I thought this would be an appropriate title to reflect my “bunker mentality.” The Brady Campaign has fired a salvo in our direction. Like I said, we have the inherent disadvantage of having our disagreements out in the open where everyone can see it. Fortunately for us, the only people who read the Brady Blog are gun nuts.
I will not take exception to the Brady Campaign trying to paint us as extremist. I would expect nothing less from them. But I do take exception to the notion that the topic of revolt isn’t a legitimate one, not deserving of being seriously addressed. How many dangerous ideas throughout history have taken root because people dismissed them as nonsense? There are people out there who, misguidedly, in my opinion, believe our Republic is a lost cause. I do not share this sentiment, but it’s out there. I don’t think dismissing it outright is a productive way of dealing with it.
Well, at least you know that the Brady Bunch reads you and many of the blogs linked here (Robb, Kevin).
They do… they’d be fools not to.
In addition to reading, they are also paying attention, as per the tinyurl links. Something tells me someone over there has figured out how Google works.
I think they might have found an exceptionally good intern for the summer. I didn’t TinyURL my link to them this one. Actually, I’m not sure how much that’s really accomplishing, in terms of keeping their google rank down.
Hey Sebastian … they tinyurl’d you – you might want to extend the same courtesy. :-)
I think there’s a line somewhere – I don’t know where it is personally. While I see good in bad in both sets of arguments that you and others have made, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to talk about it regardless of the parties in the discussion. There is a line to be crossed, but nobody has started shooting.
The Brady Bunch are twits who are just now finding themselves increasingly ignored. That they have to fire a shot across your bow isn’t at all a bad thing.
I think the interesting thing is, they provided enough context, I think, for people to tell that I was calling a bluff; suggesting that folks who poo pooed the idea of political engagement, because they were waiting for the right time to “shoot the bastards” were just making excuses, and were serious about neither.
They could have just taken what I said out of context, and left it at that. I wonder if my statement will end up in a Brady fundraiser mailing. That would amuse me.
I wonder why they won’t allow comments. Seems pretty cowardly to me. Don’t they want their loyal readers to be able to comment on the atrocities they show on their site?
Because the last time they allowed comments, people were swapping reloading tips, and talking about their favorite guns.
HAHAHAHA That’s funny. Didn’t it strike them as peculiar that their own people weren’t commenting??
Well, there was Kelli…. and that Macca woman who turned out to be one of their board members.
The topic of revolt isn’t a legitimate one?? What do they think the entire Obama campaign is built upon?
So, if the Brady bunch is reading a bunch of gun blogs I’ll have to stop thinking of them as ignorant. Now I know they are just deceitful.
?TinyURL??? (Raises hand from the back row of the class) what’s a TinyURL?
I am somewhat confused?
What is the big deal about someone infiltrating anti-gun lobby groups? As the Brady Campaign’s own post admits, they’ve been doing the same. Why is it an affront when gun right advocates do it? But not when they go undercover at Gun Shows, or when twirps like Michael Moore mis-represent themselves so they can harass old men like Charlton Heston?
As for when to rise up, and why people don’t? I think because we feel alone. For example, I think there are lots of people who would rise up if that time came. In fact, I think there are quite a few who would if there were a 100 other men joining them.
Heck, I know a lot of us wish there were enough of us to break Ramos and Compean out of prison. But alone…we’re cowards, right? Wrong…
We’re Chess strategists, we know that alone we can accomplish very little. Meanwhile, we will lose all – life, liberty, pursuit of happyness, families, loved ones, etc.
Two additional problems exist:
I. Most Americans are just like the government (fat, lazy, in debt, apathetic). And frankly, they by far outnumber every other demographic in this nation (pro gun, anti-gun, minority, christian, homosexual are all small token groups compared to “apathetic american”.)
