The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Holder doesn’t much like Georgia’s bill to allow carry in non-sterile areas of airports, despite the fact that very few of the 40 or so states that allow carry have any prohibition against the practice.
I’m sure the Administration’s position that “Thou shalt have no position on guns,” drives Holder nuttier than a fruitcake. It’s a joy to watch.
The pirate ship, flying the false flag of gun rights, known as the American Hunters and Shooters Association, is apparently no more. Even if they might technically exist, they are gone from the Internets, which is just about as good as dead these days. We bid them farewell. Sorry guys, we’re just weren’t stupid enough to fall for it.
According to the Washington Post, NRA should now be considered a terrorist organization for supporting civil liberties.
Is the NRA a terrorist organization?
By George W. Bush’s standard — you’re either with us or against us in the fight against terrorism — NRA chief Wayne LaPierre should be just a few frequent-flier miles short of a free ticket to Gitmo right about now.
Let’s pretend you are a member of a gun club. Keith Olbermann attacks you because you’re going to allow right-of-center folks to come to your shooting range to shoot guns & very possibly say less than pleasant things about far left policies & socialism. Why would you cave to Keith Olbermann? He’s not your friend. He doesn’t even believe in the Second Amendment and declared SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia as the “Worst Person in the World” for writing the Heller opinion.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STwsbUwcO4U[/youtube]
Apparently, if you’re on the board of Elstonville Sportsmen’s Association, you vote to cave to Keith Olbermann. Really?
They were to host a fundraising shoot by the Commonwealth Foundation next weekend, and part of the arranged fun was to include targeting a car with bad policy names written on it – cap and trade, Obamacare, and card check. The idea of conservatives blowing holes through their policy positions painted on the side of a junker car (perhaps a clunker not turned in during Cash for Clunkers?) sent Keith Olbermann’s head spinning, along with some others in the media.
Just minutes ago, Commonwealth Foundation announced that Elstonville’s leaders have pulled the plug on the event because of pressure from people who don’t even support their right to have a gun club.
In the 11th hour, under intense pressure from those who would deny the freedoms in the First and Second Amendments, the host of the Commonwealth Foundation’s second annual LiveFreePA celebration pulled the plug. Due to the short notice, the Commonwealth Foundation will reschedule LiveFreePA for the fall, at a club that stands tall for our rights and freedoms.
The Elstonville Sportsmen’s Association’s decision is regrettable, but more regrettable are the attacks on this lighthearted and safe event by left-wing pundits and gun-control advocates. This reminds us all that if the inalienable rights of citizens to express and protect themselves are to survive, those who cherish them must stand firm against those who seek to erode or limit those rights. This incident underscores how vulnerable our freedom truly is, and the need to celebrate and defend it anew.
Seriously? The gun club has no statement on the matter, so if there is more to this, they are keeping their lips locked.
He’s appearing before a committee urging that we deny constitutional rights without due process. The funny thing is the committee he’s appearing before can’t do anything about the legislation he wants. Normally that kind of thing goes through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Leahy, who seems to be kissing up to gun owners these days, with Sessions as the ranking member. I’m going to guess they aren’t going to give Bloomberg’s favored bill a hearing, and Reid certainly wants to keep that bill off the floor.
So it’s the Homeland Security and Government for Bloomberg, which is chaired by Lieberman, with Collins as the ranking member. Â Neither true friends of the Second Amendment. Fortunately for us, Coburn is on that committee, and I think he’ll be having none of Bloomberg’s crap. Interesting to see will be how Scott Brown acts. I expect McCain to be tough on Bloomberg as well, since he’s in a tough primary race this year, and he’ll wants to look more conservative than thou, so to speak.
The Pocono Record is fast becoming CeaseFire Pennsylvania’s most helpful media outlet, practically publishing press releases from them talking about how wonderful all the Democratic candidates for Governor are. Here is CeaseFire PA’s Voters Guide. I think it’s very kind of them to help gun owners out by letting us know who not to vote for. Jack Wagner is the best Democrat, and he only supports Lost and Stolen, a statewide ban on assault weapons, and using the no-fly list to deny Pennsylvanians their constitutional rights. And they are openly touting this. Even Rendell ran from his record on guns and shut up about the issue when he ran for Governor. Now they are openly opposing us and daring us to defeat them.
