From: bglover@netcom.com (William Glover) Subject: SJ result summary 8/15 To: WAPETTE@aol.com Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 03:16:27 +0000 (GMT) Cc: bglover@netcom.com, Johann_Opitz@smtp.svl.trw.com, ba-firearms@shell.portal.com SJ City council meeting to debate and vote on Trixie's gun bill. Can't call it a crime ordinance, it has nothing to do with crime, and I wonder about the Trixie part since the Mayor seemed to be the real sponsor. Trixie seems to be interested in a new job, like in the CA Assembly? Fat chance. Nice crowd, about 250 max. Well behaved, good speeches. But it was hard to watch the anti-gunners get too fired up, there were 4 anti-gun speakers. One from the SF-CA health department, one from the lawyers group in SF that supports HCI, and 2 from the SJ city. From the audience reaction, I would say there were about 5 supporters of the ordinace, and 2 of those were spouses of 2 of the speakers. The anti summary, four speakers for this, one from HCIs crowd who left 5 minutes after he made his 1 minute speech, and three government employees who acknowledged they were on company time in their speech. Big turn out of people clamoring for this gun ban bill. Makes you wonder what is really going on, since it appear no common person knew or cared about the ordinace. Now aginst there were about 50 speakers. 4-5 were the usual group representatives, NRA etc, and the other 45 were just people. Some were FFL holders, but the majority were not. Took 2 hours for them to speak. TV camera from ch 11 was there. Set up at the start, ran tape for about 15 minutes, left 2 speakers after the HCI spokesman talked, so as to not look too obvious. Clearly HCI had notified the media. HCI spokesman 1 minute speech mad the nightly news, the had about 15 seconds of a pro speaker(good one). But the usual media bias was in full play. The results were - by the end of the meeting it was dead, but Hammer and Trixie had a little chat and steered the turkey back to some committee for more work and cost analysis. It is alegedly coming back for consideration with the new data. Curious that the council did not post the notice of the meeting in the lobby, as is normally the case(so said a speaker). They also changed the time from 7:00 to 2:30 while everyone is working. Looks like they can't pass a gun grabber bill unless they do it either when no one is there, or they lie about it. There was not one minutia of evidence that this bill would do anything about crime. Best line of the meeting, ...this ordinance is like the graffitti ordance, instead of catching and locking up the perps, the city puts the spray paint cans behind bars in the stores... Works for me, one the way to the meeting, I noticed the highway signs were painted over so bad you couldn't tell the exits. So much for crime fighting in SJ. Big issue is the Mayors lack of support for funding more police. How can the city afford funds for this nonsense when they need officers for the street? This is not dead yet, it will likely come up again when no one is there, so keep on top of the issue. WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO SHOW UP. Each little nick in the BORs soon becomes a crack. Anyone can speak, so come and sign up even if all you say is you oppose the thing. It clearly is not possible for this proposal to do anything useful except harass citizens and FFL holders. And I believe that is exactly the intent of it all. I am new to this, so it may not all be accurate. I clearly don't know the players in our city the way I should. But that will change. Bill .... bglover@netcom.com ======================================================================= Being a citizen is a full-time job. If we wish to reclaim our rights, we first must begin by reclaiming our responsibilities. "A Republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, Democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over." - "A Republic if you can keep it" pg. 13 - Earl Warren ======================================================================= __ Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:28:11 -0700 From: jdrennan@ix.netcom.com (john drennan ) Subject: Re: SJ result summary 8/15 To: bglover@netcom.com (William Glover) Cc: ba-firearms@shell.portal.com San Jose gunnies have a lot to be proud of today. A crowd of about 250 gathered within half an hour, just before the appointed time of the agenda item, nearly 60 people spoke their minds in opposition to the proposal and they all spoke with passion, conviction and common sense. It was remarkable that such a big crowd could gather at mid-day during the week after having been mislead as to the meeting time by Trixie's office. Given that the mayor supports this thing so heavily, and the city staff from the attorney to the police department rep. are willing to lie to support her, you did the best that you could do: you have a delay of about