On Monday, I was pleased to attend a breakfast with U.S. Senate candidate George Allen hosted by the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia. I wanted to ask Governor Allen to release the 2012 Senate candidate questionnaire that garnered him an “A” rating by the NRA. During the event, the host did ask Governor Allen about his NRA rating and what it meant, but the governor gave a brief and vague answer (“I’m for the Second Amendment”) that in no way informed the audience about his specific positions on gun policy.
As Governor Allen was leaving the room, he took questions from several individuals lined up to speak with him. Knowing that the NRA does not release their completed surveys, I asked the governor if he would release his survey himself-repeatedly-and never got an answer.
When he served as a U.S. Senator from 2001-2007, George Allen voted to allow the federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines to expire. We are now seeing the consequences of this disastrous policy choice in gruesome mass shootings across America, like the one in the movie theater in Aurora recently and right here in Virginia – Cho used high capacity magazines when he shot and killed 32 students & staff at Va Tech.
It’s not hard to imagine where Governor Allen now stands on other gun policies: Allowing concealed carry reciprocity with any state, requiring no background checks on 40% of firearms purchasers, permitting those on the FBI’s terrorist watch list to purchase firearms at will, restricting ATF’s ability to collect and disseminate crime gun trace data, etc, etc.
The bottom line is this… If a candidate is going to take the time to answer questions on a survey for a special interest group that spends millions of dollars lobbying our elected representatives, then those voting to send him/her into office deserve to get exactly the same answers and find out what has been promised to that special interest.
The citizens of Virginia deserve transparency and accountability. They should demand it from George Allen.
See the NRA survey here:
http://www.csgv.org/storage/do…
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