Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Or, an alternative title to this post might be The Side Effects of a Successful PR Campaign.

For anyone who follows any level of tech news, liberal politics, or conservative politics, you’ve heard that Apple’s Siri won’t turn up results when asked to find abortion clinics. In one article test, it directed them to pro-life clinics. Women’s groups are pulling out the mandatory outrage, and ACLU is screaming discrimination.

I don’t think I’ve seen any commentary on one possible explanation that could be directly tied to public relations efforts by pro-choice groups. Many have found that classifying abortion as nothing more than a procedure that some women may choose as part of their reproductive health care is one easy way to minimize offending the other nearly 50% who claim pro-life status. I’ve received very different reproductive care services at two different women’s clinics – one a Planned Parenthood – and neither of them made a big deal out of abortion. The posters, decor, and informational brochures most widely available were for other reproductive care issues and public or social service programs available to low-income women. Another common theme in their materials is finding a support network for LBT folks & allies.

On the other hand, pro-life groups and clinics want to highlight themselves as being a resource regarding abortion, even if they aren’t providing them. They want to be at the top of results for women looking to end a pregnancy because they’d like to offer other alternatives. They specifically don’t want to downplay that side of their services because it’s at the core of their mission.

In other words, a likely explanation is that in minimizing the direct issue of abortion to focus on a broader spectrum of women’s reproductive health, clinics that offer them have been highly successful in their PR campaigns. I’m sure there are ways that Apple could change Siri to find more specific results, but I don’t think these groups should be publicly denouncing this new technology when it may simply be responsive to their own PR efforts.

This does relate to guns beyond that fact that finding gun stores via Siri is apparently pretty easy.

When I think about this issue, I consider the changes we’ve witnessed at the Brady Campaign and the style of other gun control groups. The Brady Campaign tried to “moderate” their message a bit by highlighting that total gun confiscation was off the table thanks to Heller. Unfortunately for them, this really appears to have driven at least some of their supporters – even at least one of their own board members who is active with the other groups on social media – to the more extreme groups that maintain Heller was a mistake that must be overturned.

This means that as the media & newcomers into the gun control movement went looking for an extreme opposite of the pro-gun view, Brady was overlooked because of their own shift in language. In that regard, it’s not so different than Siri which may not be able to read between the lines of the pro-choice movement’s adopted PR language about women’s health. When gun banners go looking for a group to represent them, they couldn’t read between the lines on the rhetoric that the Brady Campaign wouldn’t actually ask gun owners to turn every single gun in. The groups would still ask that we turn in all cheap guns, scary-looking guns, “unsafe” guns, big guns, concealable guns, etc. But, without that direct appeal of attacking gun owners and overturning the Supreme Court, it just isn’t a message that allows them to survive.

Sometimes it amazes me just how much Paul Helmke apparently was doing to hold Brady together and keep it on message. It’s got to be pretty gloomy over there these days, especially when you consider now some of their favorite sons are competing with Bloomberg’s gang in the criminal category.

The New Trajectory is a blog of CeaseFire Oregon, which asks the question:

So here’s my question to you pro-gun folks: When you sell a gun to a private buyer you don’t know, how do you know the buyer doesn’t fall into one of those categories? Do you care at all if you may be unknowingly abetting a shooting crime?

I’ve sold one or two guns through a private sale to friends who are also gun people, and I know can pass a background check. I’ve bought several guns at a private sale from people at my club. All long guns, since handguns have to go through an FFL or a Sheriff in Pennsylvania.

Personally, I would never sell a gun to someone I don’t know, but I’m not going to advocate people who do that end up in prison, or face heavy fines and criminal records. I’ve had more than a few instances of people offering to sell me handguns, only to be surprised when I’ve told them that’s illegal in Pennsylvania. It’s difficult for a lot of anti-gun people to believe, because they have difficulty in viewing guns as tools or property, but a lot of gun owners think there’s not really a problem selling a pistol to a friend, either morally or legally, and to be honest, they are only wrong about the latter.

As I’ve said, there are a lot of solutions one could think of that would alleviate the concerns regarding background checks, but the other side doesn’t want to speak about them. Why? Because the true purpose of what they propose has nothing to do with background checks, and never has. They are more interested in tightening the de facto registration scheme that the 4473 represents than they are in expanding background checks.

UPDATE: Robb has a different point of view on selling guns to strangers. I don’t associate any negative morality with the act, it’s just my personal preference. I know people who won’t sell cars to friends too, but it’s not a legal or moral issue.

USA Today, of all media outlets, is reporting on gun sales this Black Friday:

Gun dealers flooded the FBI with background check requests for prospective buyers last Friday, smashing the single-day, all-time high by 32%, according to bureau records.

Deputy Assistant FBI Director Jerry Pender said the checks, required by federal law, surged to 129,166 during the day, far surpassing the previous high of 97,848 on Black Friday of 2008.

