I’ll be the first to say that “Everytown for Gun Safety” is about the dumbest name I’ve heard for a new gun control group. What do you shorten it to? ETGS? EGS? Who doesn’t like EGS with their bacon in the morning? Though, to be fair to Bloomberg’s organizations, they’ve pretty much run the gauntlet with names. Americans for Gun Safety has been tried and failed. You wouldn’t want that dead fish stinking up the place, even if you could convince Third Way to part with it (not like they are currently doing anything with it). But there’s a lot of thought that goes into a name, which is why I’m surprised that it would seem that Bloomberg failed to secure all his social media space before announcing Everytown for Gun Safety to the world. Clearly that’s not a Bloomberg generated page.
UPDATE: Now there’s one for Pennsylvania too. Is there one for your state? It’s true that they’ll be able to boot these pages once their trademarks are in order, but I don’t see any reason not to make them work for it. Let’s make Bloomy burn through that 50 mil!
UPDATE: It’s made Buzzfeed.
UPDATE: More from John Richardson.
Billionaires for Gun Safety I guess would just be too truthful.
Koch Brothers should start Billionaires for Machine Guns (BMG). I much rather like that acronym. ;)
Seriously, though, where is the Mr. Moneybags for pro-gun activities on our side? We hear all this talk about Koch Brothers this and that…
*crickets chirping*
As was noted, they’ll be able to push the squatters off the page once they have their trademark ducks in a row.
They’ve already gone off at the start totally disavowing any gun or magazine bans.
Which not only introduces a major credibility gap, but also leaves the very politicians Bloomberg et al. pledged to support on said bans high and dry.
As they’re now faced with a “Are you lying now or las year?” question.
Which is why all their interviews have been T-Ball level so far.
I just picked up a new blog: http://everytownforgunsafety.blogspot.com and my friend Rob Morse just snagged everytownforgunsafety.wordpress.com.
We’ll see how long they can stay up.
And if Mark Glaze wants to duel me (see the Buzzfeed article), I am open for it so long as I get to pick the implement.
I’ve got MAIG on FB https://www.facebook.com/Bloombergpederastry
NY also has a group: https://www.facebook.com/EverytownforGunSafetyNY
Wait… they don’t have the trademark protection secured already?
Also way to go Mark Glaze.
Nice to see Mark Glaze, the executive director of Everytown for Gun Safety threatening to shoot citizens he disagrees with.
And while Mark Glaze’s paranoia about the big bad NRA is expected, maybe Mark Glaze shouldn’t be all gleeful and brag about a “bidding war”.
I suppose when it’s astro-turf, they can call it any stupid name they want. Fascinating to me that we are seeing another iteration of a new “gun safety” group. At least this time they aren’t pretending to be unaffiliated with the old “gun safety” groups.
And this is where the difference lies. I had an ear to ear grin plastered on my face when I heard of this. This is the same grin I get after I get done plinking. There are not too many ear to ear grins in the MAIG, MDA, and EGTS movement. It’s hard to sell the “chicken little” emotion 24/7. After a while, normal people start to treat you like the boy who cried wolf. That’s probably why they constantly have to rebrand. Bloomberg can try to purge all he wants; I think the democrat blue dogs are going to be scared about a CO repeat.
Trademark law is such that they do not get automatic comeuppance just by filing the mark. You have to use it in public and it cannot have already been used publicly at the time the mark is registered (in general, though there are lots of games to play).
For instance, in the contest of one firm publicly using a non-trademarked name for years, and some other firm coming along and later trademarking the same name – though never having used it – the first firm has pretty solid footing to tell the trademark(er) to go shove off.
In this case we got a bunch of people all using a name that is not trademarked, all at the same time. Nobody has used it before.
That said, setting up shop under the name just announced by a national group after they announced it, is not going to be easy to defend.
But it was definitely dumb of MAIG (or whoever they are now). Hell, I didn’t even tell anyone the names of my to-be-born kids until it was on paper.
When Verizon formed up they kept their new name a trade secret until the last minute, and people only found out when they registered nearly 1000 verizon-based domain names all at one time (verizonsucks.com, etc.).
Am I alone in seeing their new “safety” ad as a shot for shot remake of the old CeaseFire ad where a kid finds a gun in a closet?
Since they have such strong and wide grass roots, I’m sure it’s been a race with their passionate base to snag “everytown” Facebook pages for each state. No, you say? It’s only been the pro-gun side? Huh.
I am NOT familiar with facebook at all.
So if you register a name and someone else wants it they can go to the mods and claim your page?
Seems kinda strange to me.
NukemJim
Watched their “Accidental Death” video. A link underneath said: “See what’s putting two million American kids in danger, and learn what you can do to keep them safe”. When I clicked on the link all it said was “share this video with your friends and family”. Literally NOTHING about keeping kids safe.