Linoge details instances of left-leaning calls for boycotts of businesses that don’t agree with their political viewpoint. Apparently it’s OK when they do it, but when we knuckle dragging, cousin humping, gun loving rednecks do the same thing to Cooper Firearms, it’s McCarthyism.
Category: Guns
Jim Shepherd on The Cooper Incident
Jim has an interesting take on the events of last week at the bottom of Today’s Shooting Wire. I agree with his observation:
As I said, Cooper exercised his individual right to support a candidate. Unfortunately, his making that choice very public had very public consequences. When asked if I felt it “right” my response was simple “Is it right? It just is. It’s the way it works. It’s absolutism.”
It’s not right, it just is. That’s a pretty good way to describe it.
Reasoned Discourse
Nice comments going on in this thread.
I still don’t understand the gun nut element. I have own a substantial number of firearms for my entire adult life and have never once worried that anyone was going to come to my front door and ask me to turn them in. What is this paranoia?
“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them — Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in — I would have done it.” – Senator Diane Feinstein. Maybe because you haven’t been paying attention for the past 20 years.
This is how fucktarded they’ve become. A guy who founded a gun company isn’t safe from the knuckledraggers. I just hope he got the world’s biggest platinum parachute.
But I thought golden parachute were horrible? Oh yeah, only when it’s CEOs of big bad evil corporations. I’m not up on the difference yet, I guess.
Fucking stupid. Republicans would cut off their noses to spit their faces. If he had endorsed McCain and Palin, nothing would have happened. But one utterance of support for a Democrat (especially Obama) and it is over for him.
Is There Anything Wrong With “Sportsmen?”
I think some people take exception to being lumped in under the “Sportsmen” moniker. I don’t really think there’s anything sinister at work here, so much as it’s a reasonable moniker under which to put the coalition of hunters and shooters. You’re not going to have “Shooters for Blandidate,” because, quite honestly, there are a lot of people out there that have no idea what a shooter is, and some people who think it’s a guy on a street corner fighting over drug turf. You could try “Sport Shooters for Blandidate,” and leave out hunters, or you could do “Hunters for Blandidate,” and leave out shooters.
So what’s your blandidate for office to do? I mean, you could get really ridiculous with coalitions, and do “Concealed Carry Permit Holders for Blandidate,” which could work, if people knew what that was, and there were actually votes there. Or even more niche with “AR-15 Enthusiasts for Blandidate,” which is an even smaller subset.
So we’re stuck with the “Sportsmen” moniker. You might not like it, but that’s your coalition. If you want a different one, you’ll have to get a lot of people to vote under it, and work hard for it. If you want to try that path… may you have better luck than me. As it is, it’s difficult ot even get people motivated under the Sportsmen moniker. Further subdivision just dilutes our political power. And I say this as someone who’s never hunted, and has to listen to more than a few hunting stories as a “Sportsmen for McCain” volunteer.
Hate of the Day
Better than quote of the day, I now bring you hate of the day:
Having known Cooper personally for many years, its funny reading the cr*p on this site. All you homos can sit in the closet with your $99 winchester and stroke it thinking about how great it would be if Sarah Palin was president. Having been a life-long republican, you idiots don’t have enough higher brain function to see that you’ve been sold-out by your own party. It’s not Coopers fault that you choose not to see it… you’re as retarded as Palins youngest child.
Stay classy! I would note the IP address resolves to a location in Westchester County, which is right outside of New York City. It would be interesting to know how he knows Dan Cooper. It would be interesting to know where I can find a $99 dollar Winchester these days. I doubt this guy knows Dan Cooper. I would hope that anyone in Montana would find using Palin’s Down Syndrome afflicted son as a tool to insult gun owners reprehensible. I’ve been to Montana, and I think folks there, on the whole, are better than that.
Global Arms Treaty
Britain’s UN Ambassador John Sawers welcomed adoption of the text and expressed hope that the next US administration will reconsider its opposition to the proposed Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) “to ensure that the arms trade lives up to standards we believe all responsible exporting countries should aspire to.”
Let’s hope we head off that possibility on Tuesday.
Election Message from Wayne & Chris
To summarize, make sure to get out and vote. Barack Obama is bad on guns.
