We’re More United

I find it funny just how far anti-gun advocates will go to pretend that gun ownership is still just a concern of those rural hicks and that no “legitimate” gun owner actually supports the right to own guns they seek to ban. I came across this tab I still had open from last week when the Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show was cancelled after their largest vendor that sold fishing & hunting gear pulled out, their largest or second largest (it was tough to tell in layout plans) boat display pulled out, and dozens of hunting guides and lodges pulled out. The order, timing, & type of non-gun vendors who withdrew is flat out ignored by local officials when condemning NRA members:

It is also unfortunate that legal gun owners and the many families who have enjoyed a long tradition of hunting in the beautiful rural environment around the region will be deprived of this major event because of a controversy caused by firearms manufacturers who profit from the sale of weapons designed for the mass killing of human beings. …

This kind of conflict within the firearms community is the result of years of polarization between the majority American sportsmen and hunters who exercise their constitutional right to bear arms and at the same time favor reasonable illegal gun controls, and a minority of NRA members who refuse to recognize the very real problem of illegal military style weaponry and the mass havoc such weapons facilitate.

The anti-gun leaders know that dividing our community is the most likely path to success. However, that hasn’t happened at this point with many more people who typically just hunt realize that the guns they use are also being targeted. When presented with this pesky fact (based on the timeline and types of vendors who dropped the ESOS because of the gun ban), these anti-gunners don’t know how to fight it. They know we vote. We’re more likely to vote in off year elections, too. Now their strategy is just to lie about it and pretend that we’re heavily divided – even in contexts where the evidence clearly contradicts them.

19 thoughts on “We’re More United”

  1. Our “sportsmen” brothers need to have their opinions carefully wooed and managed, and not be taken for granted.

    An anecdotal example is that of a hunting acquaintance of mine, who quite awhile ago told me a story about how pissed off he was at the NRA harassing him by phone to join, and added “and they want to protect assault weapons! Just imagine! I’m going to send them money to do that?”

    The setting at the time wasn’t one where I could engage him in argument, and my own position is a bit complicated, regarding the NRA, so I just kept my mouth shut and let it pass. But, when the ESOS boycott scenario arose, and I was sending out emails about it, I included him as if I’d never heard his objections to “assault weapons.” Shortly I encountered him in person, and he told me how many of his sporting acquaintances he was passing my emails along to. He had joined the bandwagon.

    The point of the story being, there is a big factor of perception, regarding who “we” are and what “we” think. I’m as likely as anyone to feel like calling someone a “Fudd” and just letting them go, but, acting as if we assume everyone who has ever picked up a gun, is one of “us,” can have a powerful effect for steering and recruiting opinions.

    1. We ought to try to figure out a way to point out that if not now, the “self-defense” shooting sector will likely not only going to outweigh the hunting one, it’s on much stronger legal and political ground.

      Well, the former depends on the Supremes not turning, and the latter on us winning this battle, but I’m at least reasonably confident of our winning, and a reversal of Heller et. al. will have a … transformative effect, shall I say.

  2. Great analysis! Corroborates every anti-gun opinion, article, and statement I have seen recently based on incorrect facts (i.e. Sen. D. Feinstein).

  3. Perhaps a silver lining to events of the last couple months is that we ARE in fact uniting. This is evidence at my workplace, at Seattle metro area software company.

    This is usually “progressive central”, but a handful of us gunnies are our coming out of the woodwork and are now openly discussing the topic in the hallways.

    We usually do not engage in the politics among mixed companies, but a casual conversation about “have you found primers for sale any where recently?” or similar is common now between meetings.

  4. the sale of weapons designed for the mass killing of human beings

    I’d bet lunch that his city’s Police Department has such wicked weapons.

    Someone should ask him why Officer Friendly needs a weapon “designed for the mass killing of human beings”.

  5. I thought hunting numbers have gone down over the years while gun ownership has gone up? I think most people are using guns for purposes other than hunting at this point.

  6. I’m impressed how self-refuting those two paragraphs are. Somehow gun manufacturers and “a minority of NRA members” have enough power to shut down a huge show like this (did we leave a horse’s head in the bedroom of a Reed Exhibitions executive???), and they describe currently legal “weaponry” as illegal.

    (Maybe it makes more sense in context, but I’d rather keep my blood pressure low by not following the link.)

    1. No, it doesn’t make sense in context. She calls legal guns “illegal,” while also claiming that we pesky minority NRA members are getting in the way of making these guns illegal.

