Category: Guns

I noticed last night that OxFam has been on a big gun control kick on Twitter, complete with a hashtag and a petition fundraising page. The last few days have averaged about two tweets a day on the subject, and they get retweets in the range of 6-50+ per post. Of the posts I checked, most were retweeted by international folks or those who are professionals in organizations related to OxFam.

There’s nothing too exciting about the Twitter push, other than the fact that it is rooted in an effort designed to put pressure on President Obama to support more arms and ammunition control from the United Nations. They are creating snazzy little graphics to attract users on Pinterest. There is decidedly less interest on the predominantly female social network, garnering only 2-8 repins, with individual response rates significantly lower than their Twitter efforts. In fact, their attempt to use rather bloody imagery isn’t going over well on a site mostly known for crafting, recipe sharing, and wedding planning. (To be fair, their attempt to use heartstring-tugging imagery isn’t going over well, either.)

One of the OxFam talking points on the subject kind of made me laugh. They claim that arms “keep people in poverty.” Really? I do believe that my guns have managed to keep people gainfully employed. In fact, NSSF even released a study looking at the number of jobs offered by the firearms industry – that seems to be quite the opposite of keeping people in poverty. NSSF’s study should even make OxFam happy to see how much tax revenue the gun industry is generating since they are all about taxing the hell out of the American economy to fund domestic projects of other countries.

The funny thing about the efforts of OxFam and other gun control groups is how they are both demonizing NRA to build support while also saying that domestic gun rights groups simply don’t comprehend the UN arms treaty efforts. Take, for instance, this highlight from an article (emphasis added):

Predictably, the UN negotiations have attracted the attention of gun rights organizations. And that in turn has got some folks on Capitol Hill engaged. For the most part, the fears articulated by these voices are untethered from the actual substance of the negotiations, which will not include domestic arms productions and transfer. …

At the New York roundtable, I had an exchange with Jeff Abramson, who coordinates the civil society effort on the issue. While insisting that NGOs would not support a deeply flawed treaty, he argued that even an imperfect document may change international norms and facilitate domestic steps against dangerous arms transfers.

Got that? Gun rights groups are wrong because it isn’t about trying to control domestic transfers of firearms. However, the hope is that even a weak treaty will create a slippery slope to control domestic transfers.

The sad thing is that just like domestic gun control groups selling false promises of a crime-free society if we would only pass one more anti-gun law, the international groups are handing out false promises to gather names and contact information they will no doubt ultimately use for fundraising. One group has a setup that allows people to auto tweet their “signature” for the petition with a claim that their online click “just set a child soldier free.” No, it didn’t.

It’s all really quite sad in some ways, but far more interesting to observe than the email chains that often transmit the pro-rights information to pro-gun networks.

An opportunity to bash the National Rifle Association and those of us who defend the rights and liberties they died for. And how are these people good Americans again, exactly?

All Nine Yards takes a look at a recent round of belt tightening by the City of Orlando, which apparently  included laying off 400 city employees. This did not include the MAIG coordinator.

Josh Horwitz, the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, throws in a pinch of worry in the debate over Marissa Alexander in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, with a dash of outrage:

Third, and most disturbing, the current debate over Marissa Alexander serves only to further the interests of the National Rifle Association. They must be sitting in their high-rise offices in Fairfax, Va., marveling at how they created a country where even political moderates are now arguing for a wider application of their “Kill at Will” philosophy.

I can’t speak for the folks in Fairfax, but I’m certainly marveling over how thoroughly organizations like CSGV and Brady have lost this debate. Even Bloomberg is afraid to drag MAIG directly into it, and is instead attacking Stand Your Ground under his own auspices.

I ultimately agree with Horwitz’s conclusion that Alexander’s motion for immunity was properly denied, and will even go so far as to join them on the ridiculousness of the mandatory minimum. But it still bowls me over that, in the wake of failure after failure, guys like Horwitz just keep wanting to recycle the same tired arguments, and the same, overheated, over-the-top rhetoric. This was a tragedy practically custom made for them, and they still got no traction on it. Public support for Stand Your Ground is still pretty high.

Our opponents were used to a media environment where they could grab hold of the narrative and drive it as far as they like, but that does not work in the world we live in now. The funny thing is, no one can control it for long, not even us. But for some reason that’s strengthened our hand, and severely weakened theirs.

The Onion has put out some funny stuff over the years, even on our own issue. I can have a pretty good sense of humor about these things. This bit of parody of the NRA, for instance, is hilarious. But this latest bit from them isn’t even parody. It isn’t even funny. in fact, it’s pretty sick, if you ask me. It’s one thing to parody NRA, it’s quite another to make humor out of mass murder.