They quote Brady acting President Dennis Henigan, who is skeptical of the numbers. You know Dennis, if you really don’t like being reminded just how much you’re losing, we could always repeal the Brady Act. That way you can enjoy some bliss in ignorance, since NICS won’t be around anymore to report on just how well gun sales are doing. What do you say?

I’m always skeptical any time I see a letter to the editor in the paper from someone appearing to be a concerned citizen, yet appearing to hit all the right talking points. While there are certainly anti-gun people in New Jersey, I don’t think most of them pay enough attention This is the case with Sharon Ransavage’s letter against HR822. Ransavage is a former prosecutor in Hunterdon County, but more importantly, she’s co-chair of the Hunterdon Peace Coalition, which is a subset of Coalition for Peace Action, which, as you may remember, absorbed CeaseFire New Jersey. So she’s one of Bryan Miller’s buddies. They say it’s a small world, but I’m always surprised how small a world it really is when it comes to anti-gun activism.

If we’re a tiny minority, exercising influence beyond our number, what do they think they are?

… so violent? Kudos to Scottsdale Gun Club for the Santa idea, as it would appear to have had the intended effect. Might be kind of surprising, but sometimes it’s kind of fun to tweak the ninnies.

It’s no big secret that Dennis Henigan doesn’t like HR822, but it’s amazing how much he thinks pieces of paper stop nut jobs:

Arizona’s gun laws are so nonexistent that Jared Loughner, with his history of mental problems and threatening behavior, was a legal concealed carrier until the moment he pulled the trigger outside that Tucson Safeway. He didn’t even need a permit to carry, though he could easily have obtained one from Arizona authorities. If he had, under H.R. 822 he could have carried his Glock and its 33-round assault clip into Times Square.

Haven’t we had Times Square shootings? I hate to tell you Dennis, but he could have carried his gun to Times Square no matter what the law said, and if his particular form of paranoid schizophrenia had revolved around Times Square, instead of Gabby Giffords, I don’t think words on a piece of parchment, saying he is forbidden from carrying a gun to the scene of his mass murder, were going to stop him. You see, we’re talking about concealed weapons here, Dennis, that means other people can’t see them. Despite what you might believe, police don’t have magic gun seeing powers. Anyone who carries would know that.

Joe Huffman frequently reminds us of quotes from the gun banners in the 1990s, and this quote from Sugarmann, speaking of gun control merely being a half-mesaure, is telling. Joe comments:

Sugarmann, goes through regulatory proposals such as licensing, registration, expanding background checks at gun shows and stopping the import of high-capacity magazines. He then concludes a complete ban is the only rational conclusion.

I grudgingly admire Sugarmann for his genius in regards to “assault weapons” and his honesty in saying the endgame must be, always has been, and always will be a complete ban.

Sugarmann was, at one time, quite an intellectual force in the movement to ban guns. Violence Policy Center has never really minced words about the fact that it believes a ban is the only way to go, with anything less being just a stepping stone. Ultimately, and perhaps ironically, his honesty about the end-game is part of what contributed to the downfall of the movement. As genius as his pushing of the assault weapons issue was, as an incremental step along the way toward broader gun controls or gun bans, it was a bridge too far for many gun owners, and ultimately greatly contributed to the demise of his cause.

I’ve often found myself agreeing with Sugarmann on the ineffectiveness of half-measures proposed by many gun control advocates. But Sugarmann thinks you can ban guns, which as we’ve been pointing out, is being rendered a joke of an idea by advancing technology, and the emergence of international smuggling. It will be interesting to see how VPC and Brady fare in the post-Heller world. I think most of the gun control movement that was spawned out of the 70s, in the wake of the Gun Control Act, is fast coming to a close. It will be replaced by new groups like MAIG, who are going to be mostly focused on defending gun regulations in the few states controlled by their large cities. Grand dreams of prohibition are over.

… if the other side really is on the side of the criminal. I think it’s at least true that they have a deep and abiding hatred of gun owners who stand up for their rights, and refuse to be complicit in the disarmament of others.

I’m not even really sure what to make of this, but the outright bizarreness emanating from the Brady Center these days continues:

Umm, in 1963, Jack Kennedy was President, and given the choice, I’m pretty sure he’d rather have had the White House randomly sprayed by gunfire from a whack job with an SKS while he wasn’t home, than having his brains blown out in Dallas by a Castro-sympathizing sniper from a sixth floor window using a scoped Italian bolt action rifle.

And you have even more ridiculous nonsense from our opponents about the gun shooting two footballs fields! You’d think no one ever killed anyone before Simonov and Kalashnikov came along. Just be happy Hollywood movies have taught most random nuts to spray and pray. There was a time when they aimed. I worry more about the nut that aims, regardless of what type of firearm he has.