We're All Potential Murderers

That's the way anti-gun advocates view firearm owners.

"We haven't seen mayhem in the street — that doesn't mean the potential isn't there."
-Tom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence

Actually Mr. Mannard, we are seeing "mayhem in the street", but it's not coming from legal firearm owners. It's occurring in Chicago and the areas surrounding it that are experiencing spillover from the gang wars and incompetent administration.

This is the fact that people like Mannard can't accept. They NEED to project their own fears onto those who, by Mannards own admission, aren't the ones causing the problems. they NEED to believe that firearm owners are psychotic killers just to maintain their flawed ideology. To them, any firearm owner is just a murderer waiting for the opportunity.

One shouldn't be surprised that the ICHV is another Joyce Foundation funded group.

H/T to SIH

Wishing doesn't make it so....

Thom Mannard, ED of the Joyce puppet group Illinois Council against Handgun Violence Ownership laments that nobody cares about his group's message:

On the federal level, we know that Congress is supposed to be an institution that embodies principles. In reality though, Congress allows the gun lobby to set the agenda on this issue. Bills supported by the gun lobby have consistently received votes while bills supported by gun control advocates are not even given as much as a committee hearing. What does that say about the process? The current situation shows that we are not hearing all sides and allowing for a fair and just process....

There are many times when I wonder how our elected officials in Washington D.C. can just sit there and only acknowledge the position of the minority – i.e., gun owners, but not the majority.

So in the mind of Thom, if you don't own a gun, you support 'gun control'? Poor babies. Your organization has to be funded almost exclusively by the Joyce's and has a membership that can fit into a couple of minivans while the ISRA alone has a membership of between 15 and 20 thousand. Gun control groups nationwide 'might' be able to claim membership of 150K individuals. The NRA has 4 million.

'Majority'? You don't even know what that word means.

In reality, they know that McDonald could very well be the death knell for their group so they throw out the 'let's come to the table and talk' ploy. Even with that, though, they can't help but poison the well:

Let people who feel that giving guns to all is the right thing to do come to the table.

In other words, anyone who doesn't support their 'message' wants to hand out machineguns to schoolchildren and violent felons. So much for wanting to 'discuss' things 'intelligently and rationally'.

Really Mr. Mannard, why should we bother sitting down w/ you? What do you have to offer us?

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.