I understand and totally agree with you. But this has already been lost. So what are we to do about all of the things happening on the pro gun control front? I believe that without the MSM pushing the agenda forward, that it would die a sudden death, but that is not going to happen. For some reason, the leftist elite of the fourth estate has decided that this must be the time to try and push for the whole hog(g).
I don’t know. As I’ve mentioned before, countering the media gatekeepers is expensive, and a long term solution. I have ideas, but not the resources to implement them.
Some things that might work in the shorter term, but which I still lack the money or charisma to pull off:
Mass Protests: a la Marx for Your Lives.
A nonprofit reserved time in DC for a protest. Giffords’ group arranged transportation to ship in dupes.
Let’s see the NRA put up or shut up; their big chance to redeem themselves. The NRA — the financial gorilla supposedly in the pro-RKBA arena — could do the same thing. Schedule it now. July or August. Reserve buses to do pickups across the country. Set up a web site for folks to coordinate crash space.
The tough part is that, unlike the unemployed and student masses which the left uses, activist gun owners tend to be in the productive class, which means they have to be at their jobs being productive. But if they have a few months to schedule things, a lot could arrange the day(s) off for travel to a weekend event. Plus — just as the Marxists did — local/regional gatherings for those who can’t make the DC trek.
Strike: Hey, we tend to be the productive class. Remember the “strike” for illegal immigrants? Coordinate one single day for a mass outbreak of… red,white, and blue-flu. “Sorry; I can’t make it in today. I’m terribly sick of my rights being violated, and facing false murder accusations.” Or lock the shop door, and hang a “Gone target shooting. Back when my rights are too.” sign.
Call it a “Bill of Rights Strike.”
Letter campaigns: You know how GOA gets everyone to sign those form emails to congresscritters? Is there any reason the addressing can’t handle hundreds of news service editors’ desks? All at once? How ’bout it GOA?
Better yet, for once I’d prefer snailmail post cards. Coordinated to be mailed all on the same day. Make a downloadable template for folks to print and address to local papers, and radio and television stations.
“An open letter to victim disarming controllers,
“…shall not be infringed.”
infringe: to commit a breach or infraction of; violate or transgress
NO.
Now what are you doing to do?
/signed/
55-120 million gun owners who didn’t do it
Print a stack and mail them — again, all on a single day — to every Representative, Senator, and state legislators. Local politicians, too. Don’t forget the White House either. Send them to newspapers and broadcasters.
If 7% (a rough figure for how many out of any group typically does something) of gun owners did that, the human/civil rights violators would be flooded with piles of post cards and emails from at least 3,850,000 people. If each person sent 14 post cards (and 14 emails) — to his congressman, Senators, state reps, state senator, governor, state attorney general, US AG, CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox, MSNBC, and a local paper — that’s 53 million snailmail cards (and 53 million emails). Ambitious types with more cash on hand could send these to every congressman and Senator.
Go all out; send them to the Brady Campaign (or whatever their name is today), Everytown, Moms Demand Blood, MAIG, the NRA, and any other pro-gun control group you can think of.
Millions of post cards and emails. All at once. Preferably the same day as the BOR Strike.
They’ll try to hide it, and lie about it. But the next time they run another fake survey/poll purporting to show how much we love gun control, they’ll know in their black flabby hearts that we know.
And are watching them.
Pranking: Print a bunch of 8.5×11 signs, tape them to cardboard backing, and staple them to stakes.
PROUD TO BE
GUN FREE
HOME
We dial 9-1-1
for the children
Go out one night and stick them in random yards. Or maybe not so random.
Variations: Take a picture of the gun-free zone signs at the mall, and photoshop it: “designated helpless victim zone”. Print, a little double-sided tape, and voila!
But I hope no one spells out “2A 4EVER!” in some anti-gun HOA yard nazi’s nice bermuda grass lawn… with fast (and high) growing rye grass seed. (Broward County residents definitely should not spell “COWARD” in Sheriff Israel’s lawn.)
