Bloomberg wants the best gun control money can buy. Now he’s crapping all over Oregon trying to keep a bill banning private transfers in the Beaver State alive and well. Bloomberg is also dumping another $400,000 bucks against Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, and funding a 100-day bus tour for MAIG. He continues to pour money into running campaign ads for Mark Pryor in Arkansas by letting everyone know he’s a pro-gun Democrat.
But all kidding aside, Bloomberg’s money can do serious harm. Politicians will fear what Bloomberg’s money can buy. Money in politics is so important, it’s going to take millions of us just to counter what Bloomberg can put into a race. Traditionally gun owners are much better at negative reinforcement than positive reinforcement, in other words, we’re better at voting those who cross us out of office than working to help keep people who vote with us in office. If people want to understand why we can’t, for instance, get the Hughes Amendment repealed, this is why. If you’re only good on defense, you convince people to play defense for you, but convincing them to go on the offense gets harder. Also, if you can’t defend the people who vote with you, you’ll run out of friends in a legislature quickly.
In 2014, destroying Bloomberg has to be a top priority, and that means every race he dumps money into, he loses. That means politicians like Ayotte are going to need our boots on the ground to counter his money. If Bloomberg can show his money can buy elections, the pendulum on this issue is going to swing, and swing hard. Our biggest asset is that everyone generally thinks Bloomberg is a rich asshole, but rich assholes can buy elections. But money isn’t any substitute for the hard mechanics of coalition building, community organizing, and getting people out to the polls on election day. If that weren’t the case, Mitt Romney would be President right now.
Make him waste it…
Money or principles?
Not much you can do about Ol’ Bloomy…
Firstoff, things will get worse once he leaves the Mayors office and can focus on this full time. Count on it.
Secondly, what are our options?
1. No matter how much we raise, he will outspend us.
2. We can tar, feather, and shoot him, but that’ll make a martyr of him and get the rest of his liberal buddies’ jimmies rustled…
3. We can play to our strengths: local organization, social media, winning the courts, and keeping gun culture popular.
Option 3 works… we got a taste of Option 2 with the stupid ricin thing (fuck the guy who did that), and Option 1 is obviously a no-win.
Play to our strengths. It’s all we got.
Exactly.
With every movement comes a counter-movement, and our movement AND counter-movement is pretty precise. We wait and we plan. Sometimes that’s all you do. The anti-gunners did that first. Now we did it and Illinois will soon be in the shall-issue carry column. There is a populist uprising in states with more gun control.
Americans just aren’t into gun control anymore, or control of much of anything recreational anymore. That cuts both liberal and conservative-minded politicians as they struggle to find some sort of unifying message. As long as the liberal wings of both parties think that message is government control of all firearms, it benefits us when they continue to remain out of touch. Trust of government is at an all time low (record low maybe?) and the politicians are still talking out of their asses when it comes to guns.
Funny how Progressives are all about rich billionaire donors when they bat for their team. They are downright salivating at the fact that some rich guy is all about disarmament.
Something about the situation in Oregon that nobody’s talking about – and it’s bugging the CRAP out of me that nobody’s mentioned it – is that background checks go through our state police, and they create a record of any and all firearms transactions.
IOW, BANNING PRIVATE TRANSFERS CREATES A REGISTRY OF SALES. Not a “de facto” registry: a FULL REGISTRY. The ONLY guns not on the registry are those obtained via private transfers before the law takes effect.
This is NOT JUST a “mere inconvenience” or an “extra step” for Oregon gun purchases. It is a travesty that Must. Not. Happen.
It may be “restriction of range” in that my family, friends and acquaintances are not a very scientific sample of the state, but there are some D voters among them, and none of them are impressed with Bloomberg’s ads here in Seacoast NH. A surprising number of people who are satisfied with uber-lib governor Hassan are satisfied with the rather conservative Ayotte.
One thing I learnt growing up well off is that the rich are not necessarily smart, but they always think they’re smart.