The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
I noticed that someone in a volunteer group was asking about NRA advertisements, so I went to check out the PVF site to see if any were posted yet. It looks like they just started posting some this week. For those of you not in swing states, I thought you might like to see some of the ads.
In Virginia:
In Ohio:
In Florida:
Just to drive the point home, NRA holds a joint even with the Romney-Ryan Campaign to announce their endorsement just outside of DC in Virginia:
10,000 people show up. CSGV gets outraged and calls for protests outside of the White House, and you get this. And they wonder why no one pays any attention to them, or gives a crap about their cause?
UPDATE: Many more pictures from John Richardson.
The announcement for a special event hosted by NRA came a few days ago, so I figured that could only mean one thing. From Chris Cox:
I’m proud to announce today that your NRA Political Victory Fund is endorsing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for President and Vice President of the United States.
Romney’s statement on assault weapons from years ago while he was Governor of Massachusetts will continue to dog him with the gun vote, but with what’s on the line with the Courts, I expected NRA would endorse him anyway. In fact, in Chris Cox’s letter, the first reason listed is “Mitt Romney will appoint pro-Second Amendment judges to the Supreme Court.” With the endorsement, hopefully NRA will have some input into the selection process when it comes time to replace justices.
Gun Rights Policy Conference, put on by the Second Amendment Foundation, is in Florida this year, in the Orlando Airport Hyatt. One of these days I’ll make a GRPC, but these days I don’t have as much spare money to fly all over the place for the gun issue. One day I will go.
Miguel is there, and has an excellent illustration to show just how ridiculous Florida’s application of the law in this instance can be. Also at GRPC this year? Sounds like Robb, Joe Huffman, Dave Hardy, and John Richardson are also attending. I offer my regrets, but perhaps next year (which I say every year).
From the folks at Guns Save Life, in Illinois, who drew approximately 160 people to their event. We’re here, we’re real, get used to it.
Miguel has a link to the latest CSGV protest at the White House. I count twelve people. Meanwhile, last week, we had our Friends of the NRA Dinner for Bucks County:
That’s 81 people, who paid 45 dollars to show up, and then also forked out an average of several hundred dollars a person on games. Granted, this is the non-political branch of NRA — Friends of the NRA raises money to fund grants to support shooting sport programs, particularly youth programs run by groups like the Boy Scouts and 4H. In a single county, we can attract nearly 7x more than CSGV’s White House protests.
And I’d note that our dinner is new, and we’re hoping to grow it. Why? Because 81 is a sad turnout by Friends of the NRA banquet standards. The Liberty Bell Committee puts on a dinner in the City of Philadelphia that regularly attracts 250 or more. Chester County FNRA, hosting their dinner in Kennett Square, attracts 300 people. Montgomery County, also a new committee, but a few years older than ours, is up to 160. Biggest of all in Eastern Pennsylvania is the Lancaster Friends, who put on a dinner with 800 or more, such that they have to run the dinner buffet style, and keep it running all night so that everyone can eat.
The gun control movement in decline (GCMD?) keeps denying they are up against real people. NRA? A toadie for the gun industry who just wants to sell more guns. NRA is an organization that’s brainwashed a small number of extremists. Guns are not a grassroots cause.
But the truth is that a small number of extremists would seem to more accurately describe their movement than ours.
Notice one argument missing? Nowhere is the 5-4 thread the Second Amendment is now hanging by even mentioned. Maybe they’ve focused grouped this or something, and the fact is that people just don’t really grasp the enormity of the danger, unless you hit them with “We see him as the most anti-gun president in modern times.” But I’m pretty skeptical that this message is going to be more effective. We all remember Clinton. We all remember him using the bully pulpit ever time there was a mass shooting. We remember eight years of nothing but more gun control. I’m not sure this rhetoric passes the smell test.
But the Supreme Court issue does. I know my biggest fear is spending the next four years hoping that Scalia, Kennedy and even Thomas have really good doctors. There’s also the proverbial bus. Not to mention, at some point that 5 justice majority breaks, and I honestly don’t want to find out where that is without another pick up. Have NRA members become so detached from the issue we can no longer level with them? I mean, we’re talking about the Second Amendment being repealed from the Bill of Rights by judicial fiat. If that’s not enough to scare gun owners, we’re doomed.
There are a lot of different gun rights advocates that I’ve run into in my life, but if there’s one thing that I’ve found that’s absolutely true is that there are a lot of jackasses in this issue, and they are loud. Here’s an example:
Ready to defend the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms, gun lovers packed the council meeting, only to find a different tradition they didn’t like. Corrales, a 300-plus-year-old village, pays tribute to its roots by saying the Pledge of Allegiance in both Spanish and English before each meeting. It’s been an unremarked-upon custom until the gun restriction meeting earlier this month. At that point, crowd members in love with the Second Amendment went to town to upend the First Amendment. According to news reports, the crowd began drowning out the Spanish pledge, shouting the words in English. The mayor stopped and invited people to use the language of their choosing, and the Spanish pledge began again. The shouting continued. No Spanish could be heard.
