The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
So if Moms Against Guns is not a non-profit group, and is a corporation, what is the deal behind Clear Channel Outdoors and Interstate Outdoor Advertising donating billboards to them? Are these two companies aware they just made a major donation to a for-profit corporation?
That would lead me to believe that Clear Channel Outdoors and Interstate Outdoor Advertising are simply going out of their way to screw Pennsylvania gun owners in the November 2008 elections.
Yesterday we reviewed the very large donation by Clear Channel Outdoors and Interstate Advertising to Moms Against Guns. MAG is incorporated as a non-profit under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS tax code. [UPDATE: They are not incorporated as a 501(c)(3), but rather, as a limited liability company. In other words, they are a for-profit corporation. This is very very unusual, needless to say.] This essentially means that MAG is limited in the amount of lobbying activity it may do. Typically these may not exceed 15% of donations. Electioneering on the part of a (c)(3) is completely forbidden by the IRS tax codes.
I would note from the Inquirer article yesterday:
The billboards will stay up through November’s elections – just long enough, the group says, for voters to elect candidates willing to crack down on illegal guns.
This is electioneering under IRS rules because they are trying to influence the outcome of elections. Also from the article:
The group is working on getting 50,000 signatures for a petition on its Web site (http://www.momsagainstguns.org) urging state lawmakers to pass tougher gun laws. The petition has nearly 4,500 so far.
Petitioning the legislature would probably be considered lobbying by the IRS, which means the billboards are meant to get people to sign the petition, and fall under the category of lobbying. It’s worth noting that the going market rate for these billboards is considered the amount of the donation being made to MAG on the part of Clear Channel and Interstate. This means if this amount is in excess of about fifteen MAG’s total donations for the year, they are in violation of the tax codes.
This is important, because gun rights groups follow the rules on these matters, so MAG is abusing its tax status to get an unfair leg up in an election they, by law, should not even be participating in. The IRS is currently cracking down on this kind of abuse under it’s Political Activities Compliance Initiative. I’m going to ask everyone to please visit the IRS website that has the information required to report violations by tax exempt organizations, and report Moms Against Guns.
If MAG gets their 501(c)(3) tax status revoked, they will be forced to track down all their donors, and inform them that their donations for the year will not be tax deductible. This is usually the kiss of death for a non-profit. You have a chance here to contribute to killing off a gun control group, folks. The gun control groups love to try to pass laws that subject the shooting community to poking and prodding by government agents. When the IRS is probing into orafices MAG was never even aware they had, you can sit back and enjoy the fact that they’ve had a taste of their own medicine.
UPDATE: Hold on Folks. We may have all been mislead here.  MAG seems to be incorporated as a business entity rather than a non-profit charity.
UPDATE: Yes, Moms Against Guns is a corporation, not a non-profit.
UPDATE: See this post.
NRA-PVF has gotten behind the campaign of Monica Douglas, who is attempting to unseat Representative David Levdansky. We hope Ms. Douglas is successful in her bid, because it would be a huge boost for gun rights in Pennsylvania.
If you would like to volunteer for her campaign, and I think you should if you can, you can go here.
In the Chicago Tribune. It’s easy to raise money when everyone thinks you’re the local animal shelter, rather than a radical animal rights activist group.
Instapundit, and some of our Philadelphia area bloggers have been covering the fact that the New York Times refused to run an op-ed by John McCain despite running one by Obama. You have to wonder about the judgement of a newspaper jerking around a Senator who has displayed not too strong a penchant for respecting the first amendment. Paybacks can be hell for crossing McCain. Just ask NRA.
We need to make sure this guy never gets on the board. Pat Wray has been highlighted on the gun blogosphere before when he stood up for Jim Zumbo’s statements about “assault weapons”. Needless to say, he’d be a long shot. He’d have to run by petition, because there’s no way the nominating committee is going to give him space on the ballot, but keep in mind, there are NRA members who don’t know much about Wray, other than his outdoor writings. It’s never a good idea to take this stuff for granted, so I’m glad Bitter found this tidbit.
Mom’s Against Guns are being given free billboards in Philadelphia:
The billboards come free from Clear Channel Outdoor Philadelphia and Interstate Outdoor Advertising, two locally based firms.
“We didn’t think a billboard was going to make a difference,” said Drew Katz, chief executive officer of Interstate. “Thirty billboards might make a difference.”
The slew of billboards reflects a sense of urgency as gun violence continues to claim lives.
Here’s contact information for Clear Channel Outdoors. Here is the contact information for Interstate Outdoor Advertising. Be sure to let them know you think if they are going to give free advertising space to gun control groups they should offer the same to gun rights organizations like the NRA Foundation.  Be sure to spread this around the forums too, we certainly want these two companies to feel the heat.
UPDATE: Bitter is looking for more ideas for billboard advertising.
A great article in the Boston Globe about Olympic shooter Stephen Scherer, which is very fair to the shooting sports, and presents it in a positive light.
Armed and Safe takes issue with Uncle’s old post about a certain demographic of people who, politically, it is unwise to frighten. It is correct in one respect, that if we merely defer to people’s comfort level, we’ll end up like gun owners in the United Kingdom, who constantly did so, until that comfort level dropped to the point where sharp pointy things drive their political elite into hysterics. We absolutely can’t defer to people’s discomfort when that discomfort is caused by ignorance and unfamiliarity, as is quite often the case with our cause.
The problem we ultimately face is, more than half our population fall into the category of being completely ignorant of firearms, and the broader culture that surrounds them. In a representative form of government, this means we’re dependent on the acquiescence of this majority for the continued protection of that right. If we lose that acquiescence, even the second amendment will not practically be a barrier to them.
I see no reason to increase the inevitability of that by essentially writing off the majority of the population as unpersuadable and uneducatable, by not thinking about how to tailor the pro-gun and pro-self-defense message so that a majority buy-in to our ideas. If changes in polling on support for gun control and gun rights are any indication, 9/11 and Katrina did quite a lot to convince Americans of the need for self-protection. The gun rights side of the argument has been advancing, as people have seen Americans face situations where having a firearm might have been useful.
Uncle’s admonition shouldn’t be taken as a call to never push the boundaries, but it does suggest that attempting to crash through them can lead to disaster politically. The Civil Rights Movement committed to changing hearts and minds, and changing their political fortunes by working within the system. It is a tragedy that the role armed self-defense played in the Civil Rights Movement has largely been lost to history. We have to tell that part of the story. But if the Black Panthers, who called for settling the issue through violence, had been the public face of the Civil Rights Movement, it would not have garnered the support it needed from mainstream Americans in order to get the landmark civil rights rulings, and subsequent civil rights acts.
In a functional and stable Republic, which largely respects the basic rights of its people, the population is going to abhor violence, or the threat of violence, as a means to solve political problems. We’ve seen how well that type of system works in Iraq and Afghanistan. There has to be a balance in the gun rights movement between our public rhetoric and our private beliefs. If someone wants to polish their marksmanship, or learn about explosives, shaped charges, infantry tactics, and various other subjects, I think that’s their right as a free person. But the moment the public believes we gun folks are learning these things to use violence as a political tool they are going to want to disarm us all in order to preserve the stability of The Republic.