Category: Anti-Gun Folks

I’m going to anxiously await CSGV to condemn this:

The New Black Liberation Militia, a self-styled black survival group, has announced that it plans to make a citizens arrest of Zimmerman next week, the Associated Press reported.

It quoted Najee Muhammad, a group leader, saying, “We’ll find him. We’ve got his mug shot and everything.”

Natalie Jackson, a lawyer for the Martin family, said she does not support the threat, but also cannot control them.

If CSGV is to live up to its own standards, and not be hypocritical tools, it would not only condemn this, but also smear the Martin family. As it is, I think the Martin family is correct in their response, and I agree they can’t control the situation. But what some people would call justice, I would call vigilantism and kidnapping. CSGV is willing to hold all of us responsible for the actions of whack jobs and lunatics, so I don’t see why they would make an exception in this case.

I roundly condemn what the NBL Militia is attempting here, and believe CSGV should as well. The rule of law is the rule of law, and men are entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law. If this were the New White Liberation Militia, they would condemn their very existence, and I would join them. They would also smear us with the specter of such a militia, which I would not do. It is as unfair to smear all African-Americans with the specter of the NBLM as it is to smear all Second Amendment supporters with the specter of Tim McVeigh and racist militia groups. But I can promise you CSGV lives by a double standard here. They are fraud, they know they are frauds, which is why all they have left is anger.

It seems every time there is a tragedy, the other side looks to see how it can fit into their narrative so it can be exploited for political gain. Such is the case with Dennis Henigan’s latest, which suggests the wheel of blame this time has stopped on Child Access Prevention laws. Henigan says never mind the bullies, and never mind mental health, the issue is the gun. People will say otherwise, but trust him, it’s the gun, and only the gun.

UPDATE: Anyone notice Henigan is still the public face of the Brady Campaign? Where is this Dan Gross guy we’ve heard so much about? Has anyone seen him? Is he a real person?

Josh Horwitz has completely lost touch with whatever reality he once previously inhabited, and moved into an alternate parallel universe where Gun Control Act of 1968 nor the Brady Act were ever passed. While that’s not the case, certainly, I’m not sure why voting and gun ownership shouldn’t be relatively easy, considering they are both fundamental rights, according to our courts. I tend to believe if it’s constitutional to make me show government issued photo ID before purchasing a firearm, it’s constitutional to make me do the same before voting.

But that’s aside. The point of Josh’s article was to chide the gun owner in Michigan who went to the polls openly armed, and then carried through the school which was being used as a polling place. I tend to believe it’s constitutional to ban firearms at polling places and schools, with schools being listed specifically in Heller as being among the sensitive places.  But the fact is that it’s not unlawful to openly carry in a school in Michigan, so that should have been the end of the law enforcement encounter with the man who was carrying.

A man legally open carrying in a school or polling place certainly isn’t enough to try to tie the man, as Josh Horwitz often does, with the likes of “John Wilkes Booth, Timothy McVeigh, Sharron Angle and Ted Nugent.” The fact that Horwitz would put Sharron Angle and Ted Nugent in the same class as John Wilkes Booth and Timothy McVeigh shows his complete lack of any moral compass, and a sense of perspective so completely warped as to completely discredit anything he says. I’ll agree with Horwitz that you shouldn’t need ID to exercise the fundamental right to vote if he agrees you shouldn’t need ID to exercise the fundamental right to keep and bear arms.

Think Progress has been busy trying to debunk the myth of NRA power, and the latest is really the icing on the cake, where they parrot the anti-gun leadership talking point that gun ownership is really on the decline, and fewer and fewer people are participating in the shooting sports. Reality just does not bear this out, so I am going to have to give Think Progress a Baghdad Bob reward for this article:

 

Miguel points out our friends at CSGV are spilling more ink on ridiculous claims of no defensive gun use. They even acknowledge the DOJ study that says 80,000 – 100,000 defensive gun uses a year, but dismiss the study because “they don’t apply any value judgement to say whether they were warranted or not.”

