Year: 2011

For those of you familiar with the Wikipedia culture, it occurs to me that MAIG’s Wikipedia page is pretty poor. Wikipedia pages are supposed to be factual, not promotion material for the organization. Some changes I would suggest:

• It should be clear they are an organization that advocates gun control. Don’t let them get away with the “common sense” bullshit. What they propose is little different from the Brady Campaign or the other gun control groups.
• Is should have a criticism section, rather than just “Opposition from the NRA,” with NRA’s criticism included in that, but I’d also mention some of their members criminal tendencies.
• When it comes to what they advocate for, there should be a good mix of what they say, what we say, and what the facts are. They are not entitled to their own sets of facts. Be sure to find citations. For instance, it should be more clearly noted that police groups, including the ATF, oppose repealing Tiahrt.

Don’t let them turn their Wikipedia page into a propaganda tool. Wikipedia actually frowns on that, and if you keep things balanced, and factual, you can win. At the least, it forces MAIG to spend resources fighting with us and Wikipedia. Even if HR822 ultimately fails (given the makeup of the Senate, and the occupant of the White House, it probably will in this Congress), it’s forcing our opponents to spend significant resources. The more fronts we can engage them on, the less resources they will have when the final push comes. This is a clash of wills, and ours must be stronger for longer if we’re going to prevail in the end.

Now there’s a petition at the White House site calling for the defeat of HR822, started by Philadelphia’s police chief, and it’s way ahead of ours. Nearly all the signatures are from California, which makes me wonder if the this was put out to a very large list. I questioned whether the Brady Campaign can have that kind of impact, which makes me wonder if OFA is using some of their reach. This was launched October 11th, and it already has double our number of signatures? I’ve been around this issue a long time, and I’ve never seen our opponents display that kind of grassroots power.

I’m not saying the signatures are necessarily bogus, but someone is a lot more powerful and with more reach than our opponents is either promoting this, or someone is playing games. Either way, we have to get our game on and counter this.

UPDATE: Judging from this, it looks like MAIG is behind this drive, and they are pulling out all the stops. This is quite good for us, because it means that our opponents have pulled out all the stops just to deal with our little guerrilla petition drive. It’s worth noting that NRA won’t throw its weight behind a White House push until there’s a bill on his desk. Surely we can think of other ways to spread our opponents thin as the debate on HR822 really heats up?

BTW, if this is all MAIG driven activity, that’s further evidence they are the real deal, and will be supplanting the hecklers at Brady, CSGV and VPC as our primary, and most dangerous opponents.

UPDATE: At the rate new signatures are being added, I’m really curious what method is being used to promote this. A quick search of the Internet only reveals the letter from Michael Nutter. Maybe they are hitting up people at the anti-gun range, and asking them to sign.

UPDATE: Bitter thinks it might be they are using e-mail lists, perhaps ones they rented or purchased. If you see one of these in the wild, please forward it to me.

Thirdpower notices some other amateurish rhetoric from the Brady Campaign, greatly exaggerating our losses in Court. We really did not have a substantive loss until Heller II. They are correct to tout that as a serious loss. The only other Circuit Court decision to date was Ezell, which won big time. I would also point out to the Brady folks that the final word has not yet been written on even Heller II. It’s just likely we’re going to have to attack the bogus “assault weapons” issue through another federal circuit.