Anti-Gun Folks – Page 104 – Shall Not Be Questioned

New York City Air Defenses

I was interested to see this post over at Extrano’s Alley that the NYPD commish was bragging that they had the ability to take down aircraft. I’m thinking unless they picked up an SA-7, or some cheap and only likely marginally effective Soviet or Chicom AAA armored vehicle, that a Stinger or some other such MANPAD was awfully expensive for even a city as large as New York. Nonetheless, you never know, given enough budget and reckless abandon, what city officials will purchase. So I at least gave them the benefit of doubt that perhaps the NYPD got their hands on the mother of all toys.

Turns out that the NYPD commish bought his own bullshit, and was referred to the Barrett .50 cals in his department’s inventories. If they had a couple of Ma Deuces strapped to an SUV, or even a mini gun, I might concede that perhaps they have the ability to take out a rogue aircraft with the right kind of gunner, if it’s moving slowly enough, and they don’t mind raining lead down on large parts of the city when they miss (which will be most of the rounds). But if the M82A1Â is what the commish thinks is his anti-aircraft kit, he’s a lot dumber than I thought.

Not on their Agenda

It would seem there are ideas that are so bad that even the gun control stalwarts in this state won’t get behind them. Such is the case with bar coding bullets, which is an issue being highlighted in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is even dumber than microstamping. Of course, I’m not being very sensitive to victims of gun violence, who are floating this proposal. Our people, you see, have a problem with that. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? They make public policy proposals, and we don’t dare question them, because they are victims. They have absolute moral authority, and we’re just scum of the earth for questioning them.

Close Prisons and Pass More Gun Control

This is Governor Andrew Cuomo’s solution to New York’s rising crime rate.

What is the Purpose of the Media Matters Tagline?

By now most of you have heard of the flurry of activity appearing in the seldom read lefty blogosphere, with posts promoting gun control bearing this tagline:

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

I agree, certainly, that some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, but it’s occurring from the other side, not our side. That stands to reason, since when it comes to guns, most of them are ignoramuses on anything other than how to become hysterical on the topic. But I keep wondering what the purpose of this tagline is.

It’s certainly not required. Joyce/Media Matters are perfectly free, as fellow citizens with First Amendment rights, to fund anonymous speech. So why the tagline? A few reasons that I can think of.

They want to be able to measure how much exposure they are getting for their money. It’s relatively easy to search on the tagline and see how many sites are being reached. It’s also relatively easy to see that the blogger followed through on what he was being paid for.
They want to be able to cover their asses if a blog receives funding for a post, but in the next post does something that could qualify as electioneering, and endanger the funders tax status. By labeling the one post that received funding, it protects both the funder from accusations that they may be funding bloggers to do activity which is outside the scope of a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

If I had to take a bet, I think the latter is most likely the reason, maybe with a little of the former. The big downside for our opponents is it’s like spray painting your astroturf bright orange. It’s really easy for us to spot, and point out that, rather than being a genuine grassroots movement, what we have here are people that are pretty obviously being paid to shill for the Joyce Campaign’s anti-gun agenda.

It’s worth noting that NRA doesn’t have to pay shills to do pro-gun posts. Our community is pretty organic, and definitely unpaid. This blog costs me approximately 50 bucks a month to run between paying for the Internet connection to feed it, paying for the electricity to run the server, and upkeep on the server itself. If NRA offered to pay me for a post, I’d absolutely refuse. Even in the depths of unemployment, I still managed to find a few hundred bucks to spend at our “Friends of the NRA” dinner.

If the other side really wants to understand why they continuously lose, they have to understand this: their side can’t get mojo without buying off sympathetic people on the left to shill for their cause. I would not let NRA, or any other gun rights group I believed in, buy words from me. Every penny they spent on that would be money that isn’t going to keep lobbyists on my elected representatives like a pitbull on a poodle. If the gun control extremists want to understand why they can’t get any traction, they need to look no further than the fact that they even need to throw money at people to have a voice at all.

Are You a Presbyterian?

Your national church is supporting gun control extremists:

It may be wrapped in a message of religious peace, but Bryan Miller is a well known operative in the anti-gun community, and Heeding God’s Call is his latest project. If you’re a Presbyterian, speak out against the Church for inserting itself into politics. Government doesn’t belong in churches, but I think a useful corollary to that is that churches don’t belong in government either.

UPDATE: More here. I really don’t like it when churches insert themselves into political matters under the guise that these are really spiritual matters. Murder, rage, and vengeance — these are all matters of the spirit. Gun control is a matter of politics.

