Man the anti-gun forces are doing all they can to puff up their paper tiger. This post from Moms Demand Action sums it up perfectly:
The most important thing we can do is incredibly easy – just call your Representative. The other side is calling five times as often even though there are more of us! Members of Congress think we don’t care. Of course that’s not true, so please take three minutes while you sip your morning coffee or Diet Coke and call their offices.
That is indeed the most important thing ANYBODY with a political agenda can do. Of course the anti-rights people note that the pro-gun side are winning this war. They claim its from their own side’s inaction and lack of motivation, which is likely true…but even with 100% activism they still don’t have the numbers to even compete with the motivated pro-gun side.
Then there’s this puff-piece on the Moms Demand Action President:
but from the mainstream press in Washington, for which one key marker of sophistication seems to be assuming a knowing fatalism when it comes to gun control politics. There is an overlay of disapproval in this stance, to be sure, but also a kind of mordant glee in affirming the conventional wisdom: so it has been, and so it always shall be. And the net result, of course, is that lawmakers are essentially let off the hook. Why bother to take a risk on an issue if the press doesn’t even bother to challenge you on your stance, but simply rules it a loser out of the box?
This would be a valid argument in a total vacuum, but this is the same press corps that parroted Brady Campaign and Joyce Foundation misinformation to get a federal Assault Weapons ban passed from 1994 to 2004. That was a dark period for gun rights in America, and they indeed had the upper hand. The reason why the press is even dismissing new calls for gun restrictions is because indeed the other side lost.
She knows the litany: Even after the Newtown massacre, the Senate was unable to get a filibuster-proof majority for an impeccably moderate measure, expanding background checks on gun buyers to include purchases at gun shows and via private sales. Not only that, but a host of Republican-controlled states passed laws further loosening gun restrictions. And then came last week’s setback, when two state senators in Colorado who had voted for expanded background checks and limits on high-capacity magazines went down in a recall election.
Does she actually think the NRA and other pro-gun groups have the power to override the will of the people and even steer a recall election? Also its not like there isn’t a monetarily more powerful lobby in Michael Bloomberg who outspent the NRA in the recalls that sent the supporters of gun bans down in flames.
She sees a strong gun control message having prevailed in a state senate special election in suburban Chicago and in the special election to fill John Kerry’s seat in the Senate, where the not particularly scintillating Ed Markey was aided by ads attacking his Republican opponent for favoring the gun lobby. She sees her group having led the charge to get Starbucks to discourage customers from open-carry of firearms on its premises. And she sees several states that have passed comprehensive new regulations—including, yes, Colorado, where the law remains on the books even as two senators who voted for it head home. Their defeat was a disappointment, no doubt—the gun control side would have dearly liked to prove that it could protect every legislator who casts a tough vote – but to declare the “death of gun control” on the basis of an election in two state legislative districts, one with 52,000 people voting in a state of 5.1 million, in which one of the senators lost by a few hundred votes? “Why is that a death knell for reform?” says Watts. “It’s almost like [the press] is writing from the playbook of the gun lobby.”
Ok, so flaming defeats can be deflected by hollow victories where Starbucks is simply tipping a hat to anti-rights advocates while still serving open-carrying customers, and miniscule laws and political victories in the most “Progressive” of states are signs that they stand a ghost of a chance in greater America? I think not!
Also you have to love the false equivalency that somehow these recalls weren’t a big deal by comparing the number of voters to the entire population of Colorado who were NOT allowed to vote in the recalls. That is the definition of spin!
Bottom line, the moms are nowhere close to joining the Beltway press in jaded resignation. “I don’t know why everyone says this issue is over,” Watts said. “It’s not over until we say it’s over. Do they say that about other issues? Did they say that with Mothers Against Drunk Driving?”
Hey, you don’t have to resign to lose! Also I love the Comparison to MADD, who indeed has become an extremist group against all alcohol consumption, and who has become the definition of legislative insignificance in recent years.
Last is this little messed up piece. Its essentially talking about the Navy Yard shooting and somehow comparing it with Starbucks’ hollow concession to the anti-rights groups:
The best route for laws against gun violence may now be ballot initiatives – rather than placing one’s hope on lawmakers who cower before the NRA. Voters in Maine and Washington State, for example, may soon see such ballot measures. They are the result of millions of individuals taking a stand that gun violence should not be part of their experience.
First up, if they had “Millions of Individuals” we’d be in deep shit. Still are they forgetting that the Navy yard strictly prohibited carrying of private guns by civilian employees as well as most of the military personnel? This ALLOWED a man with a low-capacity shotgun to cause that much havoc! They are still claiming that a “No Guns Allowed” sign would somehow stop criminals looking to commit serious crimes….when every talking point they have is lead with the actions of a criminal who walked right past one of those signs.
Keep up the fight, people, because the press is still even bothering to interview sad people like this. Soon we’ll have them appropriately marginalized!