a week. Now here are some of the problems: 1. None of us knows SJ city procedure well enough yet. What exactly was decided today? Who is in charge of the proposal now? Which staffer is charged with developing the administrative support for this thing? Which committee hears the proposal next? Who's on the committee? what time, date, place do they meet? 2. The NRA and its orange legislative alert cards brought in the numbers that made you an intimidating force. I was impressed to see so many names from this list appearing in the flesh to make the argument, but they won't care about what you say without 200 angry people sitting behind you next time, and the next, and the next. Hell, some of them didn't care this time. I don't think the NRA can turn around legislative alerts fast enough to bring out the crowds in time. _Someone_ has to get the names, phone numbers and addresses of anyone and everyone who can and will show up at a meeting and work that list. The list of people who signed up today is the place to start and the person who has that list is Ed Worley in Sacramento. 3. What are the arguments that work on these politicians? We talk amongst ourselves and we understand that all these proposals are ridiculous laws designed to insult us and pick away at our rights under the shroud of what seems reasonable to someone who doesn't know or care about the issue. But practice explaining what Trixie's proposals are to someone who hasn't heard of them: they probably don't sound too bad to most people. One thing that is clear from today's meeting is that none of those pols is any smarter than most people. I don't know the answer to this problem. 4. What are the arguments that work with the press? Is the insider angle about Trixie's bid for the assembly of any interest to them? What do her likely opponents have to say about the strategy? Is there any sitting politician who is willing to stake his/her career on siding with gunowners to discredit Trixie? Or are all sides confident that we are so irrelevant that no one need care what we think? I don't know the answer to this one either. 5. What is the existing gun law in San Jose? 6. Can someone post election data to the list? What are poll results going back to the last couple of general elections? Are the people who are about to be charged with misdemeanors for putting their lawn clippings by the curb on the wrong day (that was passed in the first hour of the meeting in case you weren't there) as pissed off as we are? Don't a couple of misdemeanor convictions add up to a felony when considering things like firearms ownership? In short, could we take one or more of these people down in a general election if we had to? And could we absolutely protect the one councilman, Diquisto, who was unequivocal in his opposition to this proposal? 7. Can we make any friends in the city administration? Is someone out there charming enough to turn someone on the city staff to our way of thinking while researching any or all of the above? Some insider info. would go a long way right about now. Can we compromise our way out of this? AMMUNITION REGISTRATION and trigger locks have got to go at all costs, but isn't a lot of the rest negotiable? Was it George Bush who said "90% of success in politics is just being there"? I would say your problem boils down to finding out where to be and when to be there, knowing what you need to say (the other 10%) and getting enough people there to make it stick. Someone with the time ability and proximity needs to adopt this problem as their own and instruct the rest of us (no: lead the rest of us) or the problem needs to be broken down into smaller chunks and you need to cooperate in assembling the big picture.Let me know what you guys think. I'm happy to help with phone banking but my availability is erratic. I have a list of names, addresses and some phone number for the San Jose FFL's. I can provide mailing labels immediately. Oh, another problem: The antis didn't really have their big guns out today. When the league of women voters, HCI, LCAV and/or the 101 California survivors, and the ghetto youth counselors get their ducks lined up we will really have a fight. You will need to appear to grow stronger commensurate with the appearance of increasing support that this measure will gain at the next meeting. . . . just one man's opinion -JD __ Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 01:00:11 -0700 From: Jeff Chan To: bglover@netcom.com, jdrennan@ix.netcom.com Subject: Re: SJ result summary 8/15 Cc: ba-firearms@shell.portal.com >3. What are the arguments that work on these politicians? Votes. If those 200 pro-rights people and their friends worked 2 Saturdays on pro-gun election campaigns you'd have a 100% pro-gun city council. You'd also get rid of the breeding ground for control freaks like Hammer and Johnson (& every other anti-gunner who traded up to Congress or Sacramento). Jeff C.