Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 23:46:44 -0500 From: "Christopher W. Knox" To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: FCO Alert -- Barr Files Discharge Special note and action request. Chris -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- FCO Alert -- Barr files discharge petition On Friday, February 23 Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) filed H. Res. 364, a discharge petition which would require an immediate House vote on H.R. 125. That bill, by Rep. Jim Chapman (D-Texas), would repeal the semi-auto and magazine ban included in the 1994 crime bill. It contains no other provisions. Barr is not moving his own bill, which has the blessing of the House Firearms Task Force and Republican Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bill McCollum, for it contains language that Barr -- and we -- need to change. Under the rules of a discharge petition the bill brought to a vote can only be voted up or down with no amendments. Technically, the discharge is even more unusual than normal because it does not actually discharge the bill, H.R. 125; instead it discharges a rule from the Rules Committee calling for H.R. 125 to be brought to a vote, but with Representative Barr controlling time. A big reason for this parliamentary cuteness is to speed up the procedure. An interesting sidelight is that Chapman is retiring to run against Representative John Bryant (D-Texas) for the dubious privilege of running against Senator Phil Gramm. Call your Congressman at (202)225-3121 and fill his or her mail box. Ask that they immediately sign H. Res. 364, then vote for H.R. 125. Be sure to tell your Congresscritter that his signature on the discharge, or the lack thereof, will be treated the same as a hard gun vote. When we ran a discharge petition on McClure-Volkmer in 1986 Neal Knox even kept a permanent record of the order in which they signed. And the last shall not be first -- so to speak. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMTACniGz4I2lBJDFAQFk2AP6A2Q5l2OF0QOvxjq2kOzgV84OvP6YzrDV d8lzNvc8jAP2b5dH853Bf3Pueo4lm4HtuKY845C9P3769HipxYxCh95ViFbAa63Z kugYpsRkq7yPgQDi7WPTOHwcIrA709T6ks59FPyF2Yvm/eKdcHsYYbuMWJxNQyYp bWDkjf/8ooM= =/VA8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To receive the Online Firearms Coalition Bulletin send mail to listproc@mainstream.com containing in the message body: subscribe fco New! http://www.crl.com/~cknox/fco.html