Not that I trust the House GOP leadership any farther than I can throw them, but the late stories coming out of Ammoland, Ammoland again, and Breitbart haven’t passed the smell test on further investigation. NAGR and VGOC, the groups highlighted by Ammoland, seem more interested in attacking NRA these days than attacking the gun control crowd, so I give no credibility to anything they say. Ammoland will reprint anyone’s press releases, no matter how poorly sourced. In other words, they don’t do their homework, and they are (or were) run by a PR company in New Jersey, out to make a buck. I wouldn’t, personally, trust any source that is in it for the SEO.
I’m not saying the House GOP definitely has our back, which is why we need to keep writing, but I think what happened here is that the Breitbart article by Ben Shapiro offered a pretext for the other two groups to attack NRA, and bring them into the sellout narrative. Part of the Breitbart article is sourced from this article at The Hill:
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday would not rule out passage of bills without the support of a majority of the chamber’s Republicans, saying only that Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) was committed to finding GOP support for major legislation.
Every context they’ve violated the Hastert Rule so far as been a fiscal context. McCarthy was directly asked about other bills like immigration and gun control, and he chose not to answer directly, referring instead to Boehner’s earlier comments. I think that’s weak tea. Could they end up violating the Hastert Rule to pass gun control? Sure they could. Are they planning to do so actively? I think it’s a stretch, quite a stretch, to draw that conclusion from the statements made by McCarthy.
Keep writing your federal Senators (most important) and federal representatives (next most important). My big fear is that stories like this encourage the fatalistic among us, who will then fail to act because they think this is already a done deal, and nothing they do or say will matter. Let’s be focused on the real threats, and not rumors of threats, created by people who are drawing, to be charitable, questionable conclusions.
NAGR has been beating the drums against Cantor and Rigell in Virginia now for the last three weeks. They are more on target with Rigell than Cantor. I have verified that Cantor is solid with contacts on the Hill. Rigell (who represents Virginia’s 2nd District) has co-sponsored legislation with the gun ban crowd. In the end, NAGR is out to raise money and they found two targets that they think will do it for them in Virginia.
You know, it’s funny because I specifically chose not to blog the Brietbart article specifically because it was so far reaching and a complete flipping of the actual statements in the interview. It was clear that the story was simply to drum up hits and links of people in a panic about gun control, and I’d prefer to talk about actual real threats so that gun owners can mobilize in a serious way.
I agree that these are extremely dubious sources. The dead giveaway-even before I saw that the second one was from NAGR-was the continued capitalization me common nouns. That screams “KOOK!” to me. I have no idea why so many me these types do that so much, but I’ve noticed it before. Why do they do that? It makes no sense to me.
Haven’t seen them, but perhaps they are trying to do a throwback to the 1700s? Jefferson did that a lot in the Declaration of Independence. Maybe they think it gives them Founding era “authenticity.” Just a guess.
That should be “of common nouns.”
“NAGR and VGOC, the groups highlighted by Ammoland, seem more interested in attacking NRA these days than attacking the gun control crowd”
NAGR and VGOC are essentially the same people, though that will never be apparent in public. They are part of the same network, with the same political motives.
Their primary beef with the NRA is that the NRA is not fronting for the same broader agenda as them, and not completely part of the same network, though there is some crossover here and there.
Agreed, and am somewhat disappointed in Breitbart’s treatment of that article.
By the way, I don’t believe that you two get the thanks you deserve for all your hard work. I think this is the best gun rights blog on the planet. Always my 1st choice go-to for info because you are passionate, consistent, prolific, honest and careful.
So thanks to you both and I hope I get to meet you in Houston!
I doubt that Larry Pratt and GOA would miss anything happening on the hill, and I haven’t heard from them on the R’s potentially caving.
These fourth tier gun rights groups seem to have sprouted out of nowhere in the past couple of years. Nothing is known about them and they seem to demand street cred without having earned any.
They are to a great extent spun off from GOA, at least to the extent of being part of the same network, though their spinning off may have been symptomatic of a schism in that network. They are closely related to C4L (Campaign for Liberty) and a number of similar organizations.