Month: December 2011

I have to hand it to the Scottsdale Gun Club, they managed to find a holiday themed public relations campaign that has the wonderful side effect of making our opponents crap their pants. Here’s an example:

You will note from the comments to this picture, how our opponents react. I’m particularly stunned by this comment:

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but if you’re going to claim power over me to set public policy on firearms, you should at least not be a total moron on the subject. I don’t expect you to be able to identify this firearm as an H&K G36KV, but I do at least expect you to know what end pointy hot lead comes out of. I think most people who aren’t complete idiots know what end that is.

UPDATE: Looks like I’m not the only person that noticed.

I’ve been reluctant to argue that in some marginally convoluted way the Brady Campaign is continuing the cycle of violence by supporting the outlaws who will remain armed. But, I actually found an incident tonight where they are outright endorsing an online group that calls for retaliation rather than justice through the legal system and honors a man who was an active part of the drug culture.

This is the tweet that caught my attention. I checked out the linked Facebook page, and I was shocked by what they were promoting. That speaks volumes since I have already documented when they retweeted a young mother who was using pot around her sick child and a man whose previous tweets were calling for an expansion of the “thug” lifestyle. There were also the racist tweets that dropped the N word frequently and the woman they promoted who publicly attacks women of other races as “evil.”

The Facebook page in question is called Families Against Gun Violence. However, in the About section, it notes that the page is actually to honor Moises Nazario who was shot as part of a drug transaction. He was not an innocent bystander, as police say he was on the scene specifically to take part in the drug deal.

But, let’s say that the Brady Campaign simply didn’t do their homework to see who they were honoring with this tweet. Instead, we’ll look at the wall of the page, the link that the Brady Campaign highlighted to all of their followers. On the front page of the group, we have messages like this:

Yeah. You want to convince me that an all caps message with that kind of rhetoric is all about waiting on the legal system to take its course? I don’t think so.

This, combined with the previous people that the Brady Campaign has promoted in their social media networks, indicates that they have embraced those connected with violent and drug-related activities as spokespeople for their movement. I don’t understand how some of their own board members who are known to be active on their social media sites accept this kind of messaging. It’s unacceptable to promote these kinds of messages.

Or, an alternative title to this post might be The Side Effects of a Successful PR Campaign.

For anyone who follows any level of tech news, liberal politics, or conservative politics, you’ve heard that Apple’s Siri won’t turn up results when asked to find abortion clinics. In one article test, it directed them to pro-life clinics. Women’s groups are pulling out the mandatory outrage, and ACLU is screaming discrimination.

I don’t think I’ve seen any commentary on one possible explanation that could be directly tied to public relations efforts by pro-choice groups. Many have found that classifying abortion as nothing more than a procedure that some women may choose as part of their reproductive health care is one easy way to minimize offending the other nearly 50% who claim pro-life status. I’ve received very different reproductive care services at two different women’s clinics – one a Planned Parenthood – and neither of them made a big deal out of abortion. The posters, decor, and informational brochures most widely available were for other reproductive care issues and public or social service programs available to low-income women. Another common theme in their materials is finding a support network for LBT folks & allies.

On the other hand, pro-life groups and clinics want to highlight themselves as being a resource regarding abortion, even if they aren’t providing them. They want to be at the top of results for women looking to end a pregnancy because they’d like to offer other alternatives. They specifically don’t want to downplay that side of their services because it’s at the core of their mission.

In other words, a likely explanation is that in minimizing the direct issue of abortion to focus on a broader spectrum of women’s reproductive health, clinics that offer them have been highly successful in their PR campaigns. I’m sure there are ways that Apple could change Siri to find more specific results, but I don’t think these groups should be publicly denouncing this new technology when it may simply be responsive to their own PR efforts.

This does relate to guns beyond that fact that finding gun stores via Siri is apparently pretty easy.

When I think about this issue, I consider the changes we’ve witnessed at the Brady Campaign and the style of other gun control groups. The Brady Campaign tried to “moderate” their message a bit by highlighting that total gun confiscation was off the table thanks to Heller. Unfortunately for them, this really appears to have driven at least some of their supporters – even at least one of their own board members who is active with the other groups on social media – to the more extreme groups that maintain Heller was a mistake that must be overturned.

This means that as the media & newcomers into the gun control movement went looking for an extreme opposite of the pro-gun view, Brady was overlooked because of their own shift in language. In that regard, it’s not so different than Siri which may not be able to read between the lines of the pro-choice movement’s adopted PR language about women’s health. When gun banners go looking for a group to represent them, they couldn’t read between the lines on the rhetoric that the Brady Campaign wouldn’t actually ask gun owners to turn every single gun in. The groups would still ask that we turn in all cheap guns, scary-looking guns, “unsafe” guns, big guns, concealable guns, etc. But, without that direct appeal of attacking gun owners and overturning the Supreme Court, it just isn’t a message that allows them to survive.

Sometimes it amazes me just how much Paul Helmke apparently was doing to hold Brady together and keep it on message. It’s got to be pretty gloomy over there these days, especially when you consider now some of their favorite sons are competing with Bloomberg’s gang in the criminal category.

The New Trajectory is a blog of CeaseFire Oregon, which asks the question:

So here’s my question to you pro-gun folks: When you sell a gun to a private buyer you don’t know, how do you know the buyer doesn’t fall into one of those categories? Do you care at all if you may be unknowingly abetting a shooting crime?

I’ve sold one or two guns through a private sale to friends who are also gun people, and I know can pass a background check. I’ve bought several guns at a private sale from people at my club. All long guns, since handguns have to go through an FFL or a Sheriff in Pennsylvania.

Personally, I would never sell a gun to someone I don’t know, but I’m not going to advocate people who do that end up in prison, or face heavy fines and criminal records. I’ve had more than a few instances of people offering to sell me handguns, only to be surprised when I’ve told them that’s illegal in Pennsylvania. It’s difficult for a lot of anti-gun people to believe, because they have difficulty in viewing guns as tools or property, but a lot of gun owners think there’s not really a problem selling a pistol to a friend, either morally or legally, and to be honest, they are only wrong about the latter.

As I’ve said, there are a lot of solutions one could think of that would alleviate the concerns regarding background checks, but the other side doesn’t want to speak about them. Why? Because the true purpose of what they propose has nothing to do with background checks, and never has. They are more interested in tightening the de facto registration scheme that the 4473 represents than they are in expanding background checks.

UPDATE: Robb has a different point of view on selling guns to strangers. I don’t associate any negative morality with the act, it’s just my personal preference. I know people who won’t sell cars to friends too, but it’s not a legal or moral issue.

USA Today, of all media outlets, is reporting on gun sales this Black Friday:

Gun dealers flooded the FBI with background check requests for prospective buyers last Friday, smashing the single-day, all-time high by 32%, according to bureau records.

Deputy Assistant FBI Director Jerry Pender said the checks, required by federal law, surged to 129,166 during the day, far surpassing the previous high of 97,848 on Black Friday of 2008.

They quote Brady acting President Dennis Henigan, who is skeptical of the numbers. You know Dennis, if you really don’t like being reminded just how much you’re losing, we could always repeal the Brady Act. That way you can enjoy some bliss in ignorance, since NICS won’t be around anymore to report on just how well gun sales are doing. What do you say?