Our opponents think it’s very important to look at interesting and novel ways to eliminate gun violence in society. They are willing to sacrifice anything to reach their dream where everyone trades in their guns for flowers and unicorns. Apparently even their freedom and privacy. Let’s take a look at this gem from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Facebook page:
Apparently this gun free fantasy extends to the point of putting body scanners in public places, so your bank can stare at pictures of  your nude body. Ladd gets an A for trying to steer this particular supporter off the crazy, and back on the path to productive activism, but it was too late.
Our opponents will be the first to vote for a pervasive police state to carry forward their idealist fantasies.
Someone, somewhere, in a comment long lost, linked to an interesting page from a law firm’s website that discussed some of the intricacies of gun law, and what they can–and can’t–do in given situations. They concluded with an interesting point, paraphrased:
“Why are gun rights so important? Handguns are small objects; thus, any attempt to ban them, and to search for them, and to find the guilty party of who owns one, affects our rights in very personal ways. The harder one tries to ban handguns, the more our fourth amendment rights get violated.”
We always get to see this whenever someone gets *really* serious about trying to get rid of guns!
We’ll see what they have to say when the first amendment get gutted. That’s right, they won’t be able to say anything.
After reading there page it’s no surprise how dictators come to powers and retain supporters. Some people are just out there.
Whenever I’m at the bank, I keep a really careful eye on my gun, just in case it tries to jump out of its holster and rob the joint. So far it hasn’t, but you never know with those tricksie, evil, inanimate objects…
Won’t be an issue for me. I haven’t set foot inside a bank for over five years. Everything is done over the interwebnets these days.
And hey, if a bank wants to install metal detectors at every entrance, that’s their prerogative. I’ll simply take my business elsewhere.
“Ladd gets an A for trying to steer this particular supporter off the crazy, and back on the path to productive activism, but it was too late.”
You can’t cure stupid.
Oh, and by the way, the fact that they are discussing things on the internets under an official CSGV account means there is likely only a small number of people behind this operation any longer and they have zero message discipline. I help run a civil rights NPO up here in commiechussetts and there are 5 of us, two-three of us which are active. We NEVER use our org accounts for anything more than official org statements vetted against our org’s principles.
The CSGV twitter account (which is likely the same person as the facebook account) has argued on the internets with Gray Peterson (of peterson v. lacabe) and others and they end up looking stupid because of this. Beyond being unprofessional it is indicative of the disarray they are in over there and why they are losing support. Most rational human beings would be aghast at the crap that comes from that account. They are not even keeping up the appearances of trying to run a rational organization.
Tam, that was beautiful!
Wish I had thought of it…..
You can really tell they are living in rainbow unicorn-land via two comments.
1) That powerful lobbies and loud voices (i.e. gun fanatics) keep their agenda from progressing despite them being in the massive majority. Might it be that their ideas stink and that they are rejected by politicians and the real majority of voters? Are they serious that they cannot get their message out with all of the free media support provided by the MSM? So sorry, but people usually tune out “stupid” stuff. I’d like to see them “win quickly” if they are so sure of themselves.
2) Renewal energy? OMG, I originally trained as a chemist and a simple review of energy demands and yields from the the renewable energy sources show them to be a bad joke at best, governmental/scientific stupidity and ineptness at worst. Sorry, but fossil fuels/nuclear fission are the way to go for the forseeable future. When nuclear fusion can be perfected (not holding my breath) then we can talk about flying cars with rainbow exhaust contrails and unicorn hood ornaments. Until then, they need to do some basic scientific research before spouting this nonsense. They do seem to live in an alternative universe.
And of course there’s the revealing of personal information of political opponents.
Oh yeah they want a police state, and the 2nd Amendment is just the one they’re most loud about removing. Its not like ANY human rights are sacred to these swine.
CSGV is doing their best to troll us in an attempt to get more screenshots for their FB notes. I’ve been an observer and occasional participant in the ‘conversation’ before being blocked by CSGV for probably nothing more than not taking the bait.
I do not have a blog, nor pseudonym, nor any affiliation with any organization besides being a member or contributor to NRA, SAF, CRPA, and Calguns foundation. it is impossible for CSGV to ‘dig up any dirt’ on me and for that reason I believe they don’t consider me worthy of their time.
It appears they’re deliberately trying to incite a few bloggers to lash out in order to gain screenshots for their collection of ‘harassment and indimidation by pro-gun bloggers.’ The last thing anyone should do is take the bait.
