And that's not all. Demand Action will also be deploying these gun violence victims turned gun safety advocates in Carson City to personally lobby legislators for SB 221.
Gilles Rousseau: His daughter, Lauren Rousseau, was a permanent substitute teacher murdered with a gun in the Newtown shooting. [He's also featured in the TV ad above.]
Neil Heslin –His six-year old son Jesse Lewis was a first grade student who was murdered with a gun in the Newtown shooting.
Patricia Maisch –She attended Rep. Giffords’s Congress on your Corner event and helped disarm the shooter by grabbing his second magazine clip after he was tackled.
Colonel Bill Badger (ret.) –Badger is a retired U.S. Army Colonel (1952-1990, active and reserve), a gun owner, hunter, and a registered Republican. He was invited to the Congress on the Corner event by Rep. Giffords’s staff after he expressed his opposition to the health care reform bill. Badger was shot in the back of the head by the shooter and fell to the ground. As the shooter reached for his second ammunition clip, Colonel Badger grabbed the shooter, hit him in the shoulder to knock him to the ground and put him in a choke hold.
So we will indeed see an intense last minute push for SB 221.
Yet while gun safety advocates continue pushing for SB 221, the NRA and the rest of the gun (manufacturers) lobby will be squeezing all the juice they have in Carson City to kill the bill. And remember, there's not much time left. As we're starting to see the mad dash to Sine Die, temptation to abandon bills deemed "unnecessary" (read politically inconvenient) will be intense. Gun safety advocates must be prepared for what comes next.
So are they? That's the key question right now. Can SB 221 and gun safety reform in general survive the final push?
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