The most aggressive of the national gun rights organizations launched an ad campaign against the Pennsylvania Republican senator, who worked with President Barack Obama to restrict gun rights.
“Why is Senator Toomey so eager to bailout scandal-ridden President Obama’s failed gun control agenda?” asked Dudley Brown, the executive director of the Windsor-Colo.-based National Association for Gun Rights.
Brown said, “He seems more interested in being fawned over by the President and the elite media, than looking out for the interests of gun owners in Pennsylvania.”
In a city full of mysteries and riddles, one of the most frustrating is the decision by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R.-Pa.) to rush forward in middle March to save Obama’s then faltering campaign to restrict gun rights.
Despite the gun-panic the president and the media whipped after the Dec. 14 tragedy in Newtown, Conn., the underlying mood of the nation remained biased for gun rights. Had Toomey not agreed to be the Republican face to proposals crafted by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.) and the White House, the matter would have been dropped and Congress would have moved on.
It was not just that Toomey, a former Wall Street executive and one-time leader of the Club for Growth, had made his reputation as a solid economic conservative, but also that the freshman senator successfully ran to replace James DeMint as the chairman of the Republican Steering Committee, the chambers bloc of conservative senators.
In the weeks since the April 17 defeat of Toomey’s amendment to expand background checks for transfers of gun possession, the senator and his staff have worked to regain the trust and favor of conservatives.
The Rhode Island-born senator has spoken out against Obama’s war on coal and coal communities, he had filed legislation to end sugar subsidies and railed against over regulation of the cigar industry.
Toomey voted against both the illegal alien amnesty bill and farm bills—both key votes for every conservative scorecards.
Yet, even if Toomey is the best-behaved conservative for the next four years of his term, because he refuses to apologize or recant his support of gun control, there is a price he must pay.
Christopher Kuper, the NAGR’s director of federal legislation, told me the commercials that put the president’s gun control agenda in the context of the IRS and government surveillance scandals began running in the last week of June.
Danielle Thompson’s press secretary said the commercials air statewide on EPSN, Fox News, CNN, in addition to during local newscasts: WHTM—ABC Harrisburg, WTAE--ABC Pittsburgh, WPXI—NBC Pittsburgh, WGAL—NBC Harrisburg, WPMT--Fox Harrisburg, WGH—Fox Pittsburgh, KDKA—CBS Pittsburgh and WHP-CBS Harrisburg.
Kuper said NAGR members remain incensed about Toomey.
“Toomey’s gun control legislation pushed for expanded federal background checks and forces otherwise law-abiding gun owners into the NICS registration system,” he said.
“This system presumes that law-abiding citizens are guilty until they have sufficiently proven their innocence. This isn’t just bad policy, it is an affront on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms,” he said.
Kuper said Toomey’s proposal would have empowered federal bureaucrats to suspend gun rights from Americans, without due process or opportunity of appeal, who sought voluntary for mental health counseling.
This is already happening to veterans across America and Pennsylvania, and would have become law if the Toomey got his way, he said.
The Senate is different from the House, where grudges are etched in stone.
With only 100 colleagues, senators cannot take umbrage as shifting political sands mean yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend.
In the midst of his partnership with the Democrats to restrict gun rights, conservative senators fumed at Toomey. But, now there are other fights and suddenly winning Toomey’s vote is more important than grudges over a gun vote no one remembers.
The message of the NAGR’s ad campaign against Toomey is that outside the paneled walls of the Senate cloakrooms, gun owners and supporters of gun rights remember and unlike senators, voters do not always forgive and forget.
Neil W. McCabe is the editor of Human Event’s “Guns & Patriots” e-letter and was a senior reporter at the Human Events newspaper. McCabe deployed with the Army Reserve to Iraq for 15 months as a combat historian. For many years, he was a reporter and photographer for “The Pilot,” Boston’s Catholic paper. He was also the editor of two free community papers, “The Somerville (Mass.) News and “The Alewife (North Cambridge, Mass.).”