Elections: In case you hadn’t noticed, the Republicans have broken every promise on gun rights (and several more). There’s really no point in voting Republican just to keep those nasty anti-RKBA Democrats out; they’re effectively two branches of the one big Boot On Your Neck Party. As someone said, more or less, no matter who you vote for, Washington wins.
So make your November (or earlier primaries) vote count in a different way.
Write in “John Moses Browning.”
On the bright side, if the Republicans get tossed out, we’ll only have to watch out for the Democrats’ next infringement(s), without sneaking glances over our shoulders to see if the Republicans are about to stick another knife in our backs. Again.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could seriously use the money, what with truck repairs and bills. If he gets enough, he could even implement some of these ideas.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is either a liar or mentally incompetent. If not for President Trump’s pro-gun control history, I would question his judgment in appointing Sessions to head the Department of Justice. If Ted Kennedy were alive, Trump would probably have nominated him for National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator.
As noted on Friday, President Trump and AG Sessions announced a coming ban of bump-fire stocks (“bump-stock-type devices,” as the rule notice so eloquently puts it); no grandfathering, get rid of it or go to prison for possession of an unregistered NFA item.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) uses the same docket number as the December ATF proposal, so it isn’t clear whether we’ll get another formal chance to submit comments. The press release says there will be a 90 day commenting period, but that docket number makes me wonder.
But let’s look at this. From the AG’s announcement:
Today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Department of Justice is proposing to amend the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, clarifying that bump stocks fall within the definition of “machinegun” under federal law, as such devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger. (emphasis added-cb)
Sessions opens with an outright lie. And he didn’t simply misspeak.
The NPRM makes the same blatantly false claim:
Specifically, these devices convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun by functioning as a self-acting or self-regulating mechanism that harnesses the recoil energy of the semiautomatic firearm in a manner that allows the trigger to reset and continue firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter. Hence, a semiautomatic firearm to which a bump-stock-type device is attached is able to produce automatic fire with a single pull of the trigger.
No, they do not. Firing still requires the trigger finger to engage and operate the trigger individually for each shot fired. After the firearm is MANUALLY pulled forward again with the shooter’s off hand.
In general, bump-stock-type devices — including those currently on the market with the characteristics described above — are designed to channel recoil energy to increase the rate of fire of semiautomatic firearms from a single trigger pull.
No, they do not. The “rate of fire” from a “single trigger pull” is still… 1. Each round discharged still requires an individual manual operation of the trigger IN THIS UNIVERSE. The firearm’s cyclic rate of fire is determined by the physics of the firearm’s internal parts: Mass, resistance, inertia, mechanical engagement, force of discharging cartridge. If anything, a bump-stock-type device would bleed recoil energy and cause a reduction in the theoretical maximum.
Shooters use bump-stock-type devices with semiautomatic firearms to accelerate the firearm’s cyclic firing rate to mimic automatic fire.
NOT IN THIS UNIVERSE, where the cyclic firing rate is determined by the internal physics of the firearm. Bump-stock-type devices merely assist the shooter in returning the firearm to the ready-to-fire position, and maintains the trigger finger in an optimum position, at which time the shooter manually operates the trigger for the next shot.
A bump-stock-type device merely aids the untrained shooter in achieving something closer to the firearm’s inherent theoretical rate of fire. (Again, since some recoil energy is bled off to assist in manual trigger operation, it probably prevents the shooter ever reaching the actual theoretical maximum.) Bump-fire stocks are training wheels.
The ATF previously ruled that the Akins Accelerator differed from modern bump-stock-type devices in that the spring in the stock acted as an active component to force the firearm into the ready-to-fire position trigger against the shooter’s finger, without additional action by the shooter. With a modern bump-stock-type device, the shooter must MANUALLY return the firearm to the ready-to-fire position, at which time the shooter MANUALLY operates the trigger again.
