Bitter – Page 53 – Shall Not Be Questioned

OFA Gun Control Petition Plans

CSGV must be absolutely giddy for tomorrow. They are on the short list of groups selected by the President’s organization to present OFA’s gun control petitions to the Senate & House along with MAIG & Protect Minnesota. This is almost relevancy!

I think it’s quite funny that OFA spent quite a bit of time on their conference call with supporters tonight highlighting how many pieces of paper they plan to print and how many cars they plan to fill with these dead trees to drive in their pollution-generating cars to Capitol Hill to be delivered to all of those Senators who voted against them. Yet, CNN highlights how it is all a silly PR stunt.

Rules prevent the boxes of paper from being delivered directly to lawmakers, so names will be sent digitally…

According to the call leaders, their target states are New Hampshire, Arizona, and Nevada. They also touted the 1.4 million button clicks for the online petition were “unprecedented,” but oddly enough, didn’t let their supporters know that NRA now has 5 million dues-paying-members.

OFA’s only meetings that they announced for tomorrow are with California Democrats – Nancy Pelosi and Mike Thompson. But, you know, bipartisanship. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want Republicans to take their calls, but I do think it makes their claims about being bipartisan just a tad false–a pretty common theme in tonight’s phone call.

OFA is claiming that Sen. Ayotte is a success story of their gun control push because she is supposedly being hit on the issue from both the left and the right. Do any New Hampshire readers have any evidence of the right attacking Ayotte for her gun control vote? I think that may be an outright lie. They also claim that Ayotte has changed her mind on the vote, which is not at all what I have seen.

In the greater scheme of things, their leading topic tonight was immigration. The other big topic was climate change. The first two questions were also about those issues. The single question on gun control was best paraphrased as, “Does all this organizing on gun control actually work or are we wasting our time?”

Backing Sen. Ayotte against Bloomberg

If you’re a New Hampshire gun owner, the last few weeks and even coming weeks have been a great time to write letters to the editor of local newspapers. It’s a huge help when locals stand up for their own lawmakers supporting their rights.

NRA has gone to air in at least one $25,000 ad buy on WMUR with this ad in defense of Ayotte:

But supplemental letters always help. There’s still time to make a thank you phone call to her offices, too.

The Anti-Gun Safety Groups

With so many anti-Second Amendment groups rebranding as being for gun safety or for preventing accidents in recent years, you’d think they would have figured out how to be consistent on this front. That should have been part of their initial strategy meetings on the issue.

However, it clearly was not. National Review takes a look at the many different quotes and comments from anti-gun advocates who find every excuse in the book to keep kids from ever learning about firearm safety.

It’s funny that these same people probably would not promote abstinence-only sex education because they would say it does not work. Yet, it magically works on kids when it comes to guns.

One of the protesters actually talked about keeping a shotgun unsecured under his bed while refusing to teach his children how to handle it safely. He’s part of the problem, but it was easier for him to blame NRA instead of taking responsibility and being a parent.

Most Popular Gun at NRAAM?

I can’t tell you what the most popular gun was at the NRA convention on the exhibit floor, but I did hear a report about the most popular gun featured on the NRA Foundation’s Wall of Guns.

Contest participants were given a chance to buy one (or more) of 100 tickets in a drawing. The winners of each drawing from each batch of 100 were given their pick of 81 guns. In some cases for lower cost guns, they could pick two selections.

I spoke with another Foundation supporter who reported that before they stopped drawing, they had to pull off a Tommy gun because they ran out. I checked the model they had listed, and I believe it was this one.

Speaking of giving guns away, do we have any readers interested in a Colt LE6900? It’s a $899 gun that our Friends committee will be raffling off in a few short weeks for tickets that are only $20. It’s one of five guns we’ll be drawing for out of a maximum 300 tickets sold. That means if you liked the odds on our committee’s 1911 raffle last year, you should really like these odds.

An Illegaler Mayor Against Guns

Mike Bloomberg’s recruitment efforts in Mayors Against Illegal Guns manages to find some real gems to join him in advocating against the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens. The latest to join the ranks of the troubled MAIG members is Pat Ahumada of Brownsville, Texas.

Technically, he was already an Illegal Mayor Against Guns because of his multiple DWI arrests & convictions. However, he was made a member of the “Illegaler” club with his new arrest for illegally operating a gambling establishment.