About Those Obama Supporting Sportsmen
I honestly wonder how many of the folks like Dan Cooper, and some of the people on here who have come on claiming to be hunters and gun owners, have really been paying attention to the issue, his record, and who’s been endorsing him. I mean, when a supposed hunters groups like American Hunters and Shooters Association comes out and says he’s their guy, and then the radical anti-hunting group like Humane Society of the United States comes out and says the same thing, alarm bells should be going off if you’re a hunter. If you’re a gun owner or shooter, the Brady Campaign endorsement should tell you something.
I have to conclude it’s just willful ignorance.  I understand people not being a single issue voter. There are a lot of gun owners out there who don’t self-identify as such — they vote primarily on other issues. That’s something I understand, even if I would emplore them to rank the Bill of Rights higher on their priority list. But Obama is awful on guns. His record makes that abundantly clear. If you care about the Second Amendment, how can you possibly claim that you support Obama? Don’t tell me what he’s saying now, in order to get elected: Tell me when in his career he’s supported the right to keep and bear arms. You can’t. Because it’s not there. It’s not only not there, Obama has spent most of his career trying to destroy the Second Amendment.
So, Obama supporting visitors, I challenge you to convince me what Barack Obama has done for the Second Amendment to support and preserve it. Don’t recite his campaign trail talking points. Find me one thing in his record that indicates he supports the Second Amendment. Then tell me why Dan Cooper, as a guy who makes his living manufacturing firearms, isn’t of his rocker for getting behind Obama. It might be his right to vote against his self-interest, but voting against the self-interest of his employees and customers? That’s not forgivable.
It’s That Big Bad NRA Again
AHSA is apparently blaming NRA for Cooper’s ouster. First I heard anything from NRA on this one was Andrew’s comment in the USA Today article I linked to that mentioned me. It continues to amaze me how much these groups think NRA is capable of. Even if NRA were handing us marching orders, it would have to go through six different lawyers and layers of approval, to make sure no campaign finance laws were broken, and various other things, before it even got to us. Those of us in the blogosphere saw this, and brought attention to it. The rest was entirely grass roots:
Today, on behalf of the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), I condemned the actions by the NRA and its cronies forcing Dan Cooper out.
The gun lobby’s attempt to destroy a good man and small business owner, a loyal member of the gun fraternity, again reveals the desperate Joe McCarthy-like politics of fear that the NRA leadership and others put first. They are trying to scare America’s hunters and shooters into voting against Barack Obama — but we have one thing to say: vote hope and not fear.
We’re not the “gun lobby.” We’re people who care about the Second Amendment, and when it comes to Barack Obama’s record on that issue, we’re not spreading fear, we’re spreading the truth. Who are you going to believe? Those of us who actually hunt and shoot, or a guy who runs a supposed “Hunters and Shooters” group who has donated $5000 to Handgun Control Inc.
We Must Hang Together …
… you know the rest. I wanted to comment on a few things:
Fuck the Fudds.
They have been selling our gun rights down the river for the last 50 years.
They are ones who have allowed the anti-gun politicans to get away with the lie that the 2nd Amendement is about hunting.
I am on record supporting the banning of all Hunting Firearms that don’t have a self-defense purpose. Kill Bambi with your teeth, Hunters, if you can. The 2nd Amendment enumerates your right to self-defense, not some diaphonous right to shoot pheasants tied up in little cages under bushes that the guide releases when you get close.
All this is doing is helping the gun control folks is pull on the pry bars that they’ve wedged into the fissures of this movement. This is exactly the attitude that I jumped on Dan Cooper for, just coming from our side instaed of his. Understand that we need hunters in the gun movement. As many as we can get. We do not have the numbers to stand individually on our own, so that means we need to support the “fudds” even if all of them don’t always support us.
We have the data, and the arguments, to show that hunting is in every bit as much danger, and perhaps more, as gun rights are. Hunters may soon come to find they need us more than we need them. When it comes to that, we need to stand by them. The proper remedy is to convince hunters their interests lie with ours, and divisive language isn’t going to help achieve that.
Let the gun control people work the pry bars, we should be out there with cement trowels trying to smooth things over, not actively helping work the fissure.