This is very easy to test, three ways, each using a bump-stock-type device:
1. Pull the trigger a single time and immediately move your finger forward off of the “ledge” (or “finger rest”). If the firearm continues to fire without further operation of the trigger, it is a machinegun. If it does not continue to fire, it is not a machinegun.
2. Should this not be clear enough, fire again; this time keeping your trigger finger off of the “ledge” so that your finger holds the trigger down, preventing it from resetting. If the firearm continues to fire without further operation of the trigger, it is a machinegun. If it does not continue to fire, it is not a machinegun.
3. If you are still unclear on the concept, pull the trigger, but keep the rifle pressed back in a conventional non-bump-fire mode (i.e.- don’t pull the rifle forward). If the firearm continues to fire without further operation of the trigger, it is a machinegun. If it does not continue to fire, it is not a machinegun.
If one cannot understand this, then that person is mentally incompetent and should be adjudicated as such under 18 U.S. Code § 922(d)(4), and should removed from office.
If one will not understand this, then that person is guilty of malfeasance and should be removed.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could seriously use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
Obama Administration legalized bump stocks. BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.
And yes; The Zelman Partisans opposes this. Accepting this is in no way a compromise. We did not get reciprocal carry. We did get a dangerous Fix NICS. And this isn’t a merely bump-fire ban; it’s effectively a ban on semiautomatic firearms (and if you think Feinstein, Schumer et al aren’t aware of that, you weren’t paying attention): parts is parts.
I’ll try to dig up the official commenting URL tomorrow night.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could seriously use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
Oh dear. Our brave mayors can’t protect us because state preemption laws tie their hands. Sounds terrible, eh?
As Paul Harvey used to say, “And now for the rest of the story.”
Some 64% of murders have prior felony convictions, typically for prior violent crimes. That means that –under existing, enforceable — laws, they are prohibited persons unable to lawfully possess firearms. Yet somehow they are free to walk the streets and kill.
Some 88% of firearms used to commit crimes — including murder — are stolen. Theft of a firearm is a felony under existing, enforceable — laws. Possession of those guns — regardless of prior criminal history is a crime under existing, enforceable — laws. Yet somehow criminals are free to walk around with stolen property.
Murder, of course, is also illegal. Raise your hand if you’ve read a news report about a murder with a prior conviction for killing someone else. Raise your other hand if you wondered why that person was on the streets.
Now ask your mayor (and chief law enforcement officer) why.
Then ask them why they want to end preemption of laws targeting those who haven’t committed crimes against victims, when they will not or cannot do anything about existing violent criminals with the tools they have.
“Mr. Mayor, you want a local law making my rifle illegal even though I’ve never committed a crime, much less one with that rifle? Even though rifles are almost never used in crimes according to the FBI? But you’re willing to ignore the criminals with stolen guns? Why is that?”
Yeah. Why is it that they want to — continue to — ignore the known class of violent offenders, and go after honest folks?
Oh hell. Never mind their motivation; ask yourself if you really want to give more laws to incompetent clowns who are incapable of using what they have now. Ask them why you should hand a chainsaw to a moron who failed to use a hacksaw correctly.
Prediction: They’ll likely tell you that those existing laws against murder, theft, possession of stolen property, probation violations, and so forth are… incomplete, and that laws punishing honest folks who get their property stolen are needed to catch the bad guys.
Answer: Bull shit. They do catch the real criminals.
And let them go. Because trials and incarceration are expensive, and locking up your voter demographic isn’t conducive to reelection. Letting feral predators roam free is much cheaper (and ensures more votes), so long as they only prey on the little people who don’t matter to pols in plush offices.
And then something like Mandalay Bay, Sutherland Springs, or Parkland happens, and the wrong — i.e.- politically inexpedient — prey is slaughtered. So it’s time to arrest the offenders call for more laws making atrocity-of-the-day even more double-plus ungood illegaller.
