new letter/fax campaign!

06/15/03 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

Please read the progress report on S724 at www.space-rockets.com/congress

Essentially, we have two Senators blocking the bill from passing without weight limits. Senator Hatch is the chairman of the committee and carries alot of weight with the other undecided Republicans. Senator Hatch's position on this is not cast into concrete. I believe his position could be changed with a strong letter and phone campaign. Senator Kohl's position, I believe, is cast into concrete and not going to change. Right now, the other Democrats on the committee are going to follow Kohl's lead as he was one of the authors on the Safe Explosive Act. Only Sen. Durbin (Democrat is not going to follow Kohl, as Durbin is a cosponsor of S724.

The purpose of a new letter campaign is to convince Senator Hatch that unrestricted access to APCP is not going cause Homeland security problems. The campaign will also focus on getting the Democratic Senators to vote independently and not just follow Senator Kohl's lead. More importantly, they will not impose weight limitations on S724. We do not have to get out of committee with a unanimous vote, just a simple majority.

There has been a lot of discussion this last week about weight limits. I'm sure many of you would accept various levels of weight limits. Believe it or not, the real battle on this bill is going to be in the House. If you think this committee is bad, wait to you see the House. What many people do not realize is that S724 with a weight limit will cause us to lose support from people we are going to need in the House battle. Without those “troops” S724 is not going to go the distance, even with a weight limit. The unsung heroes of this legislative effort are those who have worked behind the scenes to turn negative news stories around before they got published or aired, written technical reports on the true hazards of APCP for Senate staffers, got out the letters and phone calls, made presentations to staffers and would not take no from a Senator or his staff. With weight limits, the rag tag army we have assembled begins to come apart. What works for the mid power guy, doesn't work for the high power guy. What works for the high power guy, doesn't work for the amateur. What works for the amateur, doesn't work for the dealer or manufacturer and so on. Who do we abandon along the way for a quick deal?

We do not have to start throwing people over the side to make a deal in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee is only one battle, not the war. If we lose there, we can still revive the bill in the Senate. There are ways to do that. We also have the House and Rep. Calvert's bill, yet to be introduced. This is not over by a long shot, no matter what happens this week.

Tomorrow, I will be asking for people to write and call Senators on the committee that can make a difference and help us get S724 out of committee without limits. The information will be on the congress web page. I don't know whether NAR or TRA will join in this, they will have to decide for themselves, as will you. Is this authorized by anyone in Washington? Well, I was told a few days ago that Senator Enzi would understand if I used “leverage” to get S724 passed as we both had written it, no weight limits. It is time to apply some “leverage”.

This can be reposted.

John Wickman

ARSA

P.S. Many have emailed that they are not yet on the mailing list. For this I apologize as we have been swamped with requests. Within the next 7 days, we are going to try and get everyone on the list who has sent in a request.