There were quite a number of media roaming around the rally, so this naturally made me wonder how fair the media coverage would be. Only two news outlets have covered it, or at least put their stories online. The first is the Intelligencer:
The pro-gun protesters tried to shout down speakers throughout the 45-minute rally, even as Moore sought a moment of silence for victims of gun violence and as Kessleman spoke of his dead son.
“I thought that was disrespectful,†Avino said. “It’s a poor reflection on them.â€
There weren’t any groups backing the protest, which was largely self-organized through informal communication networks, forums, Facebook, etc. Going in, it was hard to say what a smart tactic would be, because you don’t know what our opponents are going to focus on. If it’s a more vigil type rally, with speakers recounting lost loves ones, aggressive tactics would be boorish. But for an explicitly political rally, with calls to political action, chanting, etc, I don’t see why quiet opposition is necessarily the smart tactic.
This rally was not a vigil type rally, but it was explicitly political, with calls for action, including confiscation. More aggressive tactics were justified. When the line “for too many years Congress has done the bidding of the NRA,†our side cheered. When they called for bans on guns and magazine, our side booed. The speaker from New Jersey was heckled with calls to “Go back to Jersey!” When they tried to rally their crowd with “What do we want? Action!” and the pro-2A crowd drowned them out with “Freedom!” Cries of “leave us alone” were also often heard from the crowd when speakers called for action.
Where I think our side did cross the line was the few early hecklers during the moment of silence. Fortunately that quickly stopped, and our side did observe it, but those few early people own that quote above. Channel 10 News also covered the rally, I think a bit more fairly than the Intelligencer:
View more videos at: http://nbcphiladelphia.com.
UPDATE: Here’s video from the rally organizers. Decide for yourself whether they are being shouted down or just opposed.
Completely unrelated, but do you have any commentary on the UN Small Arms Treaty?
I get the impression that 99+% of what I read about it is bunk. I don’t think anyone knows what they’re talking about when it comes to this treaty.
That’s because there’s no treaty yet. It’s still a work in progress. That said, I don’t think a treaty will be good for American gun owners, even if the Senate fails to ratify. If we are judged a “non-compliant” country, because we don’t meet “international standards” for controls, we may be unable to import firearms and ammunition from countries that do end up as signatories.
We’d be better off if the UN keeps itself out of regulating the small arms trade.
Thanks for the response. Some people on our side tend to get a bit Chicken Little-ish. Spreading misinformation is never a good thing.
The damned if you do, damned if you don’t aspect to it is disappointing. Here’s hoping the Czech’s don’t sign on! lol
To get on topic, that coverage appears to be incredibly generous to the pro-gun side if you compare it to the coverage we typically get. The media might be our biggest enemy in the fight.
I do think it’s opened a lot of peoples’ eyes however. If you have even a little knowledge of firearms and common sense you can see how full of it they are. The democrats and the media aren’t just aggravating people who were always opposed to them. They’re also alienating people who have supported them in the past. I’ve talked to a couple people who will “never vote democrat again”.
There have been draft treaties in the past. I’d have to know specific accusations before I could say whether they were true or not, but there’s a lot of information floating around about the treaty which are unfounded.
Wasn’t there an amendment or something that prevents the US from accepting the small arms treaty?
The Senate passed a resolution saying they oppose it, but it is not binding. However it is a strong indicator that they would not ratify it.
The Senate passed an Amendment to prevent the Obama Administration from signing on to the treaty. I’m actually not sure Congress can constitutionally do this. They can certainly not ratify it, but negotiating treaties is an executive power. They would, in my opinion, be unconstitutionally usurping the President’s power in this case, even if I agree with it in this particular case as a matter of policy.
article II covers this it is not an amendment, but part of the constitution itself. good read.
1787 constitutional bylaws cover this exact thing. 2/3 state senators have to vote yea to ratify.
NRA news.com has updates and coverage on the UN. they want civilian arms and ammo registerd with UN.
Sebastian,
I’m re=posting this one and the one about the Mayors over at my blog. They need to be seen and read and witnessed.
Long Live the Republic.
It is concerning to see that they can turn out more than half a dozen people to attend events.
OFA at work I suppose.
Seems to me that communists and gun-grabbers are always hoping somebody (else) gets shot, because it will further their cause.
Uhm, if, as he stated, they were “shouting down speakers” during a moment of silence, wouldn’t that mean there was no real moment of silence? If there was, then whom were they shouting down at that time? You cannot both be speaking and being silent at the same time.
Makes the whole statement smell of bullshit.
Evidently I did not use the blockquote correctly…….
Can you fix it?
Blockquote is a tag, just <blockquote> and then </blockquote>
Once the raging reverend got tired of our crowd responding louder than his crowd, he decided to ask for a moment of silence, and some of the hecklers didn’t quiet down right away.
I watched the “Bucks Against Gun Violence Rally 3-30-2013” Youtube video just now. The like/dislike and comments on this video are disabled. These anti-gun videos on Youtube typically do this, so I will make my comments here instead:
1. The first thing I noticed was that the camera angle on this video was close-in on the speakers for the entirety of it. This makes it impossible for someone like me, who was not there, to know the overall crowd size of the gun control supporters who were at this rally. My gut feeling is that the crowd size of these gun control supporters was relatively small compared to the gun rights supporters. I have also noticed that many left winger media outlets typically use close-in camera angles to hide the small numbers of protesters for causes which they favor.
2. Despite the relatively small size of the these gun control supporters at this rally, the Reverend Bob Moore claims at the 0.44 mark in the video that “97% of the people” support these newfangled background checks on all gun sales, and at the 1:07 mark, he claims that gun rights advocates are “a minority within a minority.”
3. At the 2:17 mark, Steven Kesselman speaks about how his son was shot and killed by a roommate with a 12 gauge shotgun. His wife appears to be holding a large poster-sized photo of what appears to be their departed son holding his electric guitar.
This is the same man whom I saw in the NBC10 video report on this same rally. He spoke to the NBC10 reporter about what he said was the need to ban all so-called “assault weapons” in Pennsylvania and beyond.
Does this man even know that most 12 gauge shotguns do not fall into what the gun control advocates have demonized with their “assault weapon” moniker? Only the Saiga-12 and other semi-automatic shotguns with certain features could be branded with the “assault weapon” moniker, but I would be willing to bet that the 12 gauge shotgun which was used in the murder of this man’s son was of the “Elmer Fudd” configuration.
Only a complete ban on all guns would cover “Elmer Fudd” guns. Good luck on getting widespread public support for that, if that is what you advocate.
Yes… looks like Bucks Against Gun Violence has put full Reasoned Discourse(TM) into effect.
1. reasoned discourse
Term for when gun control advocates regularly censor comments on their message boards or blogs. Usually when their arguments and claims are easily refuted.
Term comes from the last days of the old Brady Campaign blog where they ran a series called, of course ‘Reasoned Discourse’ where they highlighted alleged violent or disgusting comments they had received. This was shortly before they blocked all comments and later deleted them.
I pointed out that murder was already illegal and that making it more so with a special gun murder statute was a bit silly. Reasoned discourse broke out, and my comment vanished from the blog.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=reasoned%20discourse