And to regulate the ones who didn’t do it.
Why’s that? Pretend you’re a Coward County Sheriff’s deputy. You can go after someone with a long history of violence, or you can sleep in your car. If you simply must [be pried out of your air conditioned vehicle with a crowbar to] go after some miscreant, would you choose to pursue known violent offenders who might hurt you (and whose arrests might impact the mayor’s vote totals come the next election), or would you rather go after those with no criminal history? Who are more likely to comply without violence, ensuring you make it home at the end of your shift.
And if you scream, “We need new laws!” loudly enough, you might distract folks from the fact that you and your glorious city leaders aren’t doing your effing jobs.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could seriously use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
#NeverAgain #EnoughIsEnough https://t.co/1HRudeSOib
— Lauren Hogg (@lauren_hoggs) March 21, 2018
The hell with transparent backpacks. I want to see high school girls forced to wear transparent bras and blouses so they can’t hide weapons.
Not really, of course. But apparently it is going to take more than backpacks for these little immature whiners to see the irony of demanding firearms bans on honest folks with the inevitable “transparency” of searches to force compliance. It’s just “common since.”
Richmond School Board: Ban assault weapons, improve school safety
In a unanimous vote, the board passed a school safety resolution that makes a number of political statements, including a call for a ban on assault weapons and an appeal to strengthen background checks. The resolution was approved by the Council of the Great City Schools and has been taken up by other school boards across the U.S.
I had to email the board to… congratulate them. Particularly for this part:
NOW, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the School Board and RPS call on the Congress of the United States to ban the manufacture, sale, purchase, possession, and use of assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition cartridges, except those needed by the military and law enforcement.
In case that document disappears, or gets… revised, I saved a copy. A signed copy.
My email (the addresses are publicly listed on the RPS web site):
TO: edoerr@rvaschools.net, jbarlow3@rvaschools.net, kgibson@rvaschools.net, jyoung7@rvaschools.net, psapini@rvaschools.net, fcosby@rvaschools.net, cburke2@rvaschools.net, dpage2@rvaschools.net, lowen2@rvaschools.net
SUBJECT: Congratulations on School Safety Resolution
You are now the laughingstock of the nation. Seriously: “large-capacity
ammunition cartridges”?
Can any of you DEFINE “large-capacity ammunition cartridges”?
And may I assume that all of you are volunteering to take point on the raids to confiscate all the millions of “assault weapons” that no one turns in? (And can any of you DEFINE “assault weapon”?) You do realize that there are an estimated 16,000,000 AR-15 pattern rifles alone in circulation, in the hands of people who did not buy them to turn in?
—
Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger
Writer, The Zelman Partisans
www.zelmanpartisans.com
About TZP: A group of Jews and friends who stand uncompromisingly for
the right to keep and bear arms — and the entire Bill of Rights.
http://zelmanpartisans.com/?page_id=2
When I first heard about this resolution, I very briefly considered emailing them to call them out on the idiocy of “large-capacity ammunition cartridges.” Then I decided it would be better to wait until they committed themselves. And they did it.
Added: Literacy is not the school board’s strength. I got a response:
Thank you for your note and for your advocacy!
Jonathan
Jonathan M. Young
Member, School Board
Richmond Public Schools
804-929-7006
jyoung7@rvaschools.net
Added, 2: I guessed that Mr. Jonathan Young didn’t read my “note”. He then replied, saying, ” I did read it but I believe in always being polite; something that regrettably too few persons practice. I appreciate your advocacy and your passion; I would hope that all persons are mature enough to do the same.”
I suggested that he “could politely answer the questions,” which were not rhetorical.
His reply:
Carl, I am sorry; in what municipality do you reside?
