"Second Amendment Nonsense"

Those are the feelings on the Bill of Rights by (former?*) DC area MMM president and overall twit Ladd Everitt (who also happens to be Comm. Dir. of the CSGV)



He repeats the famous "1% of gun dealers" lie which has been refuted by the CRS and compares firearms to spinach. When PuSH'ers gripe about our comparisons to cars and licensing, I plan on pointing them to this.

I wonder if Ladd still holds the 'collective rights' belief after Heller and McDonald and the BC statement that 'gun bans are off the table' or if, after all these cases, it's still 'judicial activism'?

I also wonder how well he knows GritsJr.

* I put that in parentheses since it seems the DC Chapter no longer exists. The Brady Bunch page states" We are currently organizing in your area, and we need your help." and the e-mail goes to a generic. So he's watching two groups he's been high in collapse. Telling.

More of those Dang 'Coincidences'

We've talked several times about the Huffpo Troll known as 'GritsJr' and how he just 'happened' to post the exact same comment as someone using CSGV ED Josh Horwitz' account (and then deleted) just minutes earlier.

That's just one 'coincidence' and Grits denies being Josh himself. Fair enough even though his only defense is that I photo-shopped the screencapped messages.

Another 'coincidence' is, everytime Grits gets his Br'er Bear on and starts posting links to my site , I get a flood of hits from Wash. DC.,the homebase of the CSGV, for those exact same pages right before they turn up on Huffpo.

45Superman informed me that yesterday there was even another 'coincidence'. W/i minutes of eachother*, Grits posted the exact same quotes from SipseyStreetIrregulars as CSGV did on their TwitterFeed. Interestingly though, one tweet didn't make it through until several hours later.

I'm sure Grits will just consider this just another 'conspiracy theory' since it's possible he's just a regular guy who's that obsessed w/ reposting CSGV talking points, but all these 'coincidences' sure are piling up, aren't they? You'ld think that Grits would man up and just admit he's an intern/employee of CSGV that messed up instead of digging himself and his group deeper w/ every post.

But we know that's unlikely.

*Time stamp differences accounted for.

Shades of Gray

Some of the people I work with are knuckle-dragging gun lovers. Some are gun owners who think they own “politically safe” firearms which have never and will never be targeted by the Brady Bunch………..I should probably mention here that I have queried them and they don’t even know what the Brady Campaign is……….and that makes me giggle like a school girl every time.

Some of me peers are total neutrals who ask me to appraise firearms their relatives own, and some are antis.

I’ve worked at my current company for the last 15 years and with my current team for the last 7 years and there is one that I just couldn’t identify……….until today.

Play along if you wish, I’ll stick to the highlights…

1. She’s a Buddhist of Indian decent. No, not Native American, but from India.
2. She’s a STRICT vegan. No meat, no diary, no eggs, no butter, no flavor. She occasionally eats stuff with sugar in it but complains loudly as she does it.
3. Her marriage was “arranged” by her parents based on the numerology of the viable candidates.
4. She has taken a pledge to personally save the entire planet from imminent doom by recycling EVERYTHING. Here’s a little hint; we all work in a Research & Development chemical lab and cross contamination can ruin years of work but she still recycles EVERYTHING. Right now, she has been tasked with replicating some of the findings I found 12 months ago. Thank god for lab notebooks; I’ll have to go back and recreate what I made when Obama was still popular just to show that my lab techniques and my recipes are reproducible when done properly. I don’t trust anything she does because she uses materials, equipment and techniques that were the latest rage during Bush 41.

So what’s your guess?

Gun nut? Gun owner? Neutral? Anti?

I may have to make a 5th category just for her based on the conversation in the lab today, But first, the players…

Me…gun nut(who uses ear protection for even a .22 rifle)
Ken…gun owner(who is near deaf because he didn’t believe in ear protection until it was too late.)
Jay…Buddhist vegan out to save the planet

Jay: How many *classified classified* do you have today? I did mention it was R&D, right?
Ken: What?
Me: He has eight.
Jay: I forgot that you can’t hear out of your right ear.
Ken: Actually, I have severe hearing loss in both ears.
Jay: How did that happen?
Ken: Too much shooting without hearing protection
Jay: Oh no, you must ALWAYS wear ear protection when shooting a gun.
Me: Agreed.
Ken: What?
Me: I said that I agreed with Jay that you should ALWAYS wear ear protection when shooting.
Ken: Yeah, well.

