February 17, 2009 Meeting

[johnharris]

Nashville Chapter is scheduled to meet on Tuesday, February 17, 2009,

Meeting time is 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 pm

Please arrive early (I reserve the room starting at 5:30) to order, eat and socialize as possible.

Location: Interstate Drive Shoneys in the meeting room. This is the Shoneys next to the Titan's stadium right across from the Gerst House.

At this time we are talking with State Representative Eddie Bass as a possible guest speaker. Rep. Bass is a retired Tennessee sheriff and has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee. We are anticipating an interesting talk about what Tennessee's firearms owners can and should expect from a Republican controlled General Assembly

You do not have to be a TFA member to attend nor do you have to be a resident of Nashville. Everyone is welcome and encourage to bring guests - even spouses.

I want to encourage each of you to bring someone with you to the meeting who has not been to one or been to one recently. There's no cost to come (unless you eat) and Tuesday nights are rather slow unless you are planning to go watch the Metro Council debate raising our taxes.

Come a little early and have time for dinner, or just coffee and pie.

[David Lewis]

We had a great meeting Tuesday Night. There were 46 people in attendance, our second-highest ever.
If we keep growing, we will have to find a larger location for our meetings. That's a good problem to have!

Representative Bass spoke on this session's legislative prospects, which he deemed quite good for the
bills we would like to see passed. He's the primary sponsor, or a co-sponsor of several of them.

He remarked that e-mai is a very effective tool for communicating with your representatives. He also
suggested that in our communications with legislators, that we take a moment to write our own comments,
rather than simply cutting & pasting a "hey, everyone, send this letter to your reps" message. He noted
that recently, he'd seen about 500 messages about a type of bill, all of which stated that "we don't need
this legislation in Pennsylvania"––a clear indication that the senders of the message didn't bother to read
what they were regurgitating. His advice was clear: Identical messages from dozens, even hundreds,
of people do get noticed, but don't carry the same weight that individual messages do. It's not hard to
take a moment & re-word something. Even short messages get noticed. Remember to be polite!

Our next meeting will be at 6:30PM on 17 March. No word yet who our guest will be, but we hope to
have a continued series of legislators, especially while they're in session.

Join us next month, if you can!

Regards,

David