Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Up until recently, it was an issue so toxic that it was not to be touched. In Obama’s first term, he avoided the issue for the most part. Now that he’s won re-election, gun control is a winning issue again:

Democrats see potential Republican opposition to the gun control push led by President Obama as jeopardizing the GOP’s appeal with voters in suburban districts, the very seats Democrats are focusing on in their bid to regain the House majority.

This was the same theory that they touted in 1994. It wasn’t true then, and it certainly isn’t true now. As Glenn Reynolds notes, commenting on this WaPo article, this is a “Self-inflicted wedge issue.”

This weekend, a reader sent us a link to a forum posting about a Pennsylvania DJ who was supposedly fired for being anti-gun. Before having all the facts, the original forum poster made a declaration that he was opposed to the firing over personal political views, and the reader indicated similar concerns based on the “facts” of the forum post. I didn’t post it because, to be honest, I don’t trust random forum posts that aren’t backed up by actual news sources.

When I finally found a real news source on the issue, it turns out that not only is the forum post completely wrong on the facts, any employment concerns on the part of the dj have little to do with political views.

To sum the situation up, a morning show dj, Tim Benz, is extremely anti-gun and used his show and the associated social media accounts as a way of promoting his personal politics. Apparently, he has been having fights with listeners in the Pittsburgh area about this issue recently. On Friday, he decided that he was sick of hearing from all these annoying pro-Second Amendment people and walked off of his job while on the air.

In other words, if he is actually fired, the dj will not be fired because of his personal views. If the station does let him go, he will be fired because he is incapable of behaving in a professional manner when people disagree with him – something Benz freely admits to in subsequent interviews. Now, obviously, Benz wants to keep his job. He claims that he did not officially resign, and he’s happy to serve out his contract in whatever manner the station chooses, even if it’s off of the air. However, given that the morning show slots are typically some of the most competitive times for listeners, it would seem unlikely that the station would have much interest in keeping a dj who acknowledges that he brings his personal politics to air and cannot accept disagreement in a rational manner.

I’ll be frank and say I don’t have much pity for the guy. He knew what kind of divisive topic he was bringing to his employer, and he couldn’t handle the notion that the listeners had different ideas that they care enough about to call in and/or comment about it online. He is the one who made the decision to walk off of the air rather than handling the debate in a more reasonable manner. Basically, he made a decision to screw his employer, so I think his employer is more than justified in releasing him from his contract.

That said, I think there are a few lessons here. One, if you’re a radio show host who cannot handle debate about core personal political views, it’s best to leave them out of your show. Two, if you’re a radio show host who cannot handle people who disagree with you, then perhaps you should steer clear of major political debates in general. Three, an employment agreement is not a matter of the First Amendment; you don’t get protection from saying things or behaving in a manner that reflects negatively on your employer, so don’t fall back on that defense. Four, this is somewhat related to a question that Uncle asks often in his posts: Why are anti-gun activists so violent? In this case, it’s not violence, but it is still an inability to control one’s temper to the point where it interferes with his ability to hold down his job.

We’re told we’re paranoid and delusional for our tome that registration’s only purpose is to tell the government where they all are so they can be rounded up when a pretext presents itself. Well, here’s what’s happening in California:

The 10-bill package constitutes the single largest gun control push in decades in the Golden State, which already boasts some of the nation’s strictest gun laws. It joins equally controversial proposals from Assembly Democrats that would regulate and tax ammunition sales and consider taking the state’s 166,000 registered assault weapons from their owners.

If you New Yorkers register your guns, you’re friggin nuts. Also, next time some gun control advocate tells you no one is talking about taking your guns, take a copy of Time, roll it up, and smack them with it (assault magazine).

Released here:

1. Support the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans
2. Support citizens’ rights to possess firearms for hunting, shooting sports, defense, and other lawful and legitimate purposes
3. Reinstate and strengthen a prospective federal ban on assault weapons
4. Reinstate a prospective federal ban on assault magazines
5. Require a background check for every gun sale, while respecting reasonable exceptions for cases such as gifts between family members and temporary loans for sporting purposes
6. Strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database
7. Prosecute those prohibited buyers who attempt to purchase firearms and others who violate federal firearm laws
8. Pass legislation aimed specifically at cracking down on illegal gun trafficking and straw-purchasing
9. Restore funding for public safety and law enforcement initiatives aimed at reducing gun violence
10. Support initiatives that prevent problems before they start
11. Close the holes in our mental-health system and make sure that care is available for those who need it
12. Help our communities get unwanted and illegal guns out of the hands of those who don’t want them or shouldn’t have them
13. Support responsible gun ownership
14. Take steps to enhance school safety
15. Address our culture’s glorification of violence seen and heard though our movie screens, television shows, music and video games

This is a huge, steaming crock of shit. “I support the Second Amendment!” has become the new refuge of scoundrels. Looking at this, they don’t much support the First Amendment either, given point 15.

Borepatch proposes a trade for background checks. The problem with this kind of thing is that it’s hard to do, because neither side really wants to compromise. Perhaps we can get all of those things without having to give anything up in return. Perhaps the other side believes the same thing. Even if we got together with the other side, and shook hands on the deal, there’s no guarantee that’s what’ll come out of the sausage grinder, as friendly lawmakers on each side try to sweeten the deal for their own constituency.

But that said, there’s no way I think they’d accept a deal like this. As I mentioned in the comments of a previous post, unlike many of the other gun control groups, I don’t think MAIG is really rooted in the gun prohibition movement. I don’t think that’s the purpose of MAIG. MAIG is an immune response of costal elites to the idea, pushed by our people in recent years, that the Second Amendment applies equally to big cities, and that New York and Chicago’s gun laws cannot be allowed to stand. Their primary goal is to put us on the defensive, so that day of reckoning is delayed as much as humanly possible, and if it does eventually come, will be on as close to their terms as they can get. The purpose of Bloomberg’s MAIG is the preservation of big city gun control. I have little doubt Bloomberg would be fine with prohibition, or near prohibition, for the rest of us, but I don’t view that’s why Bloomberg founded it. I think Bloomberg founded it to keep the Second Amendment out of his city.

I find it funny just how far anti-gun advocates will go to pretend that gun ownership is still just a concern of those rural hicks and that no “legitimate” gun owner actually supports the right to own guns they seek to ban. I came across this tab I still had open from last week when the Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show was cancelled after their largest vendor that sold fishing & hunting gear pulled out, their largest or second largest (it was tough to tell in layout plans) boat display pulled out, and dozens of hunting guides and lodges pulled out. The order, timing, & type of non-gun vendors who withdrew is flat out ignored by local officials when condemning NRA members:

It is also unfortunate that legal gun owners and the many families who have enjoyed a long tradition of hunting in the beautiful rural environment around the region will be deprived of this major event because of a controversy caused by firearms manufacturers who profit from the sale of weapons designed for the mass killing of human beings. …

This kind of conflict within the firearms community is the result of years of polarization between the majority American sportsmen and hunters who exercise their constitutional right to bear arms and at the same time favor reasonable illegal gun controls, and a minority of NRA members who refuse to recognize the very real problem of illegal military style weaponry and the mass havoc such weapons facilitate.

The anti-gun leaders know that dividing our community is the most likely path to success. However, that hasn’t happened at this point with many more people who typically just hunt realize that the guns they use are also being targeted. When presented with this pesky fact (based on the timeline and types of vendors who dropped the ESOS because of the gun ban), these anti-gunners don’t know how to fight it. They know we vote. We’re more likely to vote in off year elections, too. Now their strategy is just to lie about it and pretend that we’re heavily divided – even in contexts where the evidence clearly contradicts them.