There’s even an organization whose raison d’etre is promotion of open carry (see http://opencarry.org/). These are the shock troops of the gun lobby. And, they are not going away. We’re going to see more of them and we’ll be seeing increasing incidents of open carry, not just at big events for publicity, but at grocery stores, at concerts, on the street, in places of worship.
Shock troops? Hyperbole much?
The most important point, though, is that such open carrying of guns is a logical step in the gun lobby’s campaign to arm everyone everywhere. For, an armed society is one that will make the gun lobby’s patrons in the gun industry rich.
What color is the sky in Bryan’s world? I mean, this is a controversial issue even among gun people. A visit to any gun forum will reveal endless back and forth about open carry. But hey, why tell the truth when you can paint all this as a result of highly orchestrated shock troops marching to the beat of the fat men in the cigar filled room who are really calling all the shots.  What I wonder is whether Bryan actually believes this, or just believes this kind of rhetoric works.
If it’s the former, the fact that the gun control movement doesn’t have real grass roots could not be more apparent. If they did, they would also have these kinds of internal squabbles. As much as I might worry that some people are taking things too far, I’d rather have that problem than to have control over the message because no one really gives a shit about my issue. Hell, even the White House doesn’t want to touch this. That’s got to hurt if you’re Paul Helmke or Bryan Miller.
I like his last two paragraphs. Sounds of financial desperation to me.
Send me money so that we can keep open carry d.o.a. in NJ.
What I find interesting is that he doesn’t link to the Brady Campaign as a national organization looking to influence elections. Their (c)4 division definitely does issue endorsements. Is this yet another sign of the gun control movement dividing itself? The problem with that is Bloomberg will head one faction, and he has obscene amounts of money.
You know, the way things are shaping up, Bloomberg is going to be the primary force for gun control – I wonder if the Brady Campaign is going to woo him for Paul Helmke’s job when he finally rides those sleeping pills.
Brady is a defeated enemy. Bloomberg is the new enemy.
There is a militaryy adage that we always try to fight the last war. In this case the last enemy.Bloomberg is smart and will try various tactics.
It’s like the only thing they understand is financial motives and rich patrons controlling everything.
I suppose when that’s all you know (Joyce Foundation much?), that’s all you know…
Bryan Miller is right about one thing, the open carry types are the “shock troops” of our side. In terms of the renormalization of guns in American society … I’m beginning to think that they may be on to something, they may in fact turn out to be very important in winning the culture war we must> win.
They are, at the very least, not playing defense, which is necessary but if that’s the only thing we do, we’ll lose.
where’s my check from H&K Bryan Miller, you want to find it for me?
Y’know, if Bryan Miller would just drop that whole “the gun industry is behind it, I SWEAR!!!” schtick, he might just come off as being slightly more believable. As it is, the man is a damned parody of himself… to the extent that someone might almost think that someone hacked into his weblogging account and was doing his damnest to make Bryan look like a complete, blithering idiot.
Unfortunately, it would appear as though the man does an outstanding job of that by his very own lonesome. Could be worse, I guess – we could have an actually intelligent opponent. Unfortunately, in Bloomberg’s case, he will be able to buy intelligence.