Category: Anti-Gun Folks

I’m so confused by the new strategy of the Brady Campaign when it comes to promoting any grassroots support they can find online. They periodically retweet people who talk about hating gun violence. I get that retweets don’t always equal an endorsement of everything that person has ever tweeted, but I also don’t think it’s a bad idea for an organization to go and look at the last page or two of tweets from anyone they are about to promote on their own channel.

In the post-Peter Hamm era, Brady has been retweeting some interesting folks. They like retweeting folks who use the N word. One of the first people I ever saw them retweet was a blogger who had never before talked about guns or violence issues. Her entire blog was about Jesus and how much she loved Victoria’s Secret panties.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with Jesus or Victoria’s pretty underthings. VS makes some damn fine bras if you ask me. But making that a focus of a blog doesn’t exactly make you a great grassroots outreach target on public policy – unless we’re maybe talking TSA policies that discriminate against women who wear underwires.

Another early retweet came from a woman whose previous musings included her proclamation for enjoying…umm…shall we call it sexual activity of the back door variety? It just seems odd to me that the people they want to promote mix messages of gun control. But that’s not such a weird combination of messages when you consider one of the men they retweeted expressed his disapproval for gun violence in one tweet, yet bragged about how much of a thug he and his buddies were just a few tweets prior. Is Brady embracing the thug lifestyle? It seems of all the odd folks to push on Twitter, that is one with a combination of messages that directly undermines their agenda.

Today’s retweets include a young mother who, just 20 hours prior to their retweet was concerned about her toddler son and how he might be ill. As evidenced by the message Brady shared, she’s concerned about gun violence as well. However, she’s apparently not concerned enough about her own choices since she tweeted just two hours after her son was sick that she was smoking weed. Umm… But that’s okay, the other person they retweeted also talked about using drugs just an hour or so before Brady promoted them. Oh, and she declared that “asian women are fucking evil.”

Again, I realize that retweets of one message don’t mean that you endorse everything the person has ever said. I get that it’s a challenge to find a balance to these issues in a day where no topic is off limits in social media. But you would think that the Brady Campaign would at least filter out anyone who has said anything racist or advocating the use of illegal substances in the last 24 hours or most recent page of tweets. It’s called common sense. And considering they call for common sense in gun control, you’d think they’d demonstrate a little bit of it when developing their media strategy.

The Bradys seem to have flashed back to the 1970’s handgun freeze movement, which I would note failed on the ballot in California even then. It was tried in states like Massachusetts also, and failed there too. They seem to have forgotten their losses, even in their heyday, and fail to remember why they needed to change their name:

Bill Maher is certainly the kind of asshole that can make you pine for the past, but the past is gone, and I, for one, am happy to see the Brady’s wallowing in it. Amateurish mistakes like this have become part and parcel for Brady’s current new media strategy, if you can even call it that.

Peter Hamm was a worthy adversary. It’s quite sad to see what the Brady folks have turned into since. I don’t think there are any adults in charge there now. It is much the same feeling that sailors on the opposing side get watching an enemy ship sink beneath the waves, or a fighter pilot feels downing an enemy ace. You thirst for victory, but easily besting your opponent has a certain sadness to it.

If you’re an FFL, and you’ve gotten a demand letter, NRA-ILA’s Office of Legislative Counsel would like to speak with you. Rumor has it that some FFLs have gotten demand letters. This is an ATF demand that needs to be answered with a lawsuit, as the multi-long-gun reporting requirement is unlawful.

Acting Brady President Dennis Henigan notes about the Norway massacre:

For those who are quick to argue that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” it is instructive that the Norway killer took many more lives with his guns than with his explosives. Violent individuals intent on inflicting multiple fatalities don’t choose knives or baseball bats. With few exceptions, they choose guns.

That the explosives did not kill more people has more to do with luck and bad planning on the part of the killer. His shooting spree, in contrast, was much more thought out. McVeigh’s bomb killed 168 people. There’s no fundamental reason explosives have to result in a lower death toll. If small arms were so unbelievably deadly as Dennis would have people believe, the military would have no use for grenades, bombs, rockets, missiles, and artillery.

