GOP Senator Turns Down Gun Victim’s Widow

GOP Senator Turns Down Gun Victim’s Widow

By Amanda Terkel | HuffPost | 05/03/2013 6:28 pm EDT
Excerpts:

WASHINGTON – “Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) has turned down a dinner invitation during the congressional recess from a woman whose husband was killed by gun violence.
Anne Lyczak lost her husband Richard in January 1994, when he was killed in a drive-by shooting in Portsmouth, N.H.

Last week, Lyczak wrote a letter to Ayotte, inviting her to dinner at her house to talk about ways to prevent gun violence. The senator recently voted against legislation sponsored by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers. Lyczak said she was "disappointed" by Ayotte's vote.

"I believe that expanding and strengthening our background check system, which has stopped more than two million attempted purchases by dangerous people since its inception in 1998, will save lives," wrote Lyczak in her letter. "And this is something that your constituents support -- 89 percent support going beyond the provisions of the Manchin-Toomey amendment to require a background check for every gun purchase."

The issue of gun violence has followed Ayotte home for the congressional recess. At the senator's first town hall meeting this week, the daughter of the slain principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School confronted Ayotte.

"You had mentioned that day the burden on owners of gun stores that the expanded background checks would harm. I am just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the halls of her elementary school isn't more important than that," said Erica Lafferty on Tuesday. Lafferty's mother was principal Dawn Hochsprung.

Ayotte's approval rating also dropped significantly after her vote against the background check amendment, according to polls. The National Rifle Association is now running a radio ad thanking her for her stance.

Other families of gun violence victims also have tried to meet with senators who voted against the background check legislation. Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), both have declined dinner invitations.”

read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/03/kelly-ayotte-gun-violence_n_3205238.html
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IMO: Isn’t it amazing that although republican legislators vote against gun control, they are unsure enough to never want to meet with the victims’ family. It proves that they are walking lockstep with the NRA in the matter of innocent American lives being taken by crazies with guns is ok.

The legislators that voted against stricter gun control legislation don’t want their names known because of the repercussions in their next elections, but it is already too late for that as polls taken show that ratings went way down for congressmen that voted against this severely needed bill.

Apparently they care less about the carnage by gun in America than they do about campaign donations and payoffs by the NRA.

Right will always supersede wrong if we give it a chance.

 

And this grub voted it down and promptly announced his retirement

Coward!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Baucus

 

Senators have better things to do then take random dinner invites. What a precedent to set. Go to one dinner and if you turn down someone else they will raise hell....

Mod edit>>>stop the nonsense

Think i will send a letter to Obama inviting him to dinner and reminding him most Americans were against Obamacare. I expect the news outlets to publish him not coming and show me the same respect she wants....



Then again the "reporter" that wrote this used to blog for ThinkProgress so i am not surprised.

 

Are democrat leaders accepting dinner invitations from those who opposed Obamacare?

 

Oh look another apologist guess what no Senators do not have anything better to do than to interact with their constituents since Congress isn't doing much. When she loses her seat maybe she will reconsider.

 

Was her name Cindy Sheehan????? ... because we see how this works with the National News media and leftist agenda.

I do recall the media virtually ignoring the parents of the murdered SEALS in Benghazi when they called Barack Obama a "murderer".

 

Victims of gun violence should not be listened to regarding the gun debate. Feelings and emotions have no place in politics that affect the whole country.

 

Common sense = apologist. Got to love it. 365 days in the year. Thousands upon thousands of constituents. Have dinner with one you better have dinner with anyone who asks or calls to the media of outrage start.... This article is complete bull(*)(*)(*)(*).

 

72 year old people retire all the time.

 

Yes when 71% of his state supported a yes vote and he skips town 4 months later

 

Amen amen amen. People who are emotional about an issue are the LAST people to listen to on that issue. But stirring emotions is how pointy-headed liberal cretins roll, as they cannot win a logical debate based on the merits.

 

If its true then there is some merit to it.

- - - Updated - - -

Have any been given?

 

I dont know i will FOIA every single email sent to Obama over the last 5 years ( sarcasm)

 

Ayotte the once tough and bad conspiracist against Obama is about to become another pathetic casualty of conservatism ...

 

His brain already retired. It s partly his fault that Obama had to drop the health care Public Option as unwinnable.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Max.

 

As opposed to conservatives who, every time the subject of taxation comes up, fall to the floor, thrashing with their feet, shrieking "MY MONEY! MY MONEY!?"

Yes, the emotional impact of uncontrolled trade in guns should be taken into consideration.

Letting them fall into the hands of known felons, imbeciles, lunatics, addicts, terrorists, wife beaters and kiddy-fiddlers is not what the founders had in mind when they wrote an amendment to allow the formation of a "well-regulated militia."

It does not serve the purpose of defending liberty to allow those who would violently deprive of us such liberty to arm themselves to do so.

 

That's the funniest thing I've read recently.

 

Woefully uninformed.

The "well organized militia" has nothing to do with the individuals right to keep and bear arms.

 

I've said it before and it needs saying again..... the entirety of "progressivism" is one giant strawman.
This is yet another instance of the frauds inventing an argument from whole cloth, and trotting it out to malign ideological opposition.

and their useful idiot audience...
the street level hipster dullard doper drone...
utterly bereft of the intellectual capacity to dissect the deceitful tactic....
lap it up like nectar....

 

Oh my gosh! Senator refuses to meet with wife of victim of 20 year-old crime!

Slow news day, AgentHuffPo?

 

Obviously a publicity stunt on behalf of Lyczak. Otherwise it would not make The Huffington Post.


The Senator made the correct decision, to decline the invitation.

 

I'm inviting Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Leon Panetta to a beer summit at my local Buffalo Wild Wings to discuss their utter failure and lies concerning Benghazi.

Joe Biden and I will then do a pub crawl because Joe has to be fun to party with and I don't think Joe would have abandoned those Americans like Obama did.

I wonder, if Amanda Terkel at Huff Po will cover the event for me? If she doesn't, then she's just another partisan progressive hack journalist swimming in a toilet bowl full of them.

 

Stupid question/argument of the month

The woman is aruging for expanded background checks which would not have prevented Sandy Hook or her mother being gunned down. Seems obvious she is simply supplying an mindless, emotional and selfish question in an attempt to somehow make herself feel better, but nothing will bring her mother back and nothing in the proposed legislation would have prevented the incident from happening. I feel for her loss, but her efforts to guilt others into doing something irrational are totally selfish and misplaced.

 

How much paint does one have to huff in order to criticize a member of Congress for not going to a dinner invitation from a voter?