If you have been following our Law Abiding Gun Owner petition at Whitehouse.gov, you know that it was shut off overnight on Thursday, when we sent our last email appealing to women and minority gun owners. Like many others, we suspect that the Whitehouse staffers noticed that the anti-gun petition was dying and that ours was taking off. We also got reports that many people could not sign it prior to Friday. Over 57,000 of you were able to make your voices heard, and we would have reached 100,000 alone given the chance. No national media outlet, popular gun website or even popular gun blogger linked to our petition. Thanks to those of you who tried to spread the word, and of course, those who were able to actually sign.
As it turned out, President Obama answered all of the gun petitions, for and against, in one note and video. He did not answer ours specifically. You can read his response here on the original petition page. I do feel that he should have answered us directly because we doubled the requisite number of petition signatures, but he did clearly acknowledge law abiding gun owners in his answer at least. If you read between the lines of what he said and wrote, the President appears to be notifying us that his political hands are tied and that we need to act now by contacting our congress members directly, and also by letting him know what we think of his answer. Rather than hem and haw, I think this is what we should do.