The Mini-14 is now, apparently a “poor man’s assault rifle.” They have become a parody of themselves, truly. I’m pretty sure the Mini-14 is legal even in California. Josh Sugarmann has gone from being the evil genius of the gun control movement to a sad joke. How the mighty have fallen. That said, Josh can still comfort himself by taking home a bigger salary than most of us can dream of, for producing essentially nothing. Certainly nothing of greater value than most of us produce for free every day. How does it feel to be a joke, Josh? Hell, I feel worse for his patrons. How does it feel to fund a joke?

I’m glad to see CSGV is developing some real grassroots. The real tragedy (for them) is that it’s one of the more realistic and sane comments I’ve seen on their site.

VPC has a new white paper out “The Glock: A Favorite of Mass Shooters.” It’s the favorite of police officers, peaceable Americans, and several European militaries too, but you won’t hear VPC mention that.

VPC is perhaps the most irrelevant organization out there today, given the realities of the post-Heller world. The Glock is, quite possibly, the ideal poster child for Heller’s “common use” test. One could argue it is quite possibly the most deserving arm of constitutional protection out there today.

Thanks Dennis. We didn’t want to get out there and jump right in with the public policy implications, but we do appreciate you letting everyone know that Norway has strong gun laws, and that they have pretty clearly failed in this instance. I’m going to guess the vast majority of the American public has no idea that Norway has “strong gun laws” that “don’t work.” We do appreciate you helping get that message out there. Keep up the good work.

For those of you who haven’t read Brian Anse Patrick’s book, I highly recommend it. It’s one of the most thorough analysis’ of the concealed carry movement, and how it became successful, out there today.

Via NC Gun Blog, Patrick now takes a look at Colin Goddard’s film, “Living for 32.”:

If one knew about guns and gun violence from watching television entertainment and popular movies, then Living for 32might be perceived, as goes the standard movie review line, as a powerful and hard-hitting film. But it is not designed for people who substantively know. The film reinforces preconceptions of mass media-audiences. Such audiences, I know from my research, tend to construe guns as a symbol of evil. They exhibit generally an undifferentiated perception of firearms, appearing to perceive them from within the stereotypical limitations of the lurid media stories to which they have been repeatedly exposed, i.e., “gun is bad, therefore un-gun good.” Such systematically misinformed persons, for example, mostly cannot differentiate the national concealed carry movement, with its millions of licensed honest citizens safety-trained and background checked, from felonious illegal carry by criminals such as Cho (Patrick & Hart, 2011). Non sequitur passes as profundity for such an audience.

Biased? Maybe. But my experience and observations reflect that this is a correct observation. One of the problem the Internet has presented to our opponent is it’s moved the debate model away from mass media, where our opponents message predominated, to more of a national conversation, where voices and viewpoints have more equality. Ignorance has a difficult time surviving in this environment, and our opponents message depends on that.

I had contacted the film’s promoters a month or so previous about arranging a showing. I wanted especially to have my American Gun Policy seminar honors students see it, but after an initial cordial response the promoters stopped responding to my emails. The UT showing was apparently arranged in collaboration with the local foundation-funded antigun professional, the director of a local “coalition,” invisible except for the director and a secretary, who greeted me at the door.

We will venture into the lions den, and with enthusiasm, confidence and vigor. They refuse to engage in any kind of discourse where they are unable to control the agenda. More than anything, that is what will doom their movement to continued failure. Patrick also comments on how Brady is successfully targeting the target audience with their propaganda:

Additionally, the epidemiological model perfectly suits the values of the audience—My Second Commandment of Propaganda is “Reflect the values and beliefs of the audience.” The human services faculty tend toward what might be called an administrative hermeneutic or worldview. They see themselves as scientific social managers, experts who apply knowledge to social problems. The idea of the heroic social scientist or human services professional battling an epidemic is right up their alley, providing not only a sense of a secure, manageable world, but also of a personal ego-enhancing position of relatively high status in this world.

Exactly. The problem in this case would seem to be the god complex.