Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Thirdpower has been diving the wreck, and finds a whole lot of crazy. Namely Elliot Fineman of National Gun Victims Action Council:

I wonder how he can claim this being that he’s previously claimed that ‘There is no such thing as a law abiding citizen‘? Is he saying there’s no gun homicides? Being that he’s in Chicago, how does he then explain Chicago Police Dept. reports stating that87% of the homicides committed in the city are by those w/ prior arrest records (pg56/57)?

I can probably clear up the gun control narcosis here. This seems to be a common claim now by the gun control crowd. It’s not true, but those in the gun control movement who’ve now made a hobby of erecting and tear down straw men focus very heavily on the “law abiding citizen,” and we’ve had to endure taunting and mockery from individuals who couldn’t argue their way out of a wet paper bag.

I say the other side is erecting straw men here because no one argues that the proxies we used to try to determine one’s proclivity toward criminal behavior are perfect. Given that the Minority Report was a work of fiction, the best we can do is to use some form of proxy, and there is no form that would be perfect. The only logical conclusion one can come to, based on the rhetoric of anti-gun activists, is that because some people may go on to misuse their guns, that no one should have them. Any time they use this argument, it’s neo-prohibitionism on display. This is the continued de-professionalization of the gun control movement. The professionals have left the building, leaving the people those professional were front for exposed to us. It’s a sad spectacle.

Which then leaves us with MAIG, the only professional gun control organization remaining, and the only one making arguments in a post-Heller world. MAIG’s focus is on the proxies we use. We categorically reject the lack of due process involved with many of their proposals, but they have, so far, avoided the kind of amateurish arguments you see from the groups in decline.

Thirdpower has been kind enough to update his post, and provide a link to the actual study. In terms of the study being a flop, I was partially correct. I say partially, because I figured there’d be more surveying of attitudes towards gun policy, and there wasn’t. What there was, beyond what was mentioned in the press release, there wasn’t any red meat to be found. One things is for sure, Wintenmute wasn’t happy that NSSF and NRA broadly alerted on this survey, and discouraged dealers from participating:

Thirdpower notes that Garen Wintenmute, anti-gun professor and anti-gun activist extraordanire, has released the results of his survey of gun dealers. They note:

The majority of gun dealers and pawnbrokers (54.9 percent) believed it is too easy for criminals to get guns in the U.S. Agreement varied little with age and sex, was somewhat more common among gun dealers than pawnbrokers, and was more common among respondents from corporate/multisite licensees than others.

That’s it? You sent a 12 page questionnaire with 38 questions to gun dealers, and this is the best you can tout, other than some other uncontroversial statistics? Did you ask about any other contentious issues? I’m sure they did. I’m also sure they’d be touting the results of those if the answers had gone the way they wanted them to. I’m going to guess that the results did not go the way they wanted them to.

Here I was feeling bad I didn’t really have anything to say about the 11 year 9/11 anniversary, but then I saw this and felt much better. Yes, let’s take attention off the murdered folks at pay attention to their pet cause!

It would appear that MAIG has come to realize that having a membership with a higher rate of criminal activity than concealed carry holders is an argument that actually sticks. When they speak, they become the spokesmen for criminals calling for disarming the law-abiding.

When gun bloggers first started pointing out how many criminal mayors they had – mostly around the time one was under a high profile arrest for gun crimes – MAIG kept their names on their website with pride. I guess they felt they needed every supporter they could find, even if the supporter was headed to prison.

Today’s arrest of Trenton’s mayor had MAIG scrubbing their website of their member within a couple of hours. In fact, I saw the post on Days of Our Trailers, but initially couldn’t figure out if Thirdpower was simply assuming that because the guy was a big-city mayor in NJ that he was a member since the MAIG site had him gone. However, a simple search of the mayor’s name and MAIG turned up the evidence.

The only reason that MAIG would want to act quickly on these matters is because they have found that it does actually undermine their credibility to have Bloomberg allying himself with criminals in calling for gun control. I guess MAIG is hoping that by erasing evidence of any relationship within the group, they can minimize the impact.

In the Philadelphia Daily News:

He can relate to people who collect guns, he says, because he collects bikes. He has six in his living room: a mountain bike, a road bike, the cyclocross, his “commuting bike,” a tandem (“the only way to get my girlfriend to go with me”) and a bike “on display” that he doesn’t ride.

No, you can’t. You don’t collect bikes in the same way people collect guns. You have multiple bikes that each meet the needs of different applications. You’re the bike equivalent of a guy who own a bolt-action in .243 Winchester for deer, keeps a pistol for home defense, has a shotgun for bird hunting, and keeps a 10/22 for fun and plinking. Now, if Max had half a dozen Penny-Farthings in his living room, one of which he was particularly proud of because it once belonged to a nephew of Queen Victoria, he’d have some idea what collecting guns is all about.

That the crowd who supports gun control can sometimes be a bit unhinged is certainly not news to those who frequent the gun corners of the blogosphere, but lately it’s been getting even worse. Just today, from Twitter:

I’m not sure where I was making a joke in that conversation, or where the bigotry and racism comes from, but whatever that hejjet guy is sniffing, smoking or snorting, he should really share with the rest of us, because that’s some grade A hallucination right there. Of course, that’s not all. Let’s not ignore the other shit gun control activists say. Blaming the gun for gun violence is nothing new, but the latest tactic is collective blame. If you own a gun, and especially if you advocate for your Second Amendment rights, you are responsible for every crime or accident with a gun that comes along.

This is what the gun control movement in this country is now reduced to. It greatly pleases me, because they aren’t far from political oblivion if this is the best they can proffer. The funny thing is, despite the accusation, it does indeed feel increasingly like we’re up against angry children, who offer child-like arguments to the problems of our society. We must keep pushing.

The Brady folks must be pretty desperate to try to remain relevant when the DNC has largely been focused on just about every other lefty issue that isn’t theirs, and they are begging the DNC to say something nice about their cause, and reminicing about the Clinton years when they could sit at the cool kids’ table.

Of course, the lack of attention to the gun issue plays both ways. For instance, I’m covering the conventions because there just isn’t any relevant gun news out there. All that’s coming across my Google Alerts and other sources are the dozen or so armed citizen stories I see per week. You know, the ones the Brady folks claim never happen*. I’ve made an editorial decision not to cover armed citizen stories unless there’s some unusual angle that makes for an interesting post. But I will say, I’d prefer to be on this side of things than theirs, where armed citizen stories are too banal to blog about, rather than begging to be relevant because my issue is as dead as Carrie Nation.

* Just in case the Brady supporters want to say I’m exaggerating about what I pass up. See here, here, here, here, and here. That’s just a few days worth. These gets picked up by local news outlets. You never see it picked up in national news. Doesn’t fit the narrative.