Well for the record, CJ Buck and AKTI were willing to accept that the legislative intent record was flawed, potentially big trouble, and took steps to fix it. So before anybody goes ripping into them too seriously, let's all remember that.
Let's step back a sec here and talk about how you make political change happen, short of actually holding office:
1) "Access based" (or "smoky back-room politics"). If you can establish friendly, "insider" contact with politicians, you can gain influence. This is the #1 technique AKTI has been using, both during the AB78 hearings in '97 that lead to concealed folders via changes to PC12020, and this more recent SB274 issue.
To play this game, you need money. A paid lobbyist is critical, and a decent-sized company (like Buck) behind you helps too.
It can be very effective - the NRA plays this gameplan all the time.
But it's not without problems. It's easy to get too chummy with the "insiders" and lose track of what's really going on, which in this case is the loss of civil rights. And if the opposition thinks that's the only game you can play, you can find your options limited, in a hurry.
2) Grassroots politics. Also known as "bombardment by the masses". When legicritters all of a sudden start getting flooded with incoming messages from the citizenry, they have to suspect that they've pushed some sort of hot-button. In a year in which the voters are already pissed off over the power situation, a bit of carefully applied pressure can do worlds of good.
This is also in the NRA's playbook, in spades. What we did by bombarding the Assembly Safety Committee on Monday was *nothing* compared to what I've seen the California NRA Member's Council system pull. They can, and have, utterly SHUT DOWN the state capitol building for up to a week with solid EMail, fax, phone and letter bombardments, to the point where NRA lobbyists walking down the hall get chased by staff members of grabber politicians, who literally BEG them to shut down the flood! The lobbyist's response? "Make the gun-grabber bills go away, and the flood stops".
And it does, inside of a matter of *minutes*.
Or another example: sometimes there's one key voting legicritter that the NRA's lobbyist will go talk to, and find out the guy is stubborn. No problem. He goes out into the hall, makes one phone call, that fires up a phone tree, the legicritter's phones ring off the hook so heavy his staff is utterly bogged down. For days if need be. Then the NRA guy goes and sees if his attitude is improved.
That's grassroots power.
3) Threats. Either prove you can vote out targeted enemies and threaten to make THEM a target on elections day, or go dig up some dirt on 'em and raise a scandal. This one is my personal favorite, esp. the latter variation
. It's what I did to the Commie Mommies, and part of how I'm gonna nail my Sheriff.
4) Legal action. Happens more in local politics...but if a bad law can be shot down in the courts, it reflects badly on the law's supporters. See also "threats", above.
3 and 4 aren't really relevant to this latest mess. But #2 isn't in the AKTI's playbook yet. It sure as hell is in mine...and I've got the NRA contacts and training to rig up a crude, low-level immitation of their grassroots playbook. Which is what we hit the Assembly Safety Committee with; you can bet their staffers talked to the bill's author and it was at least a factor in getting the legislative intent altered the way we needed.
In conclusion: I think AKTI needs to communicate better with the people affected by laws they're involved in. When necessary, grassroots action and a friendly, professional "second incoming opinion" can help the situation, as shown here.
AKTI's basic intentions were good, and when the door to an improvement opened up they took it rather than saying "we didn't make any mistakes the first time around, you peons should just go away".
We can all learn from this. A case can be made that AKTI should stick with "access politics" as insiders BUT communicate with us and when grassroots power is necessary, work with us instead of against us - BF is now big enough to generate some potent grassroots energy.
Jim
