Month: April 2011

At this point, I think Paul Helmke probably wishes it were a beer summit, because at least then he could have gotten a free beer out of it, and maybe met the President. We initially were quite skeptical of Brady claims of success from the summit. With this report in the Washington Post, that skepticism would seem to have been warranted:

But the official the advocates wanted to hear from most stayed mostly quiet.

The silence of Steve Croley, the White House’s point man on gun regulation policy, echoes the decision by Democrats to remain mute on guns as a national issue, even in the wake of the Tucson rampage.

They later go on to say:

One area in which Croley has shown less interest, according to several people who have spoken with him about the issue, is restricting the large-volume ammunition magazines that allowed the Tucson shooter to keep firing. When Paul Helmke, director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, broached the subject during the March 15 gathering with Croley, officials promptly adjourned the meeting.

That adds more evidence that the “assault clip” effort is just the latest ridiculousness from the other side. Though I strongly believe they have given up on passing legislation at this point, and are focusing almost exclusively on testing issues based on their ability to attract media attention, followers, and most importantly donations. Read the whole Washington Post article. This makes me seriously question why Brady is even keeping around a 501(c)(4). They are in hearts and minds territory at this point, and that’s not anything you need a (c)(4) non-profit to accomplish.

CSGV is blasting some bloggers, including Joe Huffman, for, as best as I can summarize being mean to Joan Peterson. They particularly seemed incensed by Link P’s assertion:

“Peterson is no survivor of gun violence.  Her sister was murdered by her criminal brother in law. She wasn’t even there.

This isn’t something I would have ever said to Joan, because I think her grief is genuine and real, and I wouldn’t want to appear to be diminishing it or trivializing it. But I’m also not sure why Link’s statement is fundamentally wrong as a matter of how we generally think about these things.

Those who have been reading for a while know my mother died of breast cancer when I was 20 years old. She was diagnosed in my early teens and spent about 8 years fighting a losing battle against the disease. So I not only know what it’s like to lose a loved one, I know what it’s like to watch them slowly die and deteriorate over a period of years.

But yet the title of this post would make you think I had cancer, had beat cancer, or had otherwise somehow been directly victimized by it. By the same token, if I had said I was a suicide victim, it might make you wonder if I had tried it, or was giving a new definition to the term “ghost writing.” Usually when we speak in the context of victimhood, we assume a direct association with the person who was victimized. If your sister was raped, you’d say your sister was a victim of rape. You wouldn’t say you were a victim of rape. People would naturally assume that meant you yourself were raped.

There’s a lot of religion in this issue, on both sides. I don’t mean literal religion, but figurative, in the sense that the same kind of devotions, faiths, heresies, dogmas and scriptures are at work at a very fundamental level. But our religion is the role firearms play within the American cultural and political framework. It is heresy to the other side, because their religion centers around victimhood. Victimhood, to us, is heresy. Or at least the type of victimhood their religion centers around is. In short, Link was questioning Joan’s religion, and while that’s never polite, I can’t be so quick to say it’s incorrect. If it is, then I’m a cancer victim.

Clearly we must rid of world of this menace, which waste our most precious resources. I can see no use for such pretentiousness, such gaudiness, and such… Frenchness. These Dassault Clip have no use other than to make it hurt a lot more if you fall into someone and jab them with the tail fin. Call your Congressman now. Only trained pilots and aviation mechanics should have these dangerous clips.

I’m thinking of a little Photoshop play on the Brady’s new term might be in order for folks out there who have mad Photoshop skills. Clearly the creativity department at the Brady Campaign and Brady Center are running a bit lean these days. I thought Mass Murder Magazines was actually a better term, but assault clips it is. So here’s some ideas I have, but don’t have the artistic skill to create:

• Kind of like the Microsoft paper clip, but threatening in some way. Like he’s going to assault you.
• Some menacing variation on a clipboard that looks scary and dangerous.
• Know those things you use to hold bags of potato chips closed? Those can cut a leg clean open, I’m telling you.
• Tie clips. Nuff said.

Assault weapon was an invented term, but albeit one loosely related to assault rifle, which is a real term. Assault clip is pretty unashamedly conversion of what’s normally the noun or verb “assault” to use as an adjective to make whatever object seem like something scary that needs to be banned. Also amusing they aren’t even modifying the proper noun in this case, which would be “assault magazine,” though they probably figured that would bring to mind a publication with unusually strong paper edges, making for deeper paper cuts in the minds of the uninitiated. This isn’t about correctness or truth, after all, when there are guns to be banned.

Submit any further ideas or photoshopped work in the comments.

Josh Horwitz is at it again, trying to paint NRA as a bunch of militia crazies because Don Young, Congressman from Alaska, has apparently been seen with someone who later turned out to be a sovereign citizen militia whacko. The entire evidence of this is seen here, showing Young in some sort of fast food establishment talking to what he probably thinks is some kind of tea party-like Second Amendment group. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest Cox probably wasn’t going off about fringed flags and admiralty courts in front of the Congressman. I’m going to go out on another limb here and suggest you probably can’t swing a dead cat in Alaska without hitting some kind of Second Amendment group, and that politicians aren’t going to vet the leadership of every single one before speaking to them. Alaska is not a populous state, yet they have two representatives on the NRA Board. That should speak to the dedication of the average Alaskan to Second Amendment rights.

Speaking of the other NRA Board member, Wayne Anthony Ross (WAR, for short), CSGV levels poorly substantiated charges of racism and sexism. The sexism charge is particularly odd, since Ross broke ranks with NRA to endorse Sarah Palin for Governor, against the male incumbent. Odd for a guy who apparently thinks poorly of women. That, ironically, is what had everyone digging for anything WAR had ever written, including a defense of freedom of expression, penned twenty years ago, which has been twisted into evidence of racism.

This is a sad accusation by a group that is out of influence, and will soon be out of money.

I’m not sure what money they found to make this ad. I’m really not sure what money they will find to run it:

ABC is reporting:

The Brady Campaign, an advocacy group for stricter gun laws, will release a 30-second television ad today urging the President and Congress to ban assault clips. The group is teaming up with the Kelly O’Brien, the fiancée of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Congressional staffer, Gabe Zimmerman, who was killed in January’s shooting rampage in Tucson. O’Brien will be on Capitol Hill today to pledge support for legislation to ban assault clips like the one Tucson gunman Jared Lee Loughner used to kill six and injure 13.

So it would seem they have intentions to air this on television, but to be effective they are going to have to target their strongholds in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, all of which are very expensive media markets. As of 2008, the Brady Campaign was down to 381,668 dollars total in assets, after having to swallow an 838,000 dollar loss that year. I can’t imagine their finances improved with the financial crisis.

I know many of my readers are in the New York City media market, so if you see this ad, let me know. That would be indication the Brady Campaign has come into money since 2008, that someone else is fronting money to run the ads, or stations are donating the time. We need to know so we can properly identify who our opponents are.