Miguel goes through Bloomberg’s list of victims from the Miami area and finds a list of doozies, including one police shooting. This illustrates a key difference between those who support gun control and those who do not. Generally speaking, gun control advocates rarely accept the notion that there are some people out there who need shooting. Pull a knife on a cop? The results are predictable, and that the police officer was able to defend himself successfully is what most of us would regard as a good thing. To the other side? Mr. Knife Puller is just another tragic victim of gun violence. All lives are precious. When you boil all the other BS away, this is one of the core philosophical differences.
Category: Anti-Gun Folks
R+P Keeps Digging
Look at this hilariousness. Those of you in the tech industry will truly appreciate it:
As such, we are implementing the necessary Web 3.0 Social capabilities to ensure that each individual voice is not just heard, but protected against cyber-bullying, virtual filibustering, off-topic rhetoric, or defamatory and inflammatory language that is not related to the discussion thread.
Read the whole sad thing. Web 3.0? Really? They are totally beyond this whole Web 2.0 thing. We dumb rednecks can’t even begin to appreciate their sophistication. Even Bloomberg isn’t stupid enough to be this condescending and insulting toward gun owners. Bloomberg, at least, has the decently to be forthrightly condescending to us. We know where Bloomberg stands.
The more I see from these R+P people, the more I believe they really think we’re the reason there can’t be a conversation. Even though none of us censor or squash dissenting viewpoints, whereas it’s SOP for their side (and apparently for R+P too). I think these guys believe they are what the gun debate has been waiting for. Sorry, no. We’ve read this shitty novel before, and didn’t like it 5 years ago either. R+P is nothing new. In fact, they are a far more humorous and amateurish than the previous version of this farce.
American Rifle and Pistol Association Responds
It looks like Peter Vogt has chosen to respond to Bitter’s article the other day, exposing the problems with American Rifle and Pistol Association. Go read the whole, sad thing. I didn’t really understand why anyone would want to join a group like this before they published this “interview.” Now, understanding they are actually a for-profit corporation, and don’t really seem to have any real mission or vision for what they want to stand for, I really don’t understand it.
Is the purpose just to make money? Trying to help along this national conversation the other side wants to pretend hasn’t happened because of the big-bad NRA? What these ARPA folks don’t seem to get is that they have approached this issue from an astounding ignorance. The gun rights movement is already hyper-connected on the Internet, as I’m sure these guys are now beginning to discover. Perhaps I might suggest they read Brian Anse Patrick’s “Rise of the Anti-Media” before proceeding further. And that’s just a start. There has been a national conversation on gun control, and it’s been raging for decades. The anti-gun folks want no part of it because they keep losing the arguments.
Airplane Needed for Leaflet Drop
Mike Bloomberg is hosting a 1000 dollar a plate fundraising dinner for his good buddy Joe Manchin. I would love to print out that invitation and air drop them all over the state of West Virginia. I don’t see this kind of thing going over well with the locals. Let us not forget that in addition to Bloomberg’s rampant nannying on every freedom issue under the sun, he’s also an avowed enemy of coal.
“Joe Manchin gets help from the Mayor of New York City, a billionaire who hates gun rights and wants coal mining to disappear. He throws fancy fundraising dinners for Joe in Manhattan that none of you could ever afford to attend, and that goes double when the coal jobs disappear.” Yeah, that’ll go over well in West Virginia. I’m sure of it.
More on Giffords/Kelly Election Consequences
It does look like there may be some election-related consequences for Democrats targeted by Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords. They just aren’t the kinds of consequences Kelly is hoping for these days.
It looks like the only impact they may have for the North Dakota stop of their gun control tour is to drive the Democrats about 200 miles out town to avoid the anti-gun event.
More Discoveries of NYC Taxpayer Money Propping up MAIG
Over at Jammie Wearing Fools. Apparently Bloomberg sent a lobbyist who is on the city payroll to Nevada to push for gun control there. A city lobbyist noted:
“With Bloomberg, one of his strengths is that, because money is no object, he could just go rent office space,†a city lobbyist said.“It seems like they’re being sloppy.â€
It almost makes you question how much faith Bloomberg has in his own BS, that he feels the need to spend taxpayer dollars on this pet project rather than his own dollars, which as noted are substantial.
h/t Instapundit for the article
The Demonization of Gun Owners Continues
We’re all going to h-e-double-hockey-sticks, at least according to the NEA’s Vice President:
“I’m not an ordained minister, I’m not a theologian, but [the NRA] are going to hell,” the National Education Association’s vice president said during a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation convention of liberal online activists.
