Gun Control Debate Revitalizes Local Tea Party Groups
A recent Tea Party Second Amendment program attracted an overflow crowd to a rear dining room at the First Street Family Restaurant in Simi Valley.
A few days later, a couple of hundred people, many of them local Tea Party members, attended a “Day of Resistance” gun rights rally and march in Ventura.
Declared all but dead by liberal pundits after President Barack Obama’s re-election in November, the conservative tea party movement has been revitalized in large part by the gun control debate that erupted after December’s shooting in Newtown, Conn. Gunman Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School before killing himself.
“It has absolutely given us a breath of life,” said George Miller, co-founder of the Ventura County Tea Party. “I certainly don’t think it’s the only thing, but it’s a baseline freedom, so it’s kind of integral to the Tea Party message.”