Jay is a neutral who doesn’t like guns yet can recite the 4 basic rules like a pro(Ya, I tested her). She doesn’t see the point in hunting because she doesn’t eat meat but has very strong feelings about gun safety and awareness when targeting game in the field.

Our community tends to focus on die-hard 2A supporters and total douche-bag gun grabbers. I just want to remind everyone that there are some shades of gray in the mix and that harvest could prove to be the most abundant. Be yourself, be cool and talk to people. You just might be surprised.

Reading tea leaves

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been trying to figure out what the Brady Bunch is up to. Something has been bugging me about their actions since Heller and I finally have a working hypothesis. First a brief recap…

1. Heller and McDonald stung them so badly they tried to sell them as victories for further gun control.
2. Ignored by Obama to the point of them releasing their infamous “report card” just days before his State of the Union speech in a vain attempt to shame the President into responding during a speech known to have a very large audience.
3. Ignored by the Congress. Remember how Diane Feinstein said “now is not the time” to bring up the AWB and that she would “wait for the right time” to bring it up? Well, the midterms are just days away and not looking too good for the party which traditionally favors gun-control. If “the right time” hasn’t presented itself while the democrats hold both Houses of Congress and the White House, what are the chances after November 2nd?

Having the Brady Bunch bitch and belly ache to the President, the Congress and the SCOTUS makes perfect sense to me and would be a decent use of their limited resources. But then they throw me for a loop.

4. They bitch about various professional athletes.
5. They bitch about Starbucks.
6. They bitch about Lady Gaga.

I posted before that 4, 5 & 6 were simply a way for them to keep their name in the news because 1, 2 & 3 just wasn’t getting them any face time. They can’t be stupid enough to think that trying to ban guns one restaurant at a time would be a good use of their limited cash. They can’t be stupid enough to think they can manufacture outrage because a pop-singer poses with fake prop guns.

Then I remembered the title of one of Helmke’s blog posts on HuffPo.

“What we’re doing now isn’t working.”

That’s a bit of an understatement but that’s the key. They telegraphed their plan. The Brady Bunch has to be frustrated far beyond the brave face they put when the cameras are around. So that’s where my hypothesis starts…

The Brady Bunch isn’t stupid.

No, I’m not talking about Helmke, Henigan and Petey; they have become a parody of themselves and can’t say ANYTHING, even if it’s the truth, without directly contradicting themselves with their own previous statements. I’m talking about the few wealthy donors who finance them.

What they need is a fresh face with a clean slate and a sympathetic story to pluck the heart strings.

Enter Colin Goddard; survivor of Virginia Tech after being shot 4 times.

People under the age of 35 don’t remember the assassination attempt on Reagan or who Jim Brady even is and the BC knows their only hope is to co-opt the next generation of youth to support their cause.

I think the movers and shakers behind the curtains are pushing Helmke out and putting Colin Goddard in a chair before Congress and on the Oprah Show.

Colin is being groomed.

Helmke is nervous of being supplanted.

Could be wrong of course, but we should start cataloging EVERYTHING Colin says now since those words may come in quite handy in the near future.

UPDATE: Looks like Brady Board member Joan Peterson, AKA japete, is primping Colin's feathers less than 24 hours after I posted.

Non-partisan?

The anti-gun group Americans United for Safe Streets claims to be 'non-partisan' and is, and I quote " not picking sides" yet it seems the only people they're targeting in their ad campaign are, drumroll please....

Republicans.

The campaign will target a handful of Republican hopefuls and could be a boon to their Democratic counterparts,

They're about as 'non-partisan' as the AHSA (was) and the Brady Bunch.

Oh, and lookey who's funding them:

$500,000 Michael R Bloomberg City of New York/Bloomberg New York NY 10/17/08

A few of the other names on there you might recognize as well. Fanatical gun banners like Horwitz and Spangler.

Just another puppet group to make it sound like they have more support than they really do.

Telling

GOP Candidate for Governor of IL, Bill Brady, has, on his endorsement page, both the NRA and ISRA.