Apparently, having entered the national stage by demanding that the US Congress pass national legislation which would affect Americans across the country, he doesn’t think he should be answerable outside of his local district.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could seriously use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
Yes, I am aware St. Patrick’s Day was the 17th, but perhaps we can spare a moment to remember the town of Lisdoonvarna. A town that most likely is not going to be remembered as it is. Irish singer Christy Moore wrote a lovely song about it. I always like Christy Moore’s music, plus it has pretty pictures.
So to set this up nicely, I’ll give you a bit of background. Ireland, like Israel in her past has had to fight for their culture. There is this column Dreidels & Hedgerows, but just a brief bit of background on the Irish war of Independence. First we will look at the Easter uprising.
The Easter Rising, also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, 24 April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was heavily engaged in the First World War. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798, and the first armed action of the Irish revolutionary period.
Then there was the theft of 160 pounds of gelignite and detonators at Soloheadbeg.
The war began with an unauthorized ambush by IRA volunteers Dan Breen and Seán Treacy at Soloheadbeg in 1919 and officially ended with a truce agreed in July 1921.
This occurred after Ireland had voted for Independence from Britain
In the Irish general election of December 1918, the Irish republican party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory, gaining 73 out of 105 seats (25 of these unopposed) in the British Parliament. However, in its election manifesto, the party had vowed to set up a separate government in Ireland rather than sit in the British Parliament. At a meeting in Dublin on 21 January 1919, Sinn Féin established an independent parliament called Dáil Éireann and declared independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Black and Tans were not subject to strict discipline in their first months and, as a result, their deaths at the hands of the IRA in 1920 were often repaid with arbitrary reprisals against the civilian population.
Morning: The IRA attacked eight addresses in central and south-central Dublin city, killing eleven men and wounding five, one of them fatally. The targets were British intelligence agents (mostly part of the “Cairo Gang“), although not all of those shot were, in fact, intelligence agents. A gun battle erupted between IRA gunmen and auxiliaries who stumbled across the scene of one assassination: two auxiliaries were killed, and one IRA man, Frank Teeling, was captured in the shootout but extricated somehow by the IRA later that day.
Afternoon: Police, Auxiliaries, and soldiers raided Croke Park during a Gaelic football match between Dublin and Tipperary in response to the IRA shootings that morning. For some unknown reason, police opened fire on the crowd. Fourteen spectators were killed. That evening, Dublin Castle claimed that the raiding party came under fire from rebel gunmen; this claim was contradicted by the press, and, later, by the findings of military courts of inquiry, which were suppressed by the Government. The shootings were generally considered to be a reprisal.
Evening: Two IRA operatives (Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy) who had helped compile the intelligence used in assassinating most of “the Cairo gang”, along with Conor Clune (a relative of Patrick Clune, Bishop of Perth, Australia), who had been arrested with them, were “shot while trying to escape” in Dublin Castle.
Huh, who’d a thunk it. A government firing on unarmed bunch of civilians as a football/soccer match then blaming it on someone else. Or on their farms, just going about their lives and trying to survive the war taking place all around them.
19 March 1919: IRA volunteers raid Collinstown airfield (now Dublin Airport) outside Dublin.[4] They captured 75 rifles and 4,000 rounds of ammunition. (Henderson says the raid occurred on 20 March and that 6,000 rounds of ammunition were captured.)
Always, the on-going attempt to gain weapons to remove the British from the historically Irish land of Ireland. Yeah, kind of like trying to remove the British from the historically Jewish land of Israel. Apparently the British don’t learn so quick.
Both sides agreed to a ceasefire (or ‘truce’) on 11 July 1921. In May, Ireland was partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act, which created Northern Ireland. The post-ceasefire talks led to the signing of the Oslo Accords Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921.
This resulted in the Irish Civil war, the result being “occupied” Ireland in the North, or Ulster and the Free Irish Republic in the South. Funny how we never hear the UN refer to it that way isn’t it?