II. Assurance or even probability of a better world. And I think this is the biggie. Say that 3% actually did get mobilized over an issue. Say they stormed and even took Washington – what next? You can’t make everyone happy. And you can’t get everyone to agree with you. That leaves any new regime requiring the use of force on civilians. Few of us want to go there, and it’s exactly in opposition to what we believe. Freedom to live. About the only way such could be pulled off is if you had a focal point so conducive (ie: British regulars harassing, terrorizing and murdering citizens) so as to create a majority uniformness within the active populace. And the issue is substantial enough that the vast “apathetica” is willing to allow it’s occurrence to see what happens.
This is essentially what happened in the American Revolution. Enough crap happened that the “active citizens” were mobilized into a majority form. Yes, there were those who sided with the British but they were less so and they lost ground quickly as the British acts against the people continued to increase. Meanwhile, there were a great number of Americans that were part of the “apathetica”. They continued to lack mobility. However, the situation had reached a point that their apathy was no longer opposed to a change in the status quo. One could say a casual curiosity existed. Until the movement became the new status quo.
We would need similar situations to occur. I truly think the closest we could come to some sort of revolution would be localized. (ie: There are some native american activists who seek to establish a new nation in the north east midwest. I could see there being enough of a movement united with such to lead to some Montana/Dakota establishment.) Where the American “apathetica” would find the bloodshed to distasteful in their own backyard. Such an event might work….
In truth, I am worried that military technology being developed thanks to the war in Iraq will soon leave such small arms as we are allowed as near impotent. I don’t think we’ll see their like in use in Iraq but decades later the research now will come to fruitation.
Jack – TinyURL is a site: http://www.tinyurl.com that allows you to link to something with a cloaked URL. Instead of linking directly to the Brady Bunch, you can cloak that link in order to not help with their Google rankings. I don’t know if it makes much of an impact.
“I think they might have found an exceptionally good intern for the summer.”
I’ll lay 4:1 it’s Pennington doing the blogging.
You might be right. What made me think intern was their blog didn’t start getting smart until about the time college let out for the summer.
“Has a “bunker paranoia†gripped the NRA leadership, so clouding their judgment as to justify the moral bankruptcy of spying on gun violence victims and their families?”
Has? I thought in their world of ludicrous conspiracy theories that was the way we have always been! I thought that we were all paranoid militia types who have hunting racks in our Ford F-150’s and go around declaring armed revolt anytime someone mentions Sarah Brady! Geez these guys better get with the program; doesn’t anyone subscribe to the the NY Times?!
LOL!
” I wonder if my statement will end up in a Brady fundraiser mailing. That would amuse me.”
Who would they send it to? The Joyce Foundation? LOL!
I picked an awful day to have my server crash, didn’t I?
Man, I’d have had like 2 or 3 more hits from them!
Interestingly, when I made my post about seeing a poor future for our republic yesterday, nearly everyone in the comments section went on at length about gun rights. That’s a problem, from where I see it.
The state I just left, Tennessee, has some of the better gun laws in the nation. Reasonable CCW, NFA weapons are okay, no special permits required to own or purchase, et cetera. In fact, its gun laws have been steadily getting better over the last ten years, with constantly loosening restrictions on CCW and other victories.
On the other hand, it’s seen confiscatory increases in taxes, draconian smoking laws, red light cameras, all on the state level, as well as all the plethora of post 9/11 fed.gov intrusiveness. Children pass through metal detectors as they carry their clear or mesh bookbags to school.
I can see an America in ten or twenty years where we have a national ID card with biometrics and an integral RFID chip, asset forfeiture is still rampant, we’re still losing a never-ending War on Drugs, tobacco and trans-fats are banned, minimum wage is $10/hr, and taxes are at European levels to support a European-style public health system…
…but we have national CCW reciprocity.
We’re winning on the gun front. What about the other fronts?
my favorite part of their entire article was when they say that a majority (they even give percentages) of the people support registration…
guess what geniuses, a majority of the people once supported slavery… that didn’t make it right.
a majority of the people also once supported the trail of tears… that didnt make it right, in fact, it was ruled as unconstitutional by the SCOTUS.
