Category: Guns

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!