{"id":1486,"date":"2016-02-02T14:39:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T14:39:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1486"},"modified":"2016-02-02T14:45:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T14:45:05","slug":"truck-stop-stumping-va-concerns-firefighters-and-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1486","title":{"rendered":"truck stop stumping; VA concerns; firefighters and guns"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve picked a 75-mile radius to campaign in on nights and weekends in Northwest, Ohio. \u00a0[And we’re asking our supports to do the same in their areas.] \u00a0Last Saturday I stopped, first, at a Pilot Truck Stop about five miles down I-75 from us. \u00a0I passed on campaign cards to people from West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma… and I approached a guy who turned out was from Canada, but he wished me luck anyway. \u00a0I smiled… \u00a0The people from West Virginia had a Sierra Club sticker on their car. \u00a0I, in turn, said I was “pro-environment” — which I am. \u00a0See our position paper on the environment…<\/a> \u00a0I then headed to Gomer, Ohio (pop. not much). \u00a0At Uncle Al’s Pizza there, I talked with Cody Woods, who had recently graduated from Columbus Grove High School and was going in the Navy next month to serve on submarines. \u00a0He said a vet he works out with at a local gym discovered a tumor, but it seems it took him the longest time to get in to see a VA doctor. \u00a0Woods said he’d definitely like to see improvements in the VA around healthcare for vets. \u00a0I passed on a campaign flyer to Cody and said when I got to D.C. I’d work on that. \u00a0He smiled… \u00a0In Middle Point, Ohio (which is in no way close to the middle of the state), I dropped in unannounced on a volunteer firefighter meeting in the downtown station. \u00a0This turned into a town hall meeting of sorts, with the main topic being: guns. \u00a0Two of the firefighters were adamantly opposed to the government banning any sort of weapons — which, they said, would be a “slippery slope” in then banning more, and more… types of guns. \u00a0Because we saw the gun violence up-close-and-personal in a rough neighborhood in Cleveland for five years, I’m in a different camp. \u00a0While I back the Second Amendment, I believe (as does President Obama) that there should be more “common sense” gun laws to cut down considerably on shootings in America (we have an astronomical 100,000 a year now). \u00a0For more, see our position paper on guns<\/a>. \u00a0After the conversation with the firefighters, I passed on some campaign cards and asked them to tell others about the campaign — since we’d decided to use word of mouth instead of millions of dollars in TV advertising. \u00a0Call it a hunch. \u00a0They smiled.<\/p>\n

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I’ve picked a 75-mile radius to campaign in on nights and weekends in Northwest, Ohio. \u00a0[And we’re asking our supports to do the same in their areas.] \u00a0Last Saturday I stopped, first, at a Pilot Truck Stop about five miles …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1490,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions\/1490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}