Anti-Gun Folks – Page 212 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Another One Gone – Mayor Wolf

Mary B. Wolf, Mayor of Williamsport, PA (North/Central PA) has resigned from Mayor Bloomberg’s coalition of gun haters.Â I guess folks in Williamsport have some good sense, which is a lot more than I can say for John Street and the other Philadelphia politicians:

I have learned that the Coalition may be working on issues that conflict with legal gun ownership and that some action on your behalf are dubious.Â I have also learned that other mayors from cities large and small across the country have withdrawn their names as supporters of the Coalition.Â This letter informs you that I too, am withdrawing from the Mayors Coalition Against Illegal Guns.

Thanks Mayor Wolf, for choosing to no longer associate with this group.Â You do your city and our state a good service.

Mowing the Astroturf

The other Sebastian exposes one of the “concerned citizens” appearing before the Maryland Generally Assembly to testify in favor of SB43, the assault weapons ban in that state:

Sue Peschin is trying to sell the idea that sheâ€™s just a concerned member of the voting public. Donâ€™t be fooled! In the comments below, Norton has the goods on our friend Sue.

Pretty clearly sheâ€™s NOT just a worried Marylander, but a paid, professional anti-liberty lobbyist.

It’s my sincere hope that if we keep exposing their astroturf campaigns and outright deceptions, it’ll really damage their credibility, and fewer political bodies will be willing to listen to them.Â But it’s just a hope.Â Do you think this little bit will be covered by the Baltimore Sun or other Maryland media?Â Not on your life.

A Bit Too Much Credit

Old Blind Dog makes an interesting comment:

â€œâ€¦.what the left of today fails to understandâ€¦â€

They most certainly do understand it. They are deathly afraid of the threat to power that it implies. It stands in the way of their power over this country and the citizens of this country that they would subjugate under the mantle of socialism. That is why they must destroy it.

I know a fair number of people who support gun control, and I can tell you for none of them is this really true. In fact, I think it’s giving them a bit too much credit. What many on the left want does have the ancillary effect of making us easier to subjugate as a people, but most of them don’t really think that strategically about gun control. There are surely some die hard commies out there who wake up every day and think “We really need to disarm the proletariat before we can seize power and establish our workers paradise!”, but I would be hard pressed to say that even the most left leaning folks think that way. In fact, I generally find the radical left more open to RKBA arguments than much of the mainstream left, at least until the revolution against the bourgeois is over. There are also your basic hoplophobes, who are just afraid of guns, and don’t want anyone else to have them because of that. But the commies and true hoplophobes I think are a minority.

Gun control, for much of the left, is a form of cultural chauvinism. They look down in rural people and rural culture, and would like to “introduce them” to a better way to live, namely the way they live. To them, arms are barbaric, and by allowing them, we corrupt our national culture with an odor of incivility. They see themselves as above that kind of thing, and don’t see disarming as a way to subjugate, but as a way to make the country as a whole reflect their cultural values. One could argue this is still subjugation, and you’d be right, but the motivations are different, and it’s important to understand the mindset properly in order to discredit it. They don’t see gun control is a precursor to ruling, but as a package of values that are counter to our own.

That doesn’t diminish the importance of defending our rights as Americans, but it’s important to understand the many reasons that people support gun control in order to bring fourth good arguments to defeat it in the public debate over the right to keep and bear arms.

Dave Hardy Warns of False Flags

Of Arms an the Law has some thoughts about “false flag” operations:

The problem here is that folks who like the first may assume (as traditionalists) that traditional values apply. People may be taken at their word. The other side is not obsessive, but has rational limits. If they say they only dislike AR-15s and certain handguns, they must mean it. There are no “false flag” operations. A group with shooters and hunters in their name is a group of shooters and hunters, and a blog named “The Gun Guys” must be run by gunnies.

That’s an interesting observaton I hadn’t thought about before.Â It’s my hope with “Gun Control and Hunting Day”, I’ll be able to unmask some of this.Â It’s not my intention to drag out the whole Zumbo thing.Â As far as I’m concerned that’s water under the bridge now.Â But I would like to get a collection of writing out there that associates gun control with its effects on hunters.Â Hopefully this will turn out.Â I’ll be working on it a bit more tonight.

Mystery MySpace Blogger Surfaced

From the comments:

Hi.

Long distance murder rifles? Ban .22s and shotguns for the children?

That was me.

I settled on this board by the complicated algorithm of flipping some coins. Now that the Brady Campaign has gotten myspace to return the /bradycampaign blog to their ownership, thereâ€™s no reason for me to not come out with what I have to say, and I have a lot to say.

