now. People aren't feeling particularly threatened even though
they should.
        Second, NRA, still imcomprehensibly, isn't doing anything to
hold the Republicans accountable for promises made prior to the 94
mid-term elections. They've been strangely silent about the continuing
doublecross on the part of Newt Gingerich who is a gun grabber and who
is still not permitting pro-gun legislation to go to the floor for a
vote, which would cause some debate, political pressure and generally
bring our issues to the fore, which as a Bill Bennett type Republican he
doesn't want.
        Three, the winners of NRA's latest civil war are far too
concerned with consolidation of their position to worry about anything
as mundane as the defense of the Second Amendment or the recovery of
rights that we've been losing since the passage of the Volkmer-McClure
Act.
        Given those three points there's really nothing much to talk
about. We're political orphans, our largest advocacy group is far too
self absorbed to worry about anything except it's own internal politics
and nobody is trying to do another AW ban at the moment, being more
inclined to work at nibbling around the edges with the Kohl and
Lautenburg Amendments and probably illegal overextensions of regulatory
authority which is permitted to pass by by acquiesence of non-negation.
        The end result is that we've become a politically
disenfranchised rump constituency and unless a really close election
comes along where we transition from a rump to a swing constituency due
to what for us are largely external factors, we've acceded to our
becoming an irrelevancy.
        Small wonder that nobody here has much to say. At least the real
Moses had the Burning Bush and some stone tablets. All that ours has is
the "winning team" and AK-Mak (sp.)
___
 X SLMR 2.1a X Optimism is no substitute for realism.
--- Maximus 3.01
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