A Couple Of Dispatches From The Coming Skirmishes

There's a pair of worthwhile posts by Sebastian and Bitter, the dynamic duo over at Shall Not Be Questioned that deserve full attention.

First-up, Sebastian calls those of us engaging in in-fighting over the NRA to the woodshed:

Some gun rights groups are spending resources attacking NRA rather than attacking gun control. It’s times like these that we realize our worst enemy is ourselves. And note how they have pre-thrown Harry Reid under the bus before we even know what he’s going to do with Feinstein’s bill in the Senate. If I were Reid, there would be a lot of reasons I wouldn’t want it to see the light of day, and a big reason I wouldn’t is that I can read, and I still want to be majority leader in 2015.

Bitter continues her series on Specific Steps You Can Take to Oppose the Coming Obama/Biden Gun Controls with her third installment, which focuses on individuals reaching out through the media. Among them:

• Don’t write off the media as completely against us and worthless for outreach. Many individual members of the national media aren’t good targets, but the local press is much more likely to be open to different opinions.

• If you submit a letter to the editor or comment to the local television/radio stations that doesn’t get published or aired after several days, then post it online. If you have a blog, post what you intended to say online and include a link to what inspired you to write. The staff of any officials named will pick it up in Google Alerts and see that you are contacting media outlets in his/her district, even if your letter or comment wasn’t published that day.

• Email a copy of your letter to the editor directly to your lawmakers. If you want to go the direct route, just email the office of your representatives with a note that you thought they might like to see the letter to the editor you just submitted to the relevant district news outlet that mentioned them.

• In any communication with the media, you’re more likely to be featured if you are clear and concise. With letters to the editor, they shouldn’t be any longer than 150 words. The shorter letters provide more flexibility as they lay the pages out for publication.

 Check them both out and remember to get active! You've heard all of this from me before...