For example, the amount of messages and comments I got stunned me. Thousands apon thousands. The blog itself was getting 10,000+ views every day. (I regret not screenshotting this)

I want to make some comments about how we have to accomplish standing together, â€œfuddsâ€ and EBR owners, as long as you guys want to hear me out. Oh, Iâ€™d have gone to ar15.com since they had 5+ threads about it, but the registration never emailed me. So you guys are stuck with me.

So it would seem Kevin Baker was right all along. It was one of our own. Now I feel kind of bad for screwing up his scheme :)

UPDATE: I didn’t realize my commenter was not the actual MySpace dude. He was quoting a post you can read over here. For future reference, you can quote sections using the <blockquote></blockquote> in the comment area, if you want to make a quote of something else.

Brady MySpace Blog Altered

Interesting. The MySpace page seems to have been altered, with different content being substituted streamed right from the Bradys:

Which means, that both the MySpace page is pulling content from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownershipâ€™s main page, and the Brady Bunch is letting them (note the xshare/myspace/ subdirectory)

Possibilities are that the Brady Campaign managed to get MySpace to turn the blog over to them, which is Standard Mischeif’s theory (I agree), and they removed the content, or they convinced the person running it to remove the stuff, and accept their stream. Or they really did run the site and were a bit paniced when we caught them ;)

I think the Bradys were telling the truth about the blog not being associated with them, and got the blog turned over. It was using their trademarks, so they do have a legal leg to stand on if they demanded that.

A Very Brady Reply: MySpace Blog Bogus

From the comments:

I can confirm that these statements were made by an impostor. Iâ€™m a spokesman for the Brady Campaign, and I know that none of us were involved in those postings. Thatâ€™s not our statement, and itâ€™s not our position.

So it would appear whoever is hosting that MySpace Blog is not actually speaking for the Bradys in an official capacity. The IP he’s coming from does check out as being from the Brady Campaign, so this is for real.

Speaking with The Enemy

I’ve decided to e-mail the Brady Campaign and get the real story on the MySpace profile. Go take a look, because there’s a lot of choice stuff being said there, that if actually coming from someone associated with them, is definitely quite revealing as to how far they are willing to take it.

Despite the fact that I despise the Brady Campaign, we’d all be pissed off if someone in our community was printing outrageous stuff masquerading as an NRA spokesperson, so I think in the interest of fairness, we should try to find out the truth behind this MySpace user. I know these folks aren’t always fair with us, but I think if we need to consistently take the high road. It helps build our credibility as a community.

So when the Brady’s respond, I’ll post it. If they don’t, I’m going to take that as a statement that they don’t really wish to distance themselves from these statements, in which case we can all feel free to quote away. They claim they will respond within 72 hours. The clock ticks ;)

UPDATE: The Bradys have responded. They are not associated with the MySpace Blog.

Bradys Bad Mouthing Good Gun Shops

This, rather shocking Philadelphia Inquirer article, shocking in the sense that it’s not virulently anti-gun, tells a tale of a Bucks County, PA (my county of residence, north of the city) gun shop that got wrongly blacklisted by the Brady Bunch:

Which is what happened last month when the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence released a report, “Shady Dealings: Illegal Gun Trafficking from Licensed Gun Dealers.” Tanner’s store was featured as one of the scurrilous.

What the Brady Center didn’t know is that the sale had been a sting, arranged in cooperation with the local office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The rest of the article goes into more detail. They do get one thing wrong though:

While he considers the fine points, the woman will wander around, utterly uninterested. But when they’re ready to buy, she’ll be the one filling out the paperwork. If it can be proved she bought the guns for the man, it is a “straw purchase” – a felony.

This isn’t necessarily a straw purchase, since you are allowed to purchase firearms as gifts. Even in Pennsylvania, where private sales of handguns are generally illegal, there is an exception for spouses, and immediate family members.

But overall, it’s good to see stuff like this. I will have to send the Philadelphia Inquirer some praise for printing a good, balanced article on the issue. Oh, and Tanner managed to get an apology out of the Brady’s and a retraction, after getting a lot of phone calls from irate customers who read a newspaper article on the Brady’s report. I would have hoped that gun shop patrons would know ahead of time that the Brady’s are full of crap.

Bloomberg Under Federal Investigation

According to tan SAF press release, the ATF has begun an investigation into New York Mayor Bloomberg’s “sting” operation against out of state gun shops:

Five months after the Second Amendment Foundation called on U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for obstruction of justice relating to Bloombergâ€™s rogue â€œstingâ€ operation against gun retailers in five states, the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has confirmed in a letter that an investigation is underway.

Great news! Not much more detail than that, since the ATF is claiming that it can’t comment on an active investigation, but for everyone who called the ATF, it would seem it has paid off. The letter can be seen here.