Category: Anti-Gun Folks

No sooner does Ahab debunk the Brady’s latest post on “God, not Guns” than it disppears down the memory hole.  Turns out a lot of gun people are really into this Jesus thing, and know their stuff.  I guess the Brady’s haven’t been listening much to Barack Obama tell them about people clinging to religion and guns.

Looks like they are trying to post more in hopes of attracting more traffic.  I was wondering why I suddenly had three new posts in Bloglines, which is unusual for them.  Either way, they point out that the guy who got into a gunfight in Seattle, and has a CHL from the State of Washington, never should have had one.  Well, the fact that get got into a scuffle with someone and shot him ought to be an indication he wasn’t the type of person who ought to be armed.  Regardless, the fact that he was addicted to a controlled substance means he wasn’t eligible to own a firearm, let alone carry one.  CeaseFire Washington had this to say:

Kristen Comer, executive director of Washington Ceasefire, a gun-control advocacy group, said the situation underscores problems with Washington state’s concealed-weapon law.

“The background checks done in Washington state are very primitive,” she said. “We didn’t have background checks before 1994.”

Right now there are two background checks, Comer said.

The state check is the equivalent of law enforcement asking each other if “John Doe is on your list,” Comer said. “And the federal system and the state system don’t talk to each other much, as far as mental health goes.”

The problem is, there is no more thorough background check that would have likely turned up these records, since it’s not clear they exist.  Was there ever a previous adjudication or commitment?  Were the authorities ever involved in his addiction treatment?  No doubt this will be used as an example of why we need ever deeper probing of carry license applicants, but it’s not clear it would have made a difference in this case.

Doug Pennington is an employee of the Brady Campaign, and I’m pretty sure the guy who does the Brady Campaign blog on Paul’s behalf.  As Thirdpower points out, he’s been commenting at The Huffington Post.  Here’s what he says in one of his comments:

One thing: I’ve read comments off and on over the months on the blog, and one reason I (and I suspect others) choose not to get between the warring sides here is that nobody listens to anybody. Commenters here seem to be good at the schoolyard taunts and calling each other “liars,” etc, though. A few do seem to have arguments at the ready and numbers to go along with them – on both sides. (If I can make it through the drek, I can actually learn things.) Almost nobody, though, shows a sense that they may not actually have all the answers. Get in the middle of a bunch of know-it-alls convinced of their correctness? Disagree and be called a liar? Spend hours going tit-for-tat in a pointless spiral? Uh, no thanks….

Welcome to the Internet, Doug.  I agree that once you get beyond the first couple of iterations of comment-reply-comment, it goes downhill pretty quickly.  So I’ll extend an open invitation to Doug to have a public discussion with him on this blog regarding any gun control related topic he may want to talk about.  The discussion could happen over a series of e-mails, with the end result being published here.  No Kelli, no Macca, No Thirdpower, no Kaveman.  Just Doug and myself.

Think they’ll take me up on it?

Thanks to Paul Helmke for pointing out a new, or at least new to me, anti-gun blog.  Since the good reverend is clinging to God, but not guns, one wonders whether she’s still one of Obama’s “bitter” ones.  But regardless, it appears that the blog allows comments.  I haven’t tried to place one yet, but I’m going to guess “heavily moderated.”  Just a hunch.  Can’t have too much reasoned discourse now, can we?  But proceed respectually and factually, as I know our commenters are wont to do.  Engage the good reverend, and let the reasoned discourse flow.

SayUncle covers the machinations of Tom Eblen, who apparently wants to believe AHSA is not a sham, no matter what the facts say.  Bob Ricker recently came back on Bitter’s site to remind us that NRA’s endorsement isn’t worth crap, and that their organization helped Claire McCaskill beat Jim Talent in Missouri, so take that you self-defense wackos.  Of course, they also endorsed Obama, who then proceeded to lose in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, and Kentucky — states with a lot of gun owning Democrats.  So I think it’s fair to question whether AHSA’s endorsement is really worth anything.

Last year in St. Louis, AHSA paid people to stand in front of the NRA exhibit hall and protest.  This year they took out a full page ad in a local Louisville paper, and are drumming up some local media coverage:

What you didn’t hear is that many gun enthusiasts balk at the NRA’s devotion to the Republican Party. They resent the NRA for appropriating their values, radicalizing their views and, perhaps, jeopardizing their ability to own guns in the future.

“In many circles, the NRA stands for the National Republican Association,” said Bob Ricker, executive director of the American Hunters & Shooters Association, which last month endorsed Obama for president.

We stand by the party that poops on us the least.  There are plenty of fine pro-gun Democrats that NRA endorses, and that number is increasing.  If Bill Richardson had received the nod from the Democrats, this would be a very different race.  If Bob Ricker wants to go off and endorse Democrats that want to take away guns from hunters and shooters, that’s his prerogative, but I don’t see how that makes his organization anything other than a false flag.

The AHSA was started two years ago by Ricker, a former NRA assistant general counsel and longtime gun industry lobbyist, and Ray Schoenke, an avid hunter and former Washington Redskins lineman who ran unsuccessfully in 1998 for the Democratic nomination to be governor of Maryland [once donated $5000 dollars to Handgun Control Inc.]

There, now it’s accurate.

The AHSA has signed up about 25,000 dues-paying members over two years, Ricker said. That pales in comparison to the 4 million members of the NRA, which had a 135-year head start. But Ricker notes that the NRA’s 4 million is only a fraction of the nation’s estimated 60 million gun owners.

And I eagerly await pulling AHSA’s form 990 to verify these 25,000 dues paying members.

As some of you may know, The Brady Campaign linked to me yesterday.  I have taken a careful measurement of their power to drive traffic with Google Analytics.  Here are the results.

The Brady Campaign’s main site drove a total of four hits, three of which were me clicking through the link on their site.  The cross post at the Huffington Post drove a total of six click throughs, five of which were actually unique.  Just for contrast, SayUncle and Dave Hardy were my top two referrers with 165 visits driven my way.  You can see the screen shots of here for Brady Blog and here for Huffpo.  As you can see there, Brady Blog and HuffPo were my 40th and 29th highest referrer respectively, scoring below most of the pro-gun blogs who are driving traffic my way via their blog rolls rather than direct links in posts.  When you’re getting beat by blog rolls, that’s a rocket to the moon, let me tell you.

UPDATE: David had the same experience.

Rebecca Peters is apparently doing some research on the effectiveness of gun control laws.  Since VPC has already cornered the market on Google based research, perhaps Ms. Peters can use Yahoo.