Category: Anti-Gun Folks

These days, I’ve kind of felt like most anti-gun editorials are really more of a dog bites man story. But every once in a while, you’ll find one that dials up the stupid to 11, and you just can’t help but mock it. This is one of those stories:

As I flipped through the pages of this children’s activity book, my innocent curiosity quickly shifted to annoyance and then disgust. This was a book written for preschoolers to first graders with the intent of teaching kids not to play with the guns that they find through the hero-like advice of a large talking bird.

Yes, the abject horror of kids learning not to play with guns. What will that evil National Rifle Association think up next!? Don’t they know that a lot of kids are killed by guns every year? And that poor Trayvon, “with Skittles in one hand and iced tea in the other, was shot to death in 2012 via Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.” To borrow from Miguel a bit:

“We have to do something about all these kids who die from gun accidents.”

“Okay, we’ll create a program that teaches young children that guns are dangerous, and not to play with them.”

“That’s awful. You can’t do that. Think of all the kids that die from guns!”

Both Thirdpower and Miguel have been covering the latest unfolding saga involving the mouth foamers at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. I headed over to their Facebook page, and boy, there is an awful lot of one sided conversations going on in that thread, because the other side has been deleted. At least our veterans forced the CSGV intern to work through the weekend deleting comments instead of doing whatever it is interns do these days. Screen caps are forever though.

They can’t really claim to be deleting flames and trolls, since they seem to be quite content with leaving flames and trolls that agree with their point of view. Remember that these groups were on the ropes before Sandy Hook. Every nut job on their Facebook page is a potential donor, and it’s donors they need to save their phony baloney jobs.

Bob Owens at Bearing Arms caught one MDA chapter leader, and volunteer for the Carolyn Maloney campaign, suggesting that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels was a pretty insightful guy. I would bet money that Alison Martin had no idea who Joseph Goebbels was when she uttered that statement of support, and when she found out, she deleted her Twitter account because it was embarrassing.

That said, the quote in question is one that has been attributed to Goebbels, but I can’t find any evidence that quote is actually his. I don’t believe if her statement was uttered in ignorance that it lets Ms. Martin off the hook — far from it. It shows a dangerous ignorance. The fall of the Weimar Republic and rise of the Nazis is a recent history that describes a country making the slow (and democratic!) descent into the madness of a mass murdering police state. I would also wager that Ms. Martin has never read Orwell. Perhaps she can learn something from another quote from George Santayana:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Bob Owens notices that CeaseFire PA has jumped quick on attempting to exploit the ambush murder of two Pennsylvania State Troopers by a crazed gunman. They are claiming that murders committed with long guns has doubled since 1996. That number is, of course, a complete fabrication. Bob looks at the actual figures and notes the number of murders with long guns has, in fact, halved. Bob notes:

The attempt to target long-guns comes after numerous media outlets sympathetic to gun control curious chose last week to abandon their 30-year fixation on so-called “assault weapons.”

Apparently, they’re now going to go after bolt-action rifles used for hunting, calling them “sniper rifles,” comparing their owners to “insurrectionists” and”terrorists” as they attempt to push universal background checks as a de facto gun registry.

I don’t think that can be stressed enough. If they get the “background check” bill they want, there will be de facto firearm registration in this country. We already have this for handguns in Pennsylvania, and nationally there is registration for firearms bought at retail through 4473. But the exceptions are important. Because you can buy, sell, and trade firearms privately, when the knock comes, they can’t prove anything. If that knock comes (don’t ever let anyone tell you they aren’t out to take your guns), you don’t want to be in a position where you have to turn it over, or admit to another serious crime.

Quinnipiac also has Corey Gardiner up by 8 over incumbent Democratic senator Mark Udall. I wonder what could have happened in Colorado since 2012 that’s gotten people so angry at the Democratic Party and Mark Udall? Remember, Coloradans, that both your Democratic senators voted for the awful Manchin-Toomey compromise which would have gutted the safe travel provisions of FOPA, among other things. They also voted for Lautenberg’s magazine limits. Don’t forget that when November comes around.

Dave Hardy, who unlike me is a lawyer, looks at the Brady Center suit against Lucky Gunner and declares it weak tea. As a reader mentioned yesterday, LG is owned by former law students of Glenn Reynolds. If I were them, I’d be looking into what sanctions are available in Colorado against plaintiffs who file frivolous lawsuits with an aim to punch back twice as hard.

I believe the best strategy to discourage the Brady Center from continuing to harass and harangue people out of exercising their constitutional rights is to make sure they pay for this to the fullest extent available under the law. I believe in the past, our side was generally reluctant to play dirty with the Bradys, for fear of the negative PR associated with the big, bad gun industry attacking poor little gun control advocates. I think in this case, based on comments I’ve seen around non-gun sites, most people view this as suing car dealers for DUIs. We shouldn’t fear the news cycle on this one.

I think we should ensure that the costs for these legal adventures is borne as much as possible by the Brady Center. If the Brady’s don’t accomplish anything except enriching our pro-2A attorneys, I’m pretty certain this strategy will be declared a loser, and they will stop.