… and wondered the same thing. I think before you poll someone, you should probably do a few leader questions to try to successfully ascertain whether the person being polled has any idea what you’re talking about. “Socialism, that’s like, when you’re social and promote being social, right? Oh yeah, I support that.” But I suppose it doesn’t look very good if you release a poll showing that only 30% of Americans have any idea of what socialism even is.
Author: Sebastian
The NRA = New KKK
Title of this post is according to Jason Whitlock, who was the author of the original piece that got Bob Costas in trouble. Our opponents in the gun control movement are salivating about this recent rhetoric, but in truth, this is the kind of coverage NRA feeds off of, because people who are even remotely inclined to side with NRA get galvanized by it. I know this is hard for many people in the gun control movement to understand, but suggesting people who enjoy shooting and value the Bill of Rights are the moral equivalent of a domestic terrorist organization bent on enforcing the kind of racial policy only Hitler could be proud of, tends to upset people enough to get more seriously involved:
You know, I did not go as far as I’d like to go because my thoughts on the NRA and America’s gun culture — I believe the NRA is the new KKK. And that the arming of so many black youths, uh, and loading up our community with drugs, and then just having an open shooting gallery, is the work of people who obviously don’t have our best interests [at heart].
That’s crazy tin foil hat stuff right there. What they fail to understand that there are a lot of gun owners, shooting enthusiasts, and other people inclined to our point of view who have better things to do, ordinarily, than to get themselves involved in a political scrap. Any hateful rhetoric such as this, is enabling for an activist. It brings people in, causes them to seek out kindred spirits, gather information, and makes them pay attention. It opens to them the idea that the only way to crush the hateful is political engagement. They begin to understand that people like this can not be compromised with. In short, it makes my job as an activist much, much easier.
Comment on Weekend Twitter Outrage over Costas’ Remark
I like it when I can take a break over a weekend to work on my basement office, get a new crown fitted at the Dentist Monday morning, and not have to worry about some media personality spewing nonsense about guns, because the other parts of the center-right coalition, and even some not part of it, are already on it like stink on s**t. Zumboing has seemingly gone mainstream.
UPDATE: More here.
The TSA As We Know it Dead?
So says an article at LinkedIn. We can only hope. If the Republicans had any guts they’d abolish the agency, along with the entire Department of Homeland Security.
2010 SHOT Show Busts a Bust
Remember in 2010 at SHOT when the ATF raided the Smith & Wesson booth? Turns out nothing came from that. All charges were dropped and the informant is in prison. Notes TFB:
So in summery, the BATFE and FBI made a high profile raid during SHOT Show to arrest a 21 gun industry people. Their case was hinged on the word of a thief, druggie and all round morally bankrupt individual. Bistrong got just 18 months while the accused spent two years fighting their case. This hardly seems like justice to me.
This is more and more what Uncle Sam’s justice actually does look like.
A Call to Action
NRA is trying to push people to call on the Sportsman Act of 2012, which would destroy at least one avenue for the EPA to regulate ammunition.
Sports Celebrity Murder Suicide
It’s hard for celebrity induced tragedies like this to register very high on my give-a-shit-o-meter. I hate this impulse to blame the gun, as if it’s so hard to suggest that maybe Belcher was just an asshole, because, you know, that’s what we call murderers who leave their kid an orphan. PJ Media had this to say about it:
How was the “gun culture†to blame for the violent actions of a grown man? Was a gun the only means by which a professional athlete might have killed himself and someone else? Of course not.
Costas’ remarks constitute exploitation of a tragedy in order to push a political point that Whitlock, Costas, and NBC no doubt already believed, and only used the moment to forward. They all should be ashamed of themselves. But our current media culture is one in which shame does not exist. Neither does the truth.
NBC is part owned by Comcast Corporation, who’s CEO is a major Democratic donor. I feel better about cutting the cord every day. The gun control advocacy groups are rank amateurs when it comes to exploiting tragedy, though they are usually not more than a few rungs above ambulance chasing lawyers on the tragedy exploitation totem pole. But they have nothing on the media. Tragedy is their bread and butter, because it makes a good story and gets eyeballs on the glowing box and clears the dead tree matter off the shelves.
When bacon is outlawed …
NRA to Brady: “Losers say what?”
NRA has an article rebutting Dan Gross’s assertion that NRA is now weak and ineffective:
Gross also failed to mention how his own organization scored in the 2012 elections. The reason for that is simple: the Brady Campaign was not included in the study because it just isn’t a player.  It raised and spent so little money that it wasn’t worth measuring. However, if you apply the same standards to Brady as the Sunlight Foundation used, the Brady score would be 0.00. It did not spend money backing one winning candidate in the 2012 election.
In order to spend money to back any candidate, one must have money to back a candidate with. The Brady folks have been short of that for some time, and have not raised serious money for electioneering in many years. Bloomberg is the big threat now. Gun control is exclusively an issue for a handful of billionare moguls.
Kathleen Kane Already Sticking it LTC Holders
She’s already signed on to a letter to the Senate leadership expressing opposition to the National Reciprocity Bill, while I’m sure she’s champing at the bit to be able to recind our own reciprocity agreements.
Pennsylvania is on its way to no longer being a pro-gun state. It’s only been kept that way by the hard work of a lot of people over the years. We’ve long depended on the blue dog Democrat to keep their own party in line. Blue dogs are now critically endangered, even in Pennsylvania. The hard left is taking control of the Democratic Party, and they are still winning elections.