      She’s never come off as very bright to me, and I suspect that she has taken the MAIG messaging to refer to every gun they want to ban as an “illegal gun” so far that she doesn’t even realize when it doesn’t make sense anymore.

  7. I just love the liberal authors comment “caused by firearms manufacturers”
    This attempt to shift the blame is very typical of anti rights types.
    I believe the “cause” was ESOS attempt to ban the most popular
    rifle platform in the USA in order that they appear “politically correct.
    Paul in Texas

  8. One thing always to ask when people are “uniting” is, uniting to do what, exactly? And uniting behind who?

    I have been most impressed in my time, with the very few times when our “leaders” had to follow their rank-and-file and grass roots, rather than the other way around.

    What I fear is more of the same-old-same-old, where we will suffer a limited defeat, that may not be as bad as it could have been, but then in the next election we’ll be “led” into supporting any number of legislators who stabbed us in the back. At the same time we will be told that limited defeats were in fact glorious victories. And, everyone will “unite” behind that.

    1. I don’t know, what sort of “limited defeat” do you think people will find tolerable?

      Criminalizing private sales?

      Outlawing magazines > N rounds?

      Another AW ban?

      Any of those three are very big things that will piss off a large number of people, no matter what the NRA tells them.

      1. I will speak in very general terms: I fear that too many people will find an expansion of background checks acceptable, if they are led to believe it will probably never impact them, personally.

        Last weekend I was speaking with a friend who is a general practitioner/family law attorney, who told me he has been amazed by the number of people he has encountered who were shocked when a background check of some sort turned up the fact that something in their background as much as 40 forty years ago disqualified them from owning guns; despite having a pristine, clean record since then. They had been disqualified all along, but, some “improvement” in the background check system finally exposed what they themselves had never known.

        If our background check systems get any “better,” expect a lot more of that.

        A good example here in Pennsylvania is that back in the early 1970s, there was a period of just a couple years when DUI/DWI was “punishable” by up to two years in prison. I’m not sure anyone was ever actually sentenced to that long a term, but that it is in the law, disqualifies any Pennsylvanian with a DUI during that period from gun ownership. But, they have only been turning up slowly in terms of accessible records.

        1. A lot of people pleaded guilty to misdemeanor “domestic violence” charges as a cheap way to get out of their mess with the authorities, only to find out, often much later as you note, that this had become a disqualifying event.

          That they get caught by the NICS just alerts them to the fact they can’t own guns. If they already have some or then buy them privately, they’re still guilty of a serious crime, and are in a very bad posture to use them in self-defense. Nor will they be able to get concealed carry licenses or legally carry concealed in Constitutional Carry states.

          The problem is with bad laws, not the background check system per se.

          1. “The problem is with bad laws, not the background check system per se.”

            But bad law can be counted on as a certainty, so any tool that can be used to implement bad law is itself a bad law.

            1. Given Lautenberg (I’m appalled I can spell that correctly, I’m horrible at spelling, so that means I’ve typed it way too many times) and “Three Felonies a Day”, you’re right. My distinction reduces to a distinction without a difference.

              Gaaah, what a mess. The NICS is also the only national database of the properly and not at all properly (VA, and again proving your point) mentally disbarred … yet there’s no prospect I see for real reform there. And you at least are also extremely hostile towards it, although your example case sounds more like it’s purely Soviet in style instead of really trying to help or at least warehouse someone. Although … at least in times past through the ’80s, well into the 2nd generation of antidepressants, electroshock was considered to be a last ditch method for totally refractory depression.

              So they of course had a bit of “best practices” cover, just like the Soviets always maintained, they weren’t officially “gangsters” like the Nazis because they always used a process instead of a “Night of the Long Knives”.

        2. Which is why the whole “mental illness” canard should scare the heck out of you.

          Ever been prescribed Chantix to help quit smoking? How about Xanax to help lose weight? Guess what, you’ve taken an “anti-depressant” and will be ineligible. And of course Obamacare will make that even easier.

          1. It’s not a canard in that there are two easily identified severe mental illnesses that if not controlled by medication patient is willing to reliably take should be disqualifying, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that includes extreme manic phases.

            Dumping the people on the streets and/or refusing to take them seriously when their problems become obvious, e.g. the future VT shooter, the state couldn’t be bothered to make sure he got his court ordered treatment, is a very big problem, is grossly inhumane, and looks like was also the cause of the Arizona and Aurora shootings (we don’t know the details of the latter but it’s entirely consistent with early adult onset schizophrenia).

            Obviously it can be abused, and very possibly that potential from a clearly malevolent Federal government means we should punt on them, but they are worth discussing.

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