Category: Anti-Gun Folks

It’s often said that a conservative is a liberal who’s just been mugged. It’s probably just as often that someone who’s been affected by violence turns into an outspoken and hard working activist for gun control. I know of few people who are truly passionate about the issue who haven’t been personally affected. It’s not surprising, really. We’re passionate about stopping them because we also have a personal stake in the outcome as shooters.

The Ventura County Reporter has a profile of Tim Heyne, who has been spreading gun control ordinances throughout Southern California:

That black day occurred on Memorial Day in 2005. Heyne and his wife, Jan, were with Heyne’s best friend, Steve Mazin, when Mazin’s neighbor, who held a grudge, approached the trio and shot them all. Mazin and Jan were killed. Heyne was left for dead with three bullets to the chest, but he survived and eventually recovered. All this, despite the fact that Mazin had a restraining order.

Mazin’s neighbor, as someone who had a restraining order on them, was not legally able to possess or purchase a firearm.

“Gun control is an incendiary term which the opposition likes to use because it sounds very condescending,” he said. “It speaks to the Second Amendment. What we are about is having sensible, responsible and accountable gun laws to keep the public safe.”

The group Heyne refers to as “we” is the Brady Center headquartered in Washington, D.C. Heyne organized the Ventura County chapter, ignoring the warnings from seasoned gun control advocates that it was the Wild West of gun ownership. In recognition of this feat, the Brady Center will be honoring Heyne for his work on gun control issues in November.

California is the wild west of Gun Ownership? Maybe in 1883, but California’s shooting community has been taking a beating since 1989, and isn’t wielding a whole lot of political power these days. I’m all for having “sensible, responsible and accountable laws that keep the public safe”. But gun control doesn’t do that. Mr. Heyne is a shining example of its failure, as the federal and state laws that disarm people subject to a restraining order did not stop someone that was intent on murder. Is it so crazy to suggest that an honest man with a gun could have?

UPDATE: Joe Huffman has a telling quote as well.

This weekend I learned from David Codrea that the Brady’s have recruited Comedian Lewis Black to encourage people to make videos in regards to how they feel about gun violence.  I think David is correct that just submitting pro-gun videos to them wouldn’t do anything useful other than maybe making us feel better.

David suggests that he has some videos he made a while back, that he’d post online.  I think  it’s a great idea for us to make some video footage ourselves to make our own version of this.  If anyone wants to submit a video to YouTube, send me a link and I’ll build a collection of them.

The Brady’s have been trying out new media.  We’ve all seen their mistakes with their foray into blogging.  Now they are playing to their more traditional strengths, using celebrity notoriety to mobile supporters, but with a new media twist.  I think we ought to be showing we can match the Brady’s in the new media every step of the way.   What say you all?

By the way, I once attended a concert by Lewis Black in Upper Darby.  I thought his bit on candy corn was really amusing.  I was also legally concealing a 9mm pistol, and yet somehow didn’t manage to cause mass hysteria.  Lewis Black may be a talented comedian, but he needs to understand that firearms can be used for good or ill, it depends on the person that’s possessing it.

A few days ago I linked to a VPC study that purported to rank states by number of drive by shootings. While I linked to it in such a way as to not take it seriously, it would appear that, perhaps because they lack the funding to conduct a proper study, that VPC determined this through creative Google searching! I couldn’t make this shit up folks.

Stick a fork in them. The VPC is done.

Jeff links to a pretty good NYT article on anti-gun blogger woes:

But, she said, liberal bloggers have expressed little interest in the subject.

Mr. Rasiej suggested she start blogging herself.

“Put up a blog and ask the blogging community how to make it part of the conversation,” he said. “There’s an opportunity for you to engage with bloggers by saying, ‘I like what you’re saying about health care but you aren’t talking about the gun issue.’ Create a presence for yourself in this community. Write on Kos or MyDD.”

The reason is because liberals don’t care about gun control anymore.  More and more it’s becoming an issue of contention on the left, and more of a settled thing on the right.   I think the lack of gun control blogs is a testament to that.