UPDATE: It would seem PCUSA has a history.

CeaseFire PA Endorses Campus Carry

From another article in the Temple University student paper. First a statement from CeaseFire PA:

â€œI hope students donÊ¼t start making the [assumption] that they can just take a gun they might have at home and carry it around in their backpack without going through the proper permit and training process,â€ CeaseFirePA Executive Director Max Nacheman said. â€œIf you are going to accept the responsibility of carrying a ï¬rearm like that for defense, you have to make sure you use that responsibility wisely and responsibly.â€

I couldn’t agree more. Funny that sounds pretty similar to PAFOA’s statement in this article:

[PAFOA]Â advocates gun ownership as an option for students, but emphasizes the necessity of pursuing firearm ownership through proper legal avenues.Â â€œFolks need to be educated, whether they are using their hands or they are considering a license to carry,â€ [PAFOA Spokesperson] Caywood said. â€œThey need to know about the laws in place and they need to know concepts about force. I think people just need to generally think about self-defense and whatever level they are choosing, they need to be in line with the law.â€

We’re very glad to have Mr. Nachman and CeaseFire PA on board with campus carry being OK, as long as you follow the law, and do the smart things like know the law, and know how to use your weapon in self-defense. It’s really the same things we argue, you know.

New Brady Chief?

Days of our Trailers notices that the job listing they posted lists the position as no longer available. That’s a good indication the Brady Campaign has made a decision on new leadership.

Astroturfing

Astroturfing |ËˆastrÅËŒtÉ™rfiNG|
Noun

A form ofÂ advocacyÂ in support of aÂ political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a “grassroots” movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a politicalÂ and/orÂ commercial entityÂ as an independent public reaction to some political entityâ€”a politician, political group, product, service or event.

See example.

Once Again, We’re the Scapegoats

We’re made out to be responsible for the acts of murdering criminals. I know about this unfortunate murder, because in Twitter Space, the Brady Campaign have been hanging about like a sleazy ambulance chasing lawyer at the scene of a fatal accident.

Sorry, but I didn’t kill that young woman. It’s illegal under federal law, in case the NY Daily News is not aware, to buy firearms in South Carolina and smuggle them to New York City to sell on the streets to criminals. You can do ten years for each count in the federal pen. I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do, that still respects the fact that being able to buy a gun is a basic, fundamental right if you’re law-abiding.

Getting the blame for the criminal actions of others is one of my primary motivations for staying active in this issue. There’s no practice of our opponents that I find more motivating than their attempts to make me the scapegoat for these social ills. It’s ironic that the New York Daily News probably believes it’s helping fan the flames of gun control, but in reality they are sowing the seeds of the destruction of New York City’s gun laws, by keeping people like you and me in the game.

CSGV Latest Pathetic Attack

CSGV’s latest message seems to be that when it comes to gun scandals, at least fourÂ out of NRA’s 76 elected board members have some experience backing anti-communist guerrillas in Cold War proxy conflicts, some of which didn’t have the nicest of bedfellows. Shocking, I know, that our government engaged in lot of unpleasantness to rid the world of Soviet communism, resulting in a lot of folks with dirty hands. But what exactly is the greater strategy at work in Fast and Furious? At best, and this is still a dubious claim, there’s some elaborate cloak and dagger affair in play to prop up the Sinaloa Cartel. If that’s the case, I’d really like to know how that helps the situation in Mexico. At worst, Fast and Furious was meant to get more guns into Mexico to make the case for more gun control, and bigger budgets at the Department of Justice.

I don’t think four NRA Board members can be construed to represent an endorsement by NRA as a whole of their past activities. Whether Horwitz likes it or not, Ollie North is a hero to many Americans, and enough NRA members, to get him the votes he needs to be on the Board. If you think this article is utter fail, this web site on NRA Board members should give you a better idea of just how sad, pathetic, and bitter the folks at CSGV are. But I do have to thank them. Their little web site provided at least fifteen minutes of amusement for me in realizing just how out of touch they are with ordinary Americans, in terms of what they find to be “controversial.”

I think it’s also quite telling that, rather than trying to get to the bottom of F&F, CSGV is instead of spending it’s time looking for ways to smear NRA. That should tell you just how much of a masquerade the whole gun violence thing is. The difference between NRA and CSGV is NRA is still being true to it’s mission. CSGV has shown they care more about hurting NRA than they care about gun violence.