So from all this, one would think that the Irish would know how to use a gun, would know what a gun can do, and what it can be used for. If not, why all those attempts to attack to gain weapons, well, and gelignite. That’s always handy. One would think they might have learned disarmed citizens are at the mercy of whatever Black and Tans the government allows in the land to wreck havoc on innocent citizens wouldn’t you?
ANNNNDDD, you would be wrong.
Which brings me to Lisdoonvarna. Just before St. Patrick’s day I read about a little town in Ireland called Lisdoonvarna that is about to be in a heap-o-trouble.
It seems little Lisdoonvarna, population of around 300 most of the time, is having 115 asylum seekers dumped on them. These are not refugees, which Ireland is required by the EU to take in a certain amount from countries that are in some sort of war condition. These are people from somewhere that have showed up and said they are seeking political asylum. The government Irish taxpayers will house and feed them indefinitely. And they children they will have. The Irish government is of the opinion they will adapt to the Irish culture and soon fit in and be a part of Ireland and life there. One too many Guinness stouts.
So the government decided to dump 115 of them on little Lisdoonvarna. They are going to be housed in the King Thomond Hotel, owned by Marcus White. Now this is interesting. Marcus White had said if the town didn’t want him to turn his hotel into a resident center and voted against it, he would honor the vote.
He lied.
The town voted against it by 93%. But Slimeball White had already signed the agreement. It was all conducted behind closed doors. He stands to make a pretty penny while betraying the small rural community. The town says they are not being told anything about who these people are, where they came from and what religion they are.
This is a short clip of a resident telling how this all went down, and it includes audio of Mr. White telling his lies.
I wonder why some of their concerns with helping these poor people just seeking a better life?
FYI: grooming doesn’t refer to fixing their hair or painting their nails.
An 18-month probe by journalists, published last weekend, found that 1,000 girls could have been targeted over 40 years by as many as 70 groomers. They were allegedly drugged, raped, and trafficked, and five deaths have been linked to the abuse.
Some of the victims were just 11 years old, and one is known to have given birth at just 14. Speaking to The Mirror, specialist child abuse lawyer Dino Nocivelli, said: “This is victim blaming at its worst. The authorities just don’t seem to get it. Children cannot agree to sex.
Not wanting to be called “racists,” British police in Telford failed to act as more than 1,000 young girls over a 40 year period were continuously raped, pimped out for sale to hundreds of men, and even killed by Asian Muslim (mostly Pakistani) paedophiles in what could be the worst-ever child slave/sex scandal in Britain since the Rotherham Muslim kidnapping, rape, and prostitution scandal of 1,400 young white girls broke a few years ago.
Which brings me back to Lisdoonvarna.
IRELAND SUICIDE WATCH: Tiny town forced to take in hundreds of Muslim invaders out of fear of being called “racist” (even though Islam is not a race).
They’re afraid of being called racist, and the guy that owns the hotel group in Lisdoonvarna, which used to get a lot of tourist trade in the summer and for the huge matchmaking festival in September betrayed them.
You know what? I hope it turns out EVERY BIT as well for Marcus White as it has for this other landlord in Ireland who took in “asylum seekers”.
Amazing machete, eh?
After nearly destroying the inside of the house, provided free of charge for these ungrateful African Muslim freeloaders posing as asylum seekers, police refused to arrest the trouble-makers, and forced the landlord to give them back their keys.
Mr. White, I’m hoping your luck is, at the most, this good. Because what do you think is going to happen to the other innocent merchants in town? What kind of tourist trade do you think your town will have after a couple of years? Actually, I’ll be curious to see if your hotel is still standing. Hope not.
Author and resident of Lisdoonvarna Michael Walsh talks about being on a plane with a woman about 10 years ago when they were talking about signing the EU agreement. She said she was afraid they were losing country. He told her they lost it as soon as they signed the agreement, it was gone.
