Category: Guns

If you’re “Fundraising Success Magazine,” and you’re interviewing Josh Horwitz, unless the topic is called “How to Suckle at the Teat of a Large Foundational Donor,” you must be really hard up for material. But nonetheless, they talk to Josh at some length.

Quickly in the interview, Horwitz dives right into his strengths, mentioning “the Ed Fund is an incredibly lean organization,” and that, “[w]e were able to cut overhead expenses drastically over the past few years, and we successfully run a wide range of violence prevention programs on a tight budget.” He naturally does not reveal that some of the “violence prevention programs” involve berating second stringers in the gun rights movement, and then going so far overboard that they were suspended by Twitter for violations of terms of use. But either way, I’m sure they saved a lot of money during the period their Twitter account was suspended, so it does fit with the narrative, I suppose.

The folks at CSGV are at least in good spirits right? Well, maybe not so much. “[T]he gun violence prevention issue can be demoralizing,” Horwitz notes, though he is clearly proud of his, “strong social-media presence that is growing every day.” Fortunately for him, the readers of Fundraising Success Magazine will never know that Josh’s cadre of New Media allies are among the best lunatics and whakjobs the left has to offer, most of whom are likely too busy pooping in Zuccotti Park to think much about donating to EFSGV or CSGV.

One advantage of not having much in the way of real donors, is that you can give them personal attention,. “[W]e have had some significant success in inspiring longtime direct-mail donors to increase their giving through this more individualized approach. Personal attention to donors and connecting with prospective donors in person or on the phone has been the key.” So NRA members, when was the last time you got a call from Wayne for sending a few bucks NRA’s way? Any SAF members get a call from Alan Gottlieb lately?

And of course, you can’t talk to Josh Horwitz without at least one of their standard propaganda bits slipping out. “Another fundraising difficulty is the obvious resource disparity between the gun violence prevention movement and the industry-funded gun lobby.” NRA doesn’t have this “personal touch” philosophy when it comes to fundraising, because there’s no way they could do this over millions of members, which accounts for the vast majority of their fundraising. But Josh has to be the David fighting the Goliath. It’s probably a lot easier to sleep at night if you think you’re fighting evil corporations, rather than merely being a sour busybody inserting your nose into the personal business of millions and millions of fellow Americans.

For those of you familiar with the Wikipedia culture, it occurs to me that MAIG’s Wikipedia page is pretty poor. Wikipedia pages are supposed to be factual, not promotion material for the organization. Some changes I would suggest:

• It should be clear they are an organization that advocates gun control. Don’t let them get away with the “common sense” bullshit. What they propose is little different from the Brady Campaign or the other gun control groups.
• Is should have a criticism section, rather than just “Opposition from the NRA,” with NRA’s criticism included in that, but I’d also mention some of their members criminal tendencies.
• When it comes to what they advocate for, there should be a good mix of what they say, what we say, and what the facts are. They are not entitled to their own sets of facts. Be sure to find citations. For instance, it should be more clearly noted that police groups, including the ATF, oppose repealing Tiahrt.

Don’t let them turn their Wikipedia page into a propaganda tool. Wikipedia actually frowns on that, and if you keep things balanced, and factual, you can win. At the least, it forces MAIG to spend resources fighting with us and Wikipedia. Even if HR822 ultimately fails (given the makeup of the Senate, and the occupant of the White House, it probably will in this Congress), it’s forcing our opponents to spend significant resources. The more fronts we can engage them on, the less resources they will have when the final push comes. This is a clash of wills, and ours must be stronger for longer if we’re going to prevail in the end.

Now there’s a petition at the White House site calling for the defeat of HR822, started by Philadelphia’s police chief, and it’s way ahead of ours. Nearly all the signatures are from California, which makes me wonder if the this was put out to a very large list. I questioned whether the Brady Campaign can have that kind of impact, which makes me wonder if OFA is using some of their reach. This was launched October 11th, and it already has double our number of signatures? I’ve been around this issue a long time, and I’ve never seen our opponents display that kind of grassroots power.

I’m not saying the signatures are necessarily bogus, but someone is a lot more powerful and with more reach than our opponents is either promoting this, or someone is playing games. Either way, we have to get our game on and counter this.

UPDATE: Judging from this, it looks like MAIG is behind this drive, and they are pulling out all the stops. This is quite good for us, because it means that our opponents have pulled out all the stops just to deal with our little guerrilla petition drive. It’s worth noting that NRA won’t throw its weight behind a White House push until there’s a bill on his desk. Surely we can think of other ways to spread our opponents thin as the debate on HR822 really heats up?

BTW, if this is all MAIG driven activity, that’s further evidence they are the real deal, and will be supplanting the hecklers at Brady, CSGV and VPC as our primary, and most dangerous opponents.

UPDATE: At the rate new signatures are being added, I’m really curious what method is being used to promote this. A quick search of the Internet only reveals the letter from Michael Nutter. Maybe they are hitting up people at the anti-gun range, and asking them to sign.

UPDATE: Bitter thinks it might be they are using e-mail lists, perhaps ones they rented or purchased. If you see one of these in the wild, please forward it to me.