Shame!

I am on OFA’s mailing list, and it’s amazing how much they enjoy scolding people for not supporting Obama’s agenda.

The first email I received yesterday reminded me that they would consider it to be a huge shame if I did not sign their petition. They said that yesterday, “The gun lobby is pretty happy with itself.” Yup, I have to admit that the many, many individual Americans who were at the NRA convention were happy that 86,228 members showed up to stand up for our rights.

Shortly after that email landed in my inbox, they sent another reminding me that I haven’t signed their petition yet.

I do find it interesting to see the kind of language that OFA supporters appear to respond to when it comes to action. As over-the-top as NRA can sometimes be in order to motivate some on our side of the issue, I can’t fathom that this style of language would encourage our base to act.

Another Illegal Mayor City

We have not had an arrest of the individual mayor, but I would classify this news as being under the responsibility of Mayor Linda Thompson, a MAIG mayor.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the City of Harrisburg, Pa., with securities fraud for its misleading public statements when its financial condition was deteriorating and financial information available to municipal bond investors was either incomplete or outdated.

An SEC investigation found that the misleading statements were made in the cityâ€™s budget report, annual and mid-year financial statements, and a State of the City address. This marks the first time that the SEC has charged a municipality for misleading statements made outside of its securities disclosure documents.

The NRA Meeting Protest

Congratulations, Houston. You managed to turn out more protesters than any city since 2004, save Pittsburgh. Unfortunately for your political agenda, that turnout was still under 40 people.

We overheard many conflicting messages. For example, there’s the man who says that it’s okay to own a two-round firearm for hunting only. Turn to the right, and you find this sign at the rally:

After that conflicting message, one of the protesters pondered why we can’t manage to find a middle ground. Gee, I wonder why. (Said protester also wanted to know why we couldn’t have a conversation, then he accused me of being a Westboro Baptist Church supporter for being pro-gun. This is why there is no conversation.)

These folks said they they didn’t want to take our guns, just promote more regulation. Well, call me paranoid, but when your messaging is that my next firearm purchase (even with a background check) is somehow to blame for death, I don’t have much faith that you’re being honest about being willing to stop at background checks.

Last night, an anti-gun group on Twitter was proclaiming a “WORLD RECORD” protest because someone stuck around for a couple of hours and read lots of names of crime victims. Somehow, I don’t think it set any real record, nor do I think Guiness will be calling them anytime soon.

For the people who claim they all in favor of outright democracy and rule of the majority, there was a common theme that they could not understand the concept that they were simply outvoted. It’s not possible for them to wrap their heads around the notion that not everyone agrees with their world view, so it must be all due to money.

And, finally, this woman says that her precious snowflake is more important than any of your civil rights.

NRA Board Elections – A Few Facts & Figures

There were 1,718,786 people eligible to vote in the NRA board elections this year. That number is overwhelmingly made up of life members. What’s significant about this number is that it’s nearly 122,000 more than last year. That’s how many more (mostly life) voting members we have now.

Of those ballots mailed, only 123,646 bothered to vote at all. A little under 11,000 had to be tossed because they were invalid. The overwhelmingly common problem (nearly 3,400) is people voting for too many candidates.

More than 10,000 people more voted than last year. The top vote getter (Ollie North) received more votes than the top vote getter last year. There are plenty of years when there are no candidates who break 100,000 votes, but three did this year. Even more amazing, one of them was Sandy Froman even though she’s not a celebrity. (She’s just awesome and wonderfully likeable.)

When we get home, I’ll do up a serious analysis of how people participate in their NRA. This is just a quick and dirty set of facts picked up quickly from the election committee report.

Bustling with Activity

We haven’t had much time to check things out yet due to our arrival delay, but the convention center already seems bustling considering how early it is.

We’ve already heard local press trading hunting stories. That’s just awesome.

Sebastian tweeted earlier today: “At the airport waiting to go to Houston. Lots of NRA looking types about.” Turns out they were just Texans. One of them started telling the other Texans around him that they should come down to the Annual Meeting and sign up for life membership. He said he could not make it, but he was actively encouraging other people to join.

I might be from Oklahoma and have it breed into me to hate this area known as “south of the Red River,” but even I had to smile at that great attitude.