DNC Candidate, Pat Quinn, after 'graciously' accepting the endorsement of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership, does not put it up on his page but does have a 'sportsmen for Quinn' bit.

Guess it didn't mean all that much after all.

Recall of a Defective Product a Bad Thing?

Josh Sugarmann of the Joyce Puppet VPC is upset that Bushmaster is recalling a possibly defective firearm.

I don't see how this could be a major problem since Josh has decreed that the market has crashed for EBR's of all sorts and nobody is buying them anymore and that crime will skyrocket after McDonald.

But as we all know (or should), Josh's entire argument is based on deceiving the public.

"The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons."

But Josh doesn't care. He's happy collecting his paycheck for putting this nonsense out.

Otis McDonald Endorses Bill Brady for IL Gov

Got A Grassroots Problem? Make Lotsa Socksas

While the Brady Bunch is trying to tell politicians gun control is a winning solution to gain the vote of women, the reality speaks louder than words.

What do they do to make is seem like they have more support than they really have? Why make a whole bunch of puppet groups and websites that regurgitate the exact same message at exactly the same time using the exact same software:


h/t to reader Link P in comments.

So What Have You Done?

I hear lots of complaining over the actions or inactions of the various gun control groups. This ranges from endorsements, litigation, legislation, etc.

While everyone has the right to express their opinion, what have you done to make your opinion actually worth something? Besides sending in your annual check I mean.

How many Representatives/Senators (either state or federal) have you contacted?

How many people have you brought out shooting?

How many have you signed up as members to your preferred organization?

Have you done anything to get the word out to others?

Have you volunteered to help out some pro-firearm activity?

Most people can't spend their entire lives or even the majority of their time advocating for a cause but have you done anything to promote it besides riding the coattails of those who do?

What have you done?

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One and the Same

We've talked about the fact that Joan Peterson is a board member of both the Brady Bunch and a Joyce Puppet group. Well those connections between the groups are getting even tighter as their support falters.

Thom Mannard has left his job of ten years as the ED of the Joyce Puppet Illinois Council against Handgun Ownership.

Replacing him is Tom Vanden Berk, another Brady Bunch board member who we've mentioned before.

As their public support continues to wain and mergers of the groups continue, it appears they're having a harder time finding enough people to run even these reduced organizations. It also shows that their agendas are just as similar as we've claimed all along. While the Brady Bunch filed a 'neutral' brief in McDonald and claimed 'handgun bans are off the table, all the Joyce groups opposed the ownership of handguns. We've seen the Brady's pick up the 'insurrectionist' meme championed by Josh Horwitz.

Gun control advocates like to rant on about the NRA and how they control the opinions and messages of all these blogs and other pro-gun groups. The reality is that there is much more diversity in opinion and leadership among firearm advocates that what is left of the gun control movement.

They are one and the same and we'll continue to see their extremist viewpoints shrink along w/ their support and budgets.

Avoiding The Hard Questions

Brady Campaign Board Member Joan Peterson, who believes you can buy grenades and RPG's at gun shows, admits she doesn't know very much about gun control laws. Yet she's in a leadership position on several gun control groups pushing to expand said laws.

She goes on and on about how the 'gun show loophole' (ie private sales) must be closed to stop criminals from obtaining guns. The only solution offered up by the BC is to force all sales to go through FFL dealers. Dealers who the BC also supports litigating/legislating out of existence using 3rd party lawsuits, zoning and licensing restrictions.

IOW, no FFL dealers....No legal transfers of firearms.

When asked for her opinion on a different method, opening up NICS to non-licensees (even though my similar question suffered 'reasoned discourse'), she replied:

This is not a matter of what I want or don't want. I assume there is a good reason why only those who are properly licensed have access to a sensitive data base. As of now, that is the law.

Interesting. So she just goes along w/ the pack? That is the law? Why does she want to expand it if it isn't a matter of what she wants?

On another note, "there is a good reason why only those who are properly licensed have access to a sensitive data base" is pretty close to the same argument our side uses to keep trace data restricted to only authorities conducting cases and not fishing expeditions by gun control groups and researchers.

Just more evidence that gun control has nothing to do w/ reducing crime and everything to do w/ control.