Personally, if a village whose history predates New Mexico as part of the United States wants to say the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish as well as English, what’s it to you? But even if you want to object to the practice, the polite way to do it would be to take it up with the Town Council, in addition to your other issues, not to engage in jackassery and just drown out the Spanish speaking people. Because, you know, that just might make gun owners come off as xenophobic boobs. The fundamental truth is that if we do not convince our new immigrants into this country the importance of the Second Amendment, and other American values, we will lose them. If they are easier to reach in Spanish as opposed to English, so be it. They certainly aren’t the first group of immigrants, and certainly won’t be the last, to prefer their native language, and want to celebrate their ethnic heritage.
If these people had responded to a GOA alert, it would be one thing, but behavior like this makes me ashamed that they might also call themselves NRA members.
A reader sent this along, from a NY cop detailing how much training the typical New York Cop receives. Someone in the comment section brought up citizen concealed carry holders, and he remarks:
Any average CCW citizen who practices more then twice a year pretty much has most of the department beat in terms of training.
That’s scary. I’m also struck by this admission:
The NYPD offers once a month training for members to use, on their own time. However, all that is done during these sessions are the same basic dumbed down qualification exercises. You will only receive real help if you outright fail. Missed 12 out of fifty @ 7 yards? GOOD ENOUGH!
MOST NYPD officers fire their FIRST gun, ever in their entire lives, at the police academy, some as young as 21 to as old as 35 shooting for their very first time, and on a DAO pistol.
As I mentioned, when you destroy your civilian gun culture, you have nothing to draw from when you need a cadre of men proficient at arms, and bureaucracies are very very bad at providing this kind of training. This is merely dangerous when you can’t hire competent gunmen to be police, when you can’t find them for military purposes, it represents an existential threat to national security.
This would have been no surprise to William Church, New Yorker, Civil War veteran, founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Journalist for the New York Times, and founder of the National Rifle Association. Nor would it have been any great revelation to General George Wingate, New Yorker, Civil War veteran, and also a founder of the National Rifle Association. These men started the NRA to address the very problem Bloomberg now faces today, who believed the solution was a healthy civilian shooting culture, even in New York City. Indeed, the NRA’s first range wasn’t far:
The first President of the “National Rifle Association,” as it was called, was General Ambrose E. BURNSIDE, who made a very good figure-head, but under whose leadership nothing was accomplished. It was not till the second year of its existence that any real progress was made. Then, by the efforts of the new President, Colonel CHURCH of the “Army and Navy Journal,” and the Secretary, Mr. George W. WINGATE, the New York Legislature of 1872 was induced to appropriate $25,000 for the purchase of a range near New York city, the Association agreeing to raise $5,000 on its part.
Can you imagine the State of New York helping NRA build a range near New York City today, and allocating money for its construction? Witness Chicago doing everything it possibly can to keep ranges out of its city. Witness New York City, whose Mayor goes into fits any time we dare to speak of restoring the Second Amendment for New Yorkers, including for its police officers. Other, more sensible New Yorkers, from an earlier time when people did not recoil at the thought of firearms, knew the solution. It’s a pity Bloomberg never will.
Based on this USA Today article (via Richard Fernandez), showing that many of Obama’s twitter followers are phony baloney, my first thought was this would be a great tactic for gun control groups to use, given their lack of any real grassroots energy. The tool can be found here. First I checked myself, and found 80% of my peeps are good, 16% are inactive, and only 4% are phony.
CSGV are 88% good, 12% inactive, and they have no fakes. This isn’t too surprising, because they have been gaining followers largely through following large numbers of people and asking for follows back, which is a legitimate tactic, and usually works.
Brady, however, is a different story. The tool lists only 20% of their users as being good. The rest of their followers, some 77%, are inactive. Only 3% are fake, but with that many inactive, it’s safe to say that CSGV probably has more engaged followers than Brady.
VPCInfo has about the same mix as I do, 79% good, 18% inactive, and 3% fake. He also has fewer followers than I do. This isn’t too surprising, because Sugarmann has been phoning it in for a few years now on the issue overall, and doesn’t really seem to have any kind of social media strategy other than being there.
NRA actually doesn’t look too great. The NRANews is 60% good, 31% inactive, and 9% fake. The NRA main feed is 54% good, 36% inactive, and 10% fake. Interesting.
I think it’s safe to say that no one in this issue seems to be buying friends. So why such appalling numbers for Brady, and even NRA’s don’t look so good? I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point Brady encouraged their followers to get on social media, and a lot did, and promptly got off. Gun owners trying Twitter, and getting frustrated or bored with it could also explain NRA’s numbers. I’ve generally found Twitter to be a bit like a garden. Every once in a while, you have to pull weeds. I’ve found TwitBlock to be a pretty good for that, but if you have a lot of followers, it can take quite a while to scan your whole list.