Miguel correctly points out threatening someone with a gun who doesn’t deserve it is called Assault with a Deadly Weapon. True in Florida. In Pennsylvania it’s actually Simple Assault if you only threaten someone with a gun, but it’s a second degree misdemeanor, which is up to two years in prison. The simple fact that most of these folks weren’t charged should indicate that DGUs are real, and numerous.

Arma Borealis takes a look at Colin Goddard’s claim that he was in the army for two years, when he was an ROTC cadet for two years. This isn’t semantics I’d get too worked up over, but I was never in the military. For those that have been, I understand this kind of distinction is more important.

UPDATE: More from Chris in Alaska of Arma Borealis in the comments.

Our opponents are generally quick to tell us that the first clause of the Second Amendment is the defining one, but when a state takes steps to create itself a well-regulated militia, our opponents balk and cry foul.

So let me get this straight, I only have a right to bear arms in a well-regulated militia, who’s existence the fanatic leaders of the gun control movement are going to fight and decry when one is proposed into existence? One thing the leaders of the gun control movement need to get clear is there’s no such thing in our Constitutional framework as a militia that “would not be under the authority of both the state and federal government,” per the quote from CSGV. Any state militia is subject to being called into the service of the United States, regardless of what the Arizona Revised Statutes have to say about it.

I was ready to nail the Brady Campaign with this one, but I don’t think it’s them.  A progressive group in Ohio is piggybacking onto the shooting tragedy at Chardon High School in order to build up their mailing list. Don’t let the sympathetic words there fool you, the information they are asking for is valuable, and is meant to build up a list. While I can’t make any connection between this registrant and gun control groups, I would not be a bit surprised to find out these names will be going straight to a gun control organization. If folks out there want to start digging, this would be worthwhile if a connection could be made. Can you imagine if NRA set up an e-mail honeypot for, say, removing restrictions of guns in schools? Our opponents would be all over it, deriding the organization as monsters for so blatantly exploiting a tragedy. And you know what? They’d be right. But we’re correct to call our opponents out for their shameless exploitation.

As Thirdower points out, there’s a double standard when it comes to our opponents. It’s perfectly fine for them, leaders of the gun control movement, to exploit a tragedy for political ends. They are good guys, after all, fighting bad people like us. I’m not allowing them to get away with it. They are not good guys. The leaders of the gun control movement are horrible people, who are shameless about exploiting the tragedy of others in order to enhance their political mission and fundraising. The thoughtful and human response during a tragedy like this is thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families. I get annoyed with people on our side who are quick to jump on gun free zones even before the blood of the victims is cleaned off the floor. There will be a time for the politics, but that time has to come after the families have at least buried their loved ones.

This is from the Brady Campaign. Sometimes I really wonder where they come up with this stuff?

It’s like they fell in the shower, and hit their head, and this random and completely false thought occurred to them, and since it sounded good they just felt the need to share. Though maybe it’s just Brady getting back to their usual role in making stuff up in an attempt to deceive. Howard Nemerov has some thoughts on Brady’s new President:

The Brady Campaign recently announced their new president, Daniel Gross, an advertising professional turned gun-control promoter. Gallup rates advertising professionals among the lowest for honesty and ethics, and Gross provides a corroborative case study.

Read the whole thing. I’d almost rather think this was more the shower scenario I described rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead. With an Army of Davids ready to fact check on a moments notice, this kind of dishonestly will do nothing but further erode their fading organization’s already damaged credibility.

A Denver Gazette article on MAIG getting nasty, and a failed attempt to get the Mayor of Colorado Springs to join the group. Some of you may know that Dave Kopel’s father, who is a legend in Colorado politics, died recently. This is of note from MAIG’s ED:

Mark Glaze, executive director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, addressed David Kopel on Twitter one day after his father’s memorial service.

“As a Colorado native I recall him well,” Glaze wrote of Gerald Kopel. “Wonder what he would think of his son calling electeds liars. #apple fell far from free (sic).”

As anyone who is active on the Twitter gun community can attest, there’s nothing wrong, in the mind of our opponents, spewing hate at gun owners. We’re not people, you see. We’re monsters. So anything goes.