NcongruNt wrote:IMO, that would be a mistake. While gun bills are important, there is still only a very small portion of the population that is actively involved in seeing progression on firearms issues. Special sessions bring incredible focus on any specific issue, and unless it's something that directly effects everyone (such as budget/spending issues), you're likely to garner a net effect of bad press and misinformation from the media, making for a more difficult situation.
Understand that for our legislators, they have a large number of issues and topics in which they have to work. When we gather support from some of them, they are often spending political capital because much of their support may oppose our legislation. Doing so during a legislative session isn't so risky, because they have other bills and work getting done that benefits those that may oppose our legislation, making for a net positive, even if those people don't like our legislation that gets passed. In a special session, you're going to be forcing a legislator to take a stand on a single issue which may cause a significant problem with his or her constituency, with nothing else to offset the perceived negative. That's dangerous because that may cause the ouster (come election time) of a legislator who has worked for us. To avoid that, a special session may cause loss of support on gun legislation, where you would then label said legislator as not on our side.
Politics is a long-term game, much like football, where progress is a result of aggregate actions. This is something that organizations like OCDO do not grasp. They want to run a Hail Mary every time, when in reality the game is won with a series of incremental movements forward. Sometimes there are setbacks, such as the death of the bills this session, but we still need to push forward and utilize those who work for us in an effective way. Honestly, I don't think a special session is the way to go about it. It may get our legislation passed (and that's a big maybe), but at the potential loss of those who have worked for us.
You make some good points, but the flip side is the old adage "Strike while the iron is hot." Right now we (theoretically) have the support of both the legislative and executive branches of the Texas government. There is no guarantee that we will have that support in two years.
The issue of gun rights, like most issues, is cyclical. Sometime you're on offense, and sometimes you're on defense. We've been on offense (making incremental movements forward) for so long that some of us are starting to think that things are always going to be that way.
Texas has had pro-gun governors for the past 15 years, and we've gained a lot of ground in that time. But imagine how those tables might turn if the 2010 gubernatorial election kicks off 15 years of governors who are lukewarm on gun issues. We could spend the better part of the next two decades just fighting to hang onto the gun rights we have right now.
It's also possible that we could enter the 2011 legislative session with a less gun-friendly legislature. If we lose the governor and/or the legislature, we can forget about gaining any new rights or making incremental movements forward. At that point, it'll be all we can do not to lose ground.
We sometimes take for granted how good we have it here in Texas, where most gun rights battles are fought against a vocal minority trying to kill our bills through parliamentary procedure. But we could wake up in 2011 to find the deck stacked against us, as is already the case with our counterparts in many other states.
So, while I understand the desire not to put our supporters in the state legislature on the spot, I'm definitely of the "strike while the iron is hot" mentality. Our bills have already weathered a glut of bad press, and our most vocal opponents have already staked their territory. While a special session might garner more scrutiny for our bills and more criticism for our supporters, I think such risks pale in comparison to the risk of losing these fights indefinitely to changing political tides.
Of course, I could be wrong. To paraphrase what famed screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) said about the film industry, when it comes to politics, nobody knows anything.