The National Rifle Association has turned its lobbyists loose on Capitol Hill — as President Barack Obama on Wednesday present his plans to stem gun violence in the nation that is expected to include a ban on assault weapons.
And the lobbyists, according to Politico, are expected to take myriad approaches in their pitch to Capitol Hill legislators beyond just arguing in favor of upholding Second Amendment rights.
One tack includes presenting arguments from weapons manufacturers that guns are about jobs,
Politico reports.
For instance, nearly 40 union workers for the Remington Arms Factory in New York protested against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new gun law at the state capitol in Albany, Politico reports.
The company makes the AR-15 Bushmaster rifle used in the Dec. 14 elementary school shootings in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were killed.
The Remington Arms employees expected to make the same pitch to Washington legislators, Politico reports.
“My boss has a firm and well-established stance in support of the Second Amendment — and we are not going to deviate from that just because criminals choose to operate outside the law,” a senior GOP aide told Politico.
The aide said constituents who support the Second Amendment are calling in.
“I think folks know our stance and respect our reasoning behind it, so there is no need for groups to meet with us to talk about where we stand,” the aide told Politico.
Still, the NRA is taking no chances — and one source told Politico that the association is dispatching both in-house and contracted lobbyists to work on legislators.
Among those within the NRA’s arsenal are such high-profile Democratic lobbying firms as Forbes-Tate and the C2 Group, with Crossroads Strategies, SNR Denton, and Shockey Scofield Solutions being enlisted on the GOP side.
The association also has retained such top lawyers as Chris Cox and James J. Baker, Politico reports.
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