Category: Anti-Gun Folks

… was outspent 7 to 1 by gun control groups, according to Adage.com. I’d wager good money the vast majority of that money came out of Bloomberg’s pockets. We can’t outspent Bloomberg; 14.1 million dollars is the change in his sofa cushions. But we can defeat him with real grassroots energy.

Reuters notes that the gun control battle is shifting to the states, with a slight edge going to pro-gun bills. The New York Times does a summary of the issues, which show that it’s considerably more than a “slight edge.” It also shows that a number of those bills that were passed, that are in the pro-gun control column, are minor bills like NICS improvements…. hardly a big win on their parts.

The latest move is to head on over to Europe to lobby those European gun makers to enact gun control. Because surely those European gun makers will be more enlightened, because they’re all so Euorpeany.

They want the European gunmakers, for example, to refuse to allow their weapons to be sold through unlicensed gun dealers. They also want the manufacturers to renounce political meddling in the U.S. through contributions to lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association.

It demonstrates how little they know about how the gun industry works. Manufactures don’t make shipments to unlicensed gun dealers. That would be illegal. They will sell to their US division, who are federally licensed to import. That importer will sell to a licensed distributor, who will sell to a licensed dealer, who sells to the general public. How exactly is, say, Berretta, supposed to control what happens to it after the point of retail sale?

Also, gun industry money is a fraction of NRA’s total contributions. Most of NRA’s money is raised in small increments from its members through traditional fundraising. While losing industry money would certainly hurt a little, it would far from cripple NRA, and you can bet if they were successful in doing this (which they won’t be), NRA would have a fundraising letter out next week talking about how anti-gun forces are bullying manufacturers into cutting off funds, and won’t you pretty please donate 25, 50, 75 or 250 dollars to help NRA make up the short fall.

And before the fundraising letter would even hit the mail, any cooperating European manufacture will have their US market share destroyed by our grassroots. The manufacturers are will aware of this, so all this is doing is costing the anti-gunners money. Though I’m sure they will enjoy the European Vacation on their organization’s dime.

The Brady Campaign and LCAGV continue to live in an alternate reality where recalling not just one, but three Colorado politicians doesn’t really mean anything.

“There’s been disproportionate attention paid to the Colorado recall, where the corporate gun lobby was able to create the perfect circumstances for a handful of extremists to carry the day,” said Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign.

What I really don’t understand about their “logic” here is whether NRA did it, or it was largely spontaneous grassroots organizing, three enemies of the Second Amendment still lost their seats by voting for gun control. At the end of the day, I think that reality matters more than who really deserves credit. Gross is trying to spin his way out of the fact that the Colorado recall efforts likely spooked the Democrats into being a lot more skeptical of the bridge he’s and his allies are trying to sell them.

It’s called Armed with Reason, and it actually looks like they might not yet have discovered Reasoned Discourse^TM, meaning when the argument turns against them, they squash dissenting viewpoints.

I’d head on over there and start making good and reasonable arguments. If none of them get approved, we can declare them as closed-minded as other pretenders to the throne of Reasoned Discourse.