We’ve already seen the Brady Campaign partner with new media fundraising and organizational groups like Credo, who worked with them on the Starbucks Campaign. Now we notice they are working with a group called Karma411, which is a new mediaish fundraising group. They seem to have begun a campaign to try to raise money using the open carry issue as a lever to drive people’s interest in their cause.
I’m going to be watching this campaign closely. They’ve set a goal of 10,000 dollars. Will they reach it? So far they are only 20 dollars toward their goal. What I want to see is how much traction Brady gets with this issue. This is going to reveal some pretty critical pieces of information in relation to this fight:
- New media fundraising is going to give us some kind of idea how their message resonates with younger people, who are going to be the target audience of this new media message. If they can bring another generation into the gun control fight, that’s going to be beneficial to them in the long run.
- It give us some idea how much money there is in scaring people about open carry. We’ve documented here in thorough detail that the Brady folks are having difficulty raising money. Is this an issue they could use to turn that around? Is the issue dead, or is it just that they’ve been going about fundraising the wrong way?
- It gives us more information for our own internal debates about the issue. If Brady can’t raise any money on it, those of us who have been detractors of open carry as a strategy will have to accept that despite what the public may or may not think about it, it’s not an issue that is going to hurt us, because the other side can’t do much with it. On the other hand, if they beat their fundraising goals, that’s a critical piece of information that open carry might be motivating renewed interest in gun control.
None of this will be perfect or conclusive information, no matter what way it goes, because we don’t really know what karma411’s fundraising effectiveness is. Ten grand is a sideshow of a fundraising effort anyway, even for the Brady Campaign. But the important thing is the names they get from this can be used to raise further money. I’ll be curious to see how this turns out for them, because it’ll at least be an important bit of information we can use.
Suppose the issue was AR-15’s or “high capacity magazines” rather than open carry?
Which rights should we ditch to avoid spooking the straights? Whose baby gets tossed from the sleigh?
It depends on what you mean by throwing the baby off the sled. We have a choice in the kinds of methods we use to support our cause, and it’s worth knowing which ones work for us, which ones don’t really matter either way, and which ones work against us.
I’m not at all saying if it turns out open carry is a bad thing that we use the force of law to restrict people from being able to do it, or even that we ought to stop fighting the other side if they try to restrict it. It should always be a choice. But I think it’s worthwhile to understand the consequences of those choices for the movement.
Folks open carry where it is already legal, already a right.
How is it “ditching” a right to pick and choose your exercise when you already have it and it is not at risk of loss?
I understand and agree with the concept of “normalizing carry” but we need to track the effect on undecided voters on a state by state/locale by locale basis. If exercising the right, en masse and as public protest rather than simply as a personal option for safety, leads to such exercise being restricted by scared voters then what good did the protesting do?
The right, where we have it, is ours to lose by making it a “capital-I Issue” where such is not necessary to achieve some other right or a particular political goal (access to CC rights, ruling by AG or Court that preemption and lawful carry shall not be interfered with by locals, that sort of thing).
We need to carefully judge if “awareness for awareness sake” in a particular place is worth the potential cost/backlash.
Fortunately it doesn’t seem to be an issue thus far, but fighting smart isn’t the same as surrendering.
I had a strange thought, and was wondering if it would work… When you donate money to a cause using a credit card via website or paypal, the receiver is usually charged a fee for the card services. This fee is usually a set amount plus a percentage of the charge.
My thought was, if people start donating a penny or two to the campaign, would it end up costing them money to accept the donations?
I doubt it. My guess is there’s a minimum amount. But either way, it’s Karma411 doing the fundraising, so Brady will get the money after Karma411 gets their cut.*
They’re really expanding the rhetoric. Their latest tweet is pushing the meme that open carry is ‘unamerican’.
Tam,
Unless I misunderstand him (and that’s happened!), Sebastian is just pointing out that this particular campaign bears watching so that we can see how effective the argument is in raising money.
He’s right that $10k is childs’ play in the fundraising world; if they can’t get that using the open carry scare tactic, then we should feel pretty good, indeed.
I still want the NFA to go away!
When did they start the campaign?
By what date do they want to raise the $10k?
If it takes them a year to raise it, I can’t call it successful (using an exaggerated example).
I would say once they stop pushing it, or once it trickles, it’s a loser. If it’s still 20 dollars in a week, I would say it’s already a loser.
You don’t misunderstand what I’m saying Packetman. This is the first Brady fundraising attempt where there’s a publicly available counter. Even aside from the open carry issue, it’ll be interesting to watch. I should note that it’s still at 20 dollars, but it might not update continuously.
It’s been sitting at $20 since at least yesterday when I first saw it.
I get how self serving this is. But in my opinion, it’s more important to bring the really draconian states like New Jersey closer to the current normal than it is to make mostly-free states mostly-freer.
Even within states, we can see how massive population centers can use more restrictive laws to decrease the number of gun owners, de-normalize gun ownership, and start to outvote the gun owners and gun agnostics outside the cities. The same principle applies on a national level. Which will honestly do more for all our rights in the long run: dismantling the onerous permit systems in NJ, NYC, DC, and Chicago so that more people will own guns and have friends and family with guns, moderating the anti-gun enclaves and eroding the stereotypes that buy federal level gun control votes; or spending our cred to get open carry in a state that’s already shall-issue to carry concealed? Which of those battles will set us up best to go on to bigger prizes, like nationwide reciprocity and NFA rollbacks?
I’m with Sebastian in that nobody gets thrown under the bus. If the antis want to ban OC anywhere, of even up the ante to trying bans on machine guns in states that currently allow them, we’ll have to fight for those rights even if they’re a political liability. Appeasement gets us killed. But while we’re fortunate enough to be on the offensive, it just makes sense to choose the order of our battles instead of pushing out on all fronts simultaneously. I suggest concentrating on the enemy’s supply lines.
Hey, I’m just devil’s advocating for the sake of discussion…
And doing a damn fine job of it Tam. =)
I’m just getting concerned about the folks who are in the pro-gun echo chamber and are thinking that just because we are winning we can’t lose.
Many don’t seem to realize the careful, methodical and very strategic thinking that got us to this point and thus think any pro-gun action, however it may be perceived by undecided voters, is appropriate to continue the trend.
I like being morally and Constitutionally pure and “right” as much as the next guy, but I like winning fights, even incrementally, more than being “right” and losing.
It’s worth noting that the total still stands at $20. But I haven’t seen Brady pushing this today either.
Still it means that MikeB302000 doesn’t have any love to give to his Brady Masters. Or any of the other anti-rights dorks who read your blog, or the other pro-gun blogs who have linked this weak effort.
It’s still at $20, and there’s only 3 “share your story” entries – all pro-gun.