With Shannon Watts speaking about drawing 400 protestors out to Riverfront Park, we decided to take a walk down there to see whether she was living up to expectations. More importantly, given that last year at Indianapolis, Watts hired armed security, we were wondering whether she’d be dumb enough to bring armed security into parks while simultaneously lobbying against bringing guns into parks in Tennessee. She did have armed security, but they were police officers. Probably hired police officers, since I doubt you’d get that many without paying them. Must be nice to have Bloomberg’s money. I’d estimate about 150 people, which we know were bussed in.
We walked around almost as if we were tourists, and the women shouted out offers of free t-shirts to us just for walking around. The police officers, on the other hand, were trying to make sure they stayed away from the camera while keeping an eye out for the group. We overheard one officer telling the other he didn’t want to be in any camera shots since he didn’t want to really been seen with their cause. Instead, they started talking about gun shows on tv.
Hope you got at least one free shirt.
I hope they bathed well after being that close to them…
By all means, take the shirt. Use it as a gun oil rag.
“We overheard one officer telling the other he didn’t want to be in any camera shots since he didn’t want to really been seen with their cause. Instead, they started talking about gun shows on tv.”
Cracked me up!!
Somebody should tell bloomy that the mad moms are ripping him off. They said they’d have 400 but only showed up with 150. That’s just 2 bus loads. I wonder if the “organizer” just pocketed the money for 4 buses and walkin’ aroun’ money and meals for the 250 rent-a-mob that didn’t show?
OK, I think at least 10% of the people there were NRA members taking pictures of the MDAs: You and I guess Bitter, Gail and a friend, Bob Owens and at least five or six others engaging or just walking around from the pics Gail sent.
“Moms Demand Action”, sounds like a particularly nasty Personals ad on Craigslist or the like.
Someone, a better satirist than me, needs to write that one up with the MDA logo affixed thereon.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt on the “bussed in” protesters. After all, a large percentage of the people attending the NRA convention are, in effect, “self bussed in”.
The fact that they can only attract 150 protesters (or perhaps find 150 people willing to be paid to be seen with them) on the other hand is absolutely worthy of ridicule.
Maybe, but I bet there are more than 150 that live there. Probably more than MDA’s goal of 400.
And that’s why we shouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt on the “bussed in†protesters. In a city with a population of over half a million, and a metropolitan area with over 1.7 million people, they had to bus in outsiders just to get ~150 protesters, and still fell short of their goal of 400 people.
That’s just epic levels of failure, especially since they had Bloomer’s money available to try and get it right.
The best thing about this is that we’re getting to see the size of the gathering because Sebastian and Bitter showed up to take pictures. If the only source of pictures were from reporters, there’s a strong chance that all the pictures would have been taken in ways to obscure the lack of attendence!