Lessons from Macca has brought up a big question, as to whether that type of commenting is just using an alias, or engaging in sock puppetry. Sock puppetry is a distinct act, and we should be careful not to accuse it when what we’re really seeing is use of an alias. Sock puppetry requires misrepresenting yourself as another distinct person. Was the poster misrepresenting themselves as another person? Or merely trying to hide identity? To me that’s the key distinction. Sebastian, for instance, is an alias. I use it to hide my true identity, but anything I tell you about myself, or any of my opinions, are the real deal. I’m not trying to represent myself as a different person than I am.

Is Macca and alias, or a sock puppet? Discuss in the comments.

So we know that SayUncle posted here his theory for what happened with the Brady Blog.  I suspected that Macca was a young staffer, but I would appear to have been incorrect, after comments on my post here.  I am fairly certain that I know Macca’s true identity at this point.

In the interest of decency, I’m not going to out who she/he is.  My personal curiosity was merely to find out whether we had some real grass roots showing up on Brady’s Blog or whether we had people closely associated with the organization showing up to make it appear that way.

Macca would appear to be a board member for the Brady Campaign, and an activist with the organization in Texas.  It would appear Macca is not full time paid staff, but nonetheless is closely associated with the organization.  Just for contrast, SayUncle isn’t even a member of the NRA.  I am a member, but I doubt there are any NRA board members out there who would know me if they saw me.   I have met some prominent people in the gun rights community, but all those contacts I developed through blogging.   Before I started blogging, I was just a number in the member database.  I started this blog, because I cared about the issue, and I wanted to impress a chick.  All of us have similar stories.

I have no doubt that Macca is as passionate about gun control as I am about stopping it, but if one of the few proponents of gun control that’s showing up to argue against us, on their own blog, is a Brady Board member, they have a lot of work to do getting people energized about their issue, and getting them informed.

The gun control movement has had three decades of a fawning media who were willing to eat up everything they said without question, and regurgitate it for public consumption.   The new media isn’t going to work that way.  We’re out here and prepared to challenge them, and their new media efforts to date stand as a shining example of how unprepared I think they are.   They had better come up with new arguments, and get used to dealing with tough criticism and questions, because it’s not going to get any easier from here.   We’re all going to make sure of that!

Via Of Arms And the Law, apparently Carolyn McCarthy has responded to Josh Sugarmann’s objections to HR2640 over at HuffPo. I wonder how many coctails the Congresswoman from New York needed to imbibe in order to dull the pain of writing these words:

The author must also consider the political realities of Washington. Despite the efforts of Mr. Sugarmann and many others, the National Rifle Association still wields tremendous influence in the halls of Congress and their blessing is required for any bill that enforces or creates gun laws.

Ouch! That had to hurt. The pain doesn’t end there, however:

In listing the three anti-gun violence organizations that have reservations about my bill, Mr. Sugarmann inadvertently addresses why the NRA has such power while the efforts of organizations working to prevent gun violence have been futile for close to a decade. The NRA is consolidated into a single cohesive unit, but the groups working for common sense gun laws are many and each possess their own agenda and points of view. Only when these groups join forces for common legislative goals will we be able to prevail not only in the halls of Congress, but in state legislatures and city halls across the country as well.

I guess she doesn’t know all the bickering that often goes on between GOA, JPFO, NRA and SAF. We are pretty united though otherwise, I’ll give her that. But we need to stay that way, which is why I get pissy when one group attacks the other to get advantage for their own group. It’s one thing to criticize, that’s fine, but I still think GOA became unhinged over HR2640. Carolyn McCarthy might get her wish though, given that the VPC is hemmoraging money at an astounding rate, it might not be too long before the gun control movement only has one group left standing.

She shouldn’t count on that translating to victory, however. The root reason we’re achieving victories over them politically isn’t that we’re united, it’s that there are a lot more of us than there are of them. If there’s a serious political movement to pass gun control, it’s completely unapparent to me here on the Internet.

A lot of other people have linked Rob’s great suggestions for Paul.  I will too.   It’s deserving of a high google rank.