I was looking up gun control laws in Ireland I find things like this:
The Firearms Act, 1925 states that a legal licence is required by law to own or possess a firearm in the Irish Republic. Failure to adhere to the law may result in a monetary fines or imprisonment and can result in firearms being seized by An Gárda Síochána. The Firearms Act, 1925 also lists a number of groups which are prohibited from legally owning a firearm, these include those suffering from mental health issues, those under the age of fifteen years and those who are under the supervision of the police
Gun crime is rising steadily in Ireland as a result of the illicit drugs trade; this has resulted in extensive tightening of licensing legislation during the last decade over the protests of the shooting sports organisations.
Huh, that’s right after the War for Independence isn’t it? Strict gun control, yet, it doesn’t seem to be working? Crime is rising? Huh.
And then I found this. I think I found part of the problem.
The laws are tight but that’s as it should be.
Ireland, oh Ireland, you have learned nothing. You were in slavery to England, and stole and made weapons to fight for your freedom. You gained it for most of the country, except those who chose to stay under England’s thumb. You know what the Black and Tans did to a disarmed populace. And all this not even a hundred years ago. You are now under the thumb of the EU and have no say in your future, you don’t represent your populace, you are merely a pawn of the EU in whatever agenda they chose to force on your people. You know all this and now you have invited worse than the Black and Tans in and set them loose on a disarmed populace. And the disarmed populace thinks that it should be that way.
I’m not giving good odds on this one. I’m fearing the day when the Bagpipes will be outlawed because they are “offensive” to the asylum seekers.
If you read the national news (or watch television, or get your news from mainstream web sites), that’s an easy conclusion to reach. So long as you don’t look too closely.
As I said, I read a lot of news. I must, to put together the weekly TZP news summary. Besides my casual browsing, I use several pre-built news searches on a variety of terms. The terms were selected to produce headlines from various points of view.
Probably 90% of the actual results reflect only one point of view; that RKBA is losing. You see it in “news” reports and Letters to the Editor (LtE) alike. You see it in polls and surveys.
Nope: Mitchell told McClatchy in an email that any suggestion she has concerns about the NRA’s Russia connections is a “complete fabrication.” But to learn that, you have to get past the false headline and two paragraphs of innuendo.
Or this oldie-butgoodiebullshit: “The NRA has blocked gun violence research for 20 years. Let’s end its stranglehold on science.” Absolutely factually wrong headline. Folks who routinely rely on the LA Times to inform them will have no basis to understand that the CDC was stopped from advocating and promoting gun control, and the funding they “lost” was the money they’d diverted from research, thus proving they didn’t need it. But try writing an LtE to correct that lie.
I’ve been writing LtEs on firearms-related topics for decades. Offhand, I can only recall two being published. One was a recent letter to the Texas Wilson County News in which I congratulated the publisher for getting facts right.
I have to go back to the mid-1990s for the only other published LtE: It ran in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch. I opened to the Op/Ed page and found they’d run two letters side by side, to reflect “both sides” of the discussion. The pro-RKBA letter was… sad. An embarrassment to RKBA. Poor grammar, unfortunate word choices, incorrect statistics. You name it, that guy got it wrong, and I was pissed because I’d sent a letter covering everything that clown had, but I got it right. But I kept reading.
And found that crappy excuse for a pro-RKBA letter over my own name. They edited it to make pro-Second Amendment types look like idiots. They edited it so heavily — changing even facts — that I couldn’t recognize it as my own. I had to dig out my personal file copy and match paragraph to published paragraph to see that they’d followed my sequence. Sort of.
I protested. Nothing.
I threatened. Nothing.
I recently wrote another LtE to a local paper, objecting to falsehoods in another letter. They refused to publish it. The publisher claimed she could “correct” the falsehoods by printing a “correction” elsewhere.
She didn’t.
We are not losing the war. Yet. But we have lost the media battle. The editorial gatekeepers will not let our truly representative views be seen.
