Union Sportsmen Describe Why They Back Obama

Martin Marks, Pennsylvania political communications specialist, sends us this report from Erie, Pa.

Stormy weather didn’t stop a group of more than 50 union sportsmen from shooting in the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Working Families Trap Shoot Finals at the Bay City Gun Club in Waterford, outside of Erie on Saturday afternoon. And it didn’t dampen the enthusiasm these union gun owners and hunters have for Sen. Barack Obama.

Jack Fischer, president of the Erie-Crawford Central Labor Council, puts it this way:

There is a lot of nonsense out there about Barack Obama taking our guns. Working folks from our area are a lot more worried about John McCain shipping away our jobs.

Gun ownership has been a wedge issue used in recent elections by Republican candidates and their extremist allies to distract blue-collar voters from the bread-and-butter economic issues that matter to working families. But, at a roundtable discussion on the election prior to Saturday’s trap shoot, participants said hunters wouldn’t be dissuaded from focusing on economic issues by right-wing distortions of Obama’s record on guns.

Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rick Bloomingdale says:

Obama’s support of the Second Amendment is crystal clear. The truth of the matter is that George W. Bush and his failed economic policies have taken away more guns from average Americans than any gun control law ever passed in the history of the United States. The disastrous Bush economic policies supported by John McCain have turned pawn shops into gun shops as struggling workers hock their guns to pay their bills.

Timothy Helper, business agent for the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 56 based in Erie, underscored the importance of protecting the traditions he and other sportsmen value but says voters must stay focused on their pocketbooks.

We come from an area where it is not uncommon for schools to close on the opening day of deer season and for local papers to give as much attention to their town’s trap shooting team results as high school football scores. Gun issues are important to us but we will not let right-wing rhetoric distract us from the critical pocketbook issues most important to our families.

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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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