And here I thought we were the religious zealots. I think she probably should have stopped with “I’m not an ordained minister, I’m not a theologian,” and followed this sage, old advice. What’s funny is I’ve gotten flack for referring to the other side as “the enemy,” and often using war metaphors when discussing political struggle. But the other side engages in the same politics of dehumanization. Perhaps there’s some other, old, sage advice that applies here.
Ms. Magazine Wimps Out of Gun Debate
We’ve all been anxiously awaiting Part Two of Heidi Yewman’s one month of trying to carry a gun. Apparently because the staff at “Ms.” were overwhelmed with pro-gun commentary, and they are shocked (shocked!) to discover that some people on the Internet might be bozos. So they are shit-canning the rest of the story.
What was Kort’s solution to this dilemma? Incredibly, it was to kill the rest of Yewman’s series. “I don’t think I should post the next two installments of this—they’ll only fire up the troops again, and we’re just not equipped to handle this on our blog,†Kort wrote.
According to Ms. Kort, who is an Editor editor at “Ms.”, the rest of the series will appear on the Huffington Post. In my career of dealing with presenting and arguing controversial viewpoints on the Internet, I can say it sometimes will challenge your faith in humanity. I can hardly blame “Ms.” for censoring posts featuring the home address of the author, nor do I blame them for censoring truly nasty comments. But I can promise you those are a small minority of the comments that have been censored.
This is straight from the anti-gun playbook: censor dissenting viewpoints and shut down debate, then claim to be doing it because people who have a pro-Second Amendment viewpoint are nasty brutes who just want to bully and intimidate everyone. That has not been my, or anyone else’s experience anywhere else on the Internet where dialog is not moderated and people are relatively free to have open discussion. Yes, some people on the Internet are poster children for the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. This is not news to anyone, and while I support “Ms.” magazine’s editorial discretion, I think bowing out of this is cowardly, and shows they are not committed to having any kind of real discussion on a serious topic.
Bad Exception Proposed for SAFE Act
I oppose carving out an exemption for retired NY cops from the SAFE act. If the guns and >7 rd magazines are only useful for hunting humans, the police shouldn’t have them either, and there can be no rationale at all for them having them off duty. It also looks like, according to this source, the GOP may have caved to Cuomo on guns in exchange for Cuomo caving on redistricting. So under the bus gun rights go:
Republicans number just 30 in the 63-seat Senate, yet they reasserted the state’s last bastion of GOP and conservative influence.
This year, Republicans were no longer under Cuomo’s thumb after he accepted the GOP’s redistricting plan, which will protect Republican power in the Senate for the next 10 years.
Senate Republicans struck a deal to share the majority with four breakaway Democrats in the Independent Democratic Conference in an unheard-of bipartisan agreement. And it worked.
Republicans allowed the IDC to raise the minimum wage and let Cuomo’s gun control bill pass, giving the IDC under Democrat Jeff Klein another major win.
Emphasis mine. If there was a deal to trade gun control for the GOP redistricting plan that preserved the GOP majority, you could bowl me over with a feather. When it comes to principles versus staying in power, power will win every time.
Welcome to the Party
A few readers have sent stories about how MAIG’s servers, etc, were being run by the City of New York. I thought this was pretty much common knowledge to anyone who has been following Bloomberg’s organization for a while, so I didn’t think it was really news, but it’s gotten picked up by the media, and they are all running with it. Welcome to the Party. Bloggers figured this out years ago.
Back in 2011, the New York Post ran a story on how Bloomy yanked 100 large out of the NYPD budget to run stings on gun shows, and then there was the revelation about a year ago that New York City wasn’t the only city who’s tax dollars were going to fund gun control. So it was largely known, at least among gun bloggers, that MAIG was partially funded by New York City taxpayers. Who knew it was big news?