Category: Anti-Gun Folks

… joins the Indicted Club.

Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence reports that the NRA is a paper tiger:

Obama proved you can talk about having reasonable regulation of firearms without fear of a backlash at the ballot box. The fact of the matter is that Obama is where most Americans are on the gun issue, which is supporting a person’s ability to own a firearm while also supporting policies like criminal background checks on all gun sales.

Voters are tired of hearing the same old rhetoric from the NRA, and the election results proved that its bark is worse than its bite.

And it’s worth noting that Obama ran from groups like ICAHV as fast as he could once he secured the nomination.  Gun control was simply not an issue in this election, and that plays against the NRA as much as it plays against gun control groups.

The Brady Campaign issues this press release, and then this editorial magically appears, and calls for ending private transfers under the guise of “gun show loophole.”  The Brady’s play the media game much better than NRA does, I’m sorry to say.  Of course, it certainly helps that there are so many in the media sympathetic to their cause, and repulsed by ours.

Paul Helmke is busy trying to deride the NRA’s influence in national elections:

— 79% of all voters say the views of the NRA were not important to their vote for President; 78% of “New Blue” state respondents agreed; 74% of gun owning voters agreed.

Well, you see, that means that 21% of voters say that the views of the NRA are important.  Can you name me one other interest group that can lay claim to influencing 27 million voters in an election?  Have the Brady Campaign conducted a poll to see what percentage of the electorate consider their views important?  If they started wrapping their heads around that inconvenient fact, they’d start to understand why Barack Obama felt the need to convince everyone how much he respected the Second Amendment.

Paul Helmke would like to think it was their message, rather than the financial crisis, which delivered the election to Obama.  SayUncle points out that it’s hooey.  What killed us this election was exceptionally bad Republican turnout.  We did a lot of hard get out the vote work in my district, which paid off.  My county only bled 3000 or so votes from 2004.  Pennsylvania is a difficult state for gun rights activists.  Many of our gun owners are also union members, and can’t always be counted on to vote like gun owners.  When economic times get rough, they run for the big “D”.  It’s worthwhile to point out that McCain was ahead in Pennsylvania before the financial crisis hit.  I recall conversations with a few gun owners after the crisis that went, “Well, I have a choice between my guns and putting food on the table.  I just don’t think we can afford another 8 years of failed economic policy.”  Of course, if you have your guns, you can always put food on the table, but it’s hard to convince people worried about jobs and mortgages to vote their gun rights.  People tend to vote their pocketbooks before all.

Sportsmen voted along the same lines for McCain that they did for Bush, but fewer of them turned out.  I think there were a lot more of those guys than my interactions with gun owners was indicative of.  A lot of unhappy gun owners voted with their butts, in that they spent election day sitting on it.  I can’t blame the Brady Campaign for trying to ride Obama’s coattails.  Maybe it’ll help their fundraising.  We’ll see how the next two years goes for them, but my prediction is that things will not go as well for them as they wish, nor as bad for them as we would like.  It’s going to be rough, either way.

For hunters that don’t support gun rights, except for their own, BadIdeaGuy managed to come up with a new term I think I like:

AHSAhole

We’ll declare Ray Schoenke the inaugural member of the club.

UPDATE: Looks like this isn’t the first instance of that term.  Ray Schoenke will have to be number 2.

They appointed Nina Vinik, who is the legal director of the Legal Community Against Violence.  No doubt she’ll approach the issue of gun violence in a fair and balanced manner.

A few weeks before the election, I posted this:

I can promise you the Brady Campaign is frustrated they are being stuffed in steerage for the entire election, but the Democrats are not abandoning gun control.  If they win this November, it will tell them they don’t have to actually support the Second Amendment to win.  It will tell them that all they have to do is pull the wool over those bitter, gun clingers eyes enough that they won’t check to hard to see what’s really behind the curtain.  It will make them think NRA is a paper tiger if they can’t defeat the most anti-gun presidential candidate in American history.

Now we get this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv1zEok3J50[/youtube]

They know how to spin the results in their favor.  But we shall see whether the Brady Campaign really carries any weight with the new administration.

Thirdpower compares AHSA and Brady on the election.  It’s almost as if they have the same goals or something.  I’m still waiting for AHSA to come out and condemn the HSUS lead ammunition ban proposal.