There’s quite alot we can do alone, as individuals to break the system without having to resort to “shooting the bastards.”
When your back is against the wall, everything is a weapon. The more time and resources LEOs and politicicians spend responding to false calls and fixing broken shit, the less time they have to worry about us.
Case in point. The Brady Bunch is now spending time and resources looking for hidden bugs and spyware instead of pissing on the Bill of Rights.
They’re occupied for a little while. Same concept applies to authorities who abuse their power which is derived from “We the People.”
Case in point. If only 10% of people who get a speeding ticket plead not guilty and take it to trial, the traffic court system would collapse under its own weight.
We don’t need to start shooting to have a revolution in this country, we just need to think about what would a power-hungry dim-whitted dictator want me to do, and then do the exact opposite. Use that image as a reverse barometer.
Kinda like going out and buying every gun Helmke rants about. If he hates it, I put it on the shopping list.
Oh I almost forgot.
This is for you Mr. Helmke.
The only reason Kelli posts on your blog is because YOU CALLED ON HER SPECIFICALLY to come and defend you. You two are friends and you’re using her as a human shield.
I know this to be true and yes I have evidence. Now ask yourself how did I get that.
BOO!
YOU CALLED ON HER SPECIFICALLY to come and defend you
You sure he called her?
Oh Nooos! The Brady bunch is spying on gun blobbers! They’re gonna find out all our super secretz!
Ironic how certain titles are 180 degrees from their effect, ie. Patriot Act, Fairness Doctrine and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
While the Brady Campaign’s stated mission is to prevent gun violence, through their efforts to undermine the 2nd Amendment, they are making gun violence MORE likely as they push policies designed to disarm the law-abiding, and they become domestic enemies of those sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the U.S.
“YOU CALLED ON HER SPECIFICALLY to come and defend you
You sure he called her?”
Yes I am.
Maybe Kelli is a spy ;)
You know, oppo research and general “know thy enemy” efforts are as old as the human race. There’s nothing particularly unsavory about insinuating oneself among one’s political enemies to get a better bead on how they roll. Misrepresenting oneself in order to accomplish that is somewhat less above-board, but it’s hardly some Original Sin of politics. Words like “astroturf” and “false flag” exist in our political lexicon for a reason, and worthless assholes like John Rosenthal have been misrepresenting themselves as mainstream gun owners since time immemorial.
So when I read the Brady Bunch dialing the Outrage-O-Meter up to a Nigel Tufnel 11 over the Mary Lou McFate thing, I kinda gotta wonder to myself:
Which side has the “bunker mentality”, again?
For people misrepresenting themselves you don’t need to look any further than the American Hunters, Shooters, etc. etc. whatever they’re called. I forget the acronym. Something like ASSHAT, if I remember right.
The Brady Campaign has an overdeveloped sense of worth. They’re surrounded by people telling them they’re saving lives, yet half of their top-graded states contain more violence than many of their lowest-graded states. They are irrelevancy incarnate.
All I know is that if they are reading all the gun blogs, they ain’t getting shit-else done!
The Brady Bunch would do well to notice that there are those of us out there in the Real World that would die in defense of what we believe in.
The True Believer gun grabbers do not have such a deep conviction in their beliefs.
In fact, I believe “gun control” will be morph into the lunatic fringe it rightly is when it’s willing accomplices in the Media gradually loose their relevancy due to loss of a believing audience.
All I know is that if they are reading all the gun blogs, they ain’t getting shit-else done!
That hits a little close to home, Carl ;-).
We don’t need to start shooting to have a revolution in this country, we just need to think about what would a power-hungry dim-whitted dictator want me to do, and then do the exact opposite. Use that image as a reverse barometer.
Oh, I liiiike this.