What made me suspicious is at first I thought CSGV had just ‘given up’ and blocked all of us that were questioning them, but it appears they are still trying to troll the people they know they can use as propaganda.
Dylan:
I think you’re right. They are putting the squeeze to the community to see what kind of crazy oozes out, which they will then use as ammunition to whip their own supporters into a frenzy. My view of what they are doing is trying to build a base of rabid supporters, but in order to do that, you have to give them villains. No one will get off their asses for gun control for gun control’s sake. It’s just not that exciting an issue. But some people will get off their asses if it means sticking it to those gun owning wing nuts!
Unfortunately for them, the same tactic works with our people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them.
My point with this post is to show what kind of people CSGV is cultivating. They have surrendered the middle, and are now trying to capture followers from the far-left, and the peace movement. Generally speaking, the side which can best channel the middle, while still motivating the fringe, wins. Right now they just want to motivate the fringe. Capturing the middle is something that would have to come later. If we play our cards right, it’ll never happen for them.
Also, notice that the original commentor’s profile pic is of pandas. I fucking hate pandas. http://youtu.be/ANg7iPu9DAg
Dylan, they’re only going after individual bloggers who they think they can intimidate. Ladd isn’t trying that crap against political veterans used to these tactics.
BTW, Sebastian, nice picture they have of you on their FB group.
Yeah, I noticed.
What gets me about that is that the suggestion doesn’t hold up if you even think about it for five seconds (and know anything about the topic, at least).
There’s no automated scan that would work (and indeed these people wouldn’t want it to be automatic, because then the police can’t enter the bank when someone’s robbing it with a knife or a stick – their guns would set off the automatic lock!) – so you’d need a human being watching each and every person coming into the bank, to OK them.
(Oh, sure, they could look only at the ones that set off a metal detector, for the gun part, but to set it sensitive enough to detect the wires for a bomb would mean it would go off for everyone, always. And you’d still need someone doing the job full-time, to be ready instantly.)
All that time and expense (bracketing entirely both privacy and health concerns) to essentially stop nothing.
(Stats from a quick search return 1325 robberies of banks in the US in 2010 – of which only 568 even claimed to be armed and only 336 produced a gun.
Rebuild the entrance of every bank in the US, put in an expensive scanner and hire someone to operate it during business hours, deal with inevitable failures and possible suits for the aforementioned issues… to (notionally) prevent 336 incidents a year, almost all of which are non-fatal anyway?
In what world does that make any damned sense? Even granting all their assumptions it’s a waste of money and effort!
The worst sort of robbery would be the one where they’re perfectly willing to just kill people for the money – and people who are that kind of mad dog can smash a window with a car or find any number of other ways to bypass the cute little automated scan.
Will CSGV suggest turning every bank into a fortress? Not a problem, since the criminals will just target armored cars – which evidently have a better return rate anyway!)
If only I’d seen that photo of Sebastian a few weeks ago, I’d have said hello to him and bought him a drink at the reception after the National Firearms Law Seminar in Pittsburgh. [Or maybe at the EVC cocktail party too?] Oh well. Next time.
Guns are so…. 20th century. To rob a bank these days, all you need is a note. And it doesn’t even have to be spelled correctly.
Heck, you could probably tweet in a robbery and have them deliver it to the front door.
(I am not serious.) Yeah, and when the body scanners are settled in we can supplement them with nitrate sniffers like they use at some high profile places in NY. Just step into the chamber, give the rotating wand system a ten second sniff and they can map some of the chemicals you’ve been around. After all we don’t want you visiting if you only recently stopped carrying a gun (or, put down your joint before you walked up).
There’s really no limit to this kind of police state mentality, but I wonder if a few of them would be sensitive to the idea of telling big brother what they’d recently put into their own bodies.
Went to the bank today.
I forgot to keep an eye on my pistol, but apparently it malfunctioned because it failed to rob the joint again.
Sigivald,
There is no indignity to which these people will not stoop for the illusion of safety.
Look at the CSGV commenter “Suememsie Tesin”; she’s willing to be photographed naked just to be allowed in the door of her local branch of First National.
They fear us. And that’s a very, very good thing…
I just hope they don’t end up on death ground, politically speaking, before they’ve had all their political power pulled
Groundhog, Look at the threats and personal attacks coming from this latest wave of “outing”. They’ve threatened a man’s child, they’ve threatened people employment, etc etc. I’m sure they haven’t hit rock bottom yet.
And we’re the ones with the guns, and we know where they live.
They don’t fear us, and they know that being a jackass on the internet isn’t something we’re willing to shoot somebody for.