No matter who I vote for in the GOP primary, I’m going to be 100% behind the winner in the Governor’s race. The step after openly opposing us in an election, if we can’t beat them, is openly opposing us from the Governor’s mansion, with the argument that the “NRA couldn’t beat me.” And they will have a point. If the NRA can’t threaten politicians with electoral defeat for crossing them, the game will be over in PA very quickly, and all those refugees we’ve taken from Jersey will have to go find another bastion of freedom.
It doesn’t seem like he likes getting caught doing the old Mary Rosh routine himself. I’d just like to see him explain how this is not the case, given the visual evidence that was uncovered that sock puppetry was being engaged in.
The Virginia Center for Public Safety (formerly Virginians Against Handgun Violence), lead by gun control advocate Andrew Goddard, seems to be upset not so much that children are being taught to stay away from guns in schools, but that the NRA is teaching it. You can see him debate Rachel Parsons, from NRA’s Public Affairs, here on Fox:
This has always been a particularly sad tactic of our opponents. Using gun accidents to push their agenda, then getting bent out of shape when we step up to try to do something about gun accidents. All because they don’t like who the message is coming from.
MikeB in the comments raises a point about why people bother tracking down information on others, and making efforts to “out” people. He seems to believe this is wrong, and in many contexts I would agree with him. I think it’s a worthwhile discussion to have as to what tactics are out of bounds, and which are in bounds. I think that’s a tricky topic, because the line is pretty fine. But I can discuss my feelings on the matter.
If you read professional agitators like Saul Alinsky, they speak on this topic as well, and Alinsky thought everything was on the table if you didn’t have a more ethical path available forward. That’s actually a high standard, if you think about it, but I think outing Horwitz meets that standard. The other side must have thought that too, which is why they used it against John Lott when he was caught doing it. I agree that was fair game too.
There’s really three levels I think activists are entitled to live their lives on; their political lives, their personal lives, and their private lives. In a political struggles, one’s political life is fair game. Their personal lives can be too, depending on how much of an effort there is to keep it private, which is the part I think we should have an awful prejudice against violating. Let me give some examples.
A few years ago I smeared a Board Member of CeaseFire PA with something in her personal life. But it was something in her personal life she made no real attempt to keep private, as it was on an easy to find public web site, under the same name she practiced her activism with. I thought it was fair game, and wanted to make a point to her about tolerance. This was on the heels of outing another CeaseFire PA board member we had strong evidence was a vile troll, posting racist garbage on web sites pretending to be a gun rights advocate. In this case he did make an attempt to conceal his identity, but his tactic was so vile, disgusting, and destructive to our cause, that he really left no choice other than to expose him once we had all gathered enough evidence.
Outing Josh Horwitz alleged sock puppet is attacking his political existence, not his personal existence, and certainly not his private existence. He’d be using said sock puppet to further his side on this political struggle. His identity is well known within the issue, and he freely associates his name with it in his role as a paid gun control advocate. His sock puppetry is directly related to the issue, only crosses into his personal life in so much as it reveals him to be an angry bastard, so it’s within bounds.
Now if a gun control advocate, even a professional one, had been found having discussions with other consenting adults on, say, an S&M forum, and made a reasonable effort to keep that private, or keep it separated from the issue, exposing that would be out of bounds. Back to the previous example, if I had been forwarded a private e-mail from Ms. Stein about her involvement in MUFON, or seen her at a meetup, I would not have used it. I would also argue someone using an alias (not a sock puppet) in an attempt to keep their personal and political lives separated, and their private life private, is also out of bounds for outing.
But using personal or private information in for a political purpose is completely different from using it purely for harassment or intimidation purposes, which is always wrong, and often unlawful. I think everyone, even gun control advocates, are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy and fair play in their personal and private lives. We should proceed on that assumption moving forward.
Thirdpower has some pretty damning evidence that Josh Horwitz, President of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, is, in fact, the same nasty individual that goes by the alias “GritsJr” over on the HuffPo. What’s interesting is we’re like the second stringers of the gun rights movement, and this is their leadership. Do you think Chris Cox and Wayne LaPierre are spending their time engaging in Internet sock puppetry? I’m pretty sure they are too busy helping to destroy Josh’s livelihood to worry much about what we second stringers are saying. Maybe there’s a lesson in that.