Polls/surveys? Same thing. Gallup claims “Americans Widely Support Tighter Regulations on Gun Sales”. To hear them tell it, 96% of Americans want universal background checks; 95% of gun owners. 75% of all Americans want a 30 day waiting period on all firearms purchases.
You couldn’t get 96% of all Americans to decide on vanilla ice cream over frozen feces, if only because of the jokers answering the phones. Certainly no state has ever come within 30 points of that figure in real elections or referendums.
So how do they get those numbers? Sometimes it’s through careful question selection, but that’s a crude technique, mostly abused by outright push-polls. The pro’s trick is weighting. That’s where you expect a bias in answers due to statistical clumping in the random selection of respondents, so you adjust the numbers to compensate. Real statisticians will do that for specific reasons.
(And what happens with “unscientific” Internet surveys; the ones where respondents aren’t carefully selected and “weighted”? Pretty much the exact opposite. The truth is somewhere in between.)
But if a pollster finds he’s getting too many pro-RKBA answers, out of proportion to the blue-city urban responses, and has to adjust…
Adjusting is exactly the wrong response. That’s deciding what the “right” result is before starting and faking the results to match preconceptions. If your “random” respondent selection was properly random, then the respondents should average out to represent — proportional to population — America. No need to “weight.” And to be sure, you randomly select another pool of respondents and run a second survey with exactly the same questions. Think of it as reproducing experimental results in real science.
Instead, we get nonsensical, proven-wrong (UNH survey in NH claimed 94% of residents wanted universal PPYI; when the Dems tried, they were voted out by large margins) 96% percent propaganda. (And kudos to the Crime Prevention Research Center for trying to conducted accurate surveys and analysis; statistics is inherently imprecise, so errors occur, but they try.)
The media gatekeepers have won the battle to inform the uninformed. They will not allow a proper defense of human/civil rights, an understanding of existing laws, or what already failed. The faked surveys become believable because, “Well, I never see anyone saying different in the news.” Convenient, that.
We have sites like this, and other bloggers and dedicated firearms sites rarely seen by those who don’t already share our interest. A few allies at services like Breitbart. Inconsistent, occasional support from Fox. The occasional local paper with severely limited circulation. If anyone can even find them, what with Google censoring bad-think search results, even shopping searches.
Big media has control. By blocking almost all positive discussion of firearms-related human/civil rights, they make appear there are none. Honest gun owners can be demonized, making it that much more likely that the deliberately ill-informed will support that much more erosion of rights. After all, only handful of radicals want those rights… they’re told, unaware of what they aren’t told.
At best, my writing here at The Zelman Partisans is preaching to the choir. More like shouting into an echo chamber.
Or a void.
Frankly, I’ve stared too long into the abyss. It’s a staredown.
But the choir doesn’t want me to say it’s hopeless. You want answers. Preferably quick, easy answers.
Sorry to disappoint.
Short of brainwashing Soros et al into channeling mass quantities of money into fact-based, unbiased, professional — as opposed to the current crop of “journalists” who decry their innocence in false reporting by exclaiming, “But it’s my job to report what [insert authority figure] said. It isn’t my place to question them.” — reporting, and the advertising necessary to make people aware of the news source, the media battle will lead to the culture loss already being decried.
The NRA can’t do it. They’re already the designated demon to the ignorant, and traitors to informed gun owners.
I can’t do it. I’m struggling to pay bills, without running up expenses chasing down leads or paying for honest surveys, or building a high traffic web site to pass that info along. Education like this is part of what The Zelman Partisans was created to do, but still lacks the resources to reach far enough.
Gun Owners of America can’t do it. They’re already reaching as far as they can, while pushing pro-rights legislation and law suits.
55,000,000 to 120,000,000 gun owners, and we can’t cough up a buck a piece per year to create a loud enough voice of truth. Hell, I’d settle for enough to buy an editor or two in major markets, the way the victim disarmament side has done.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could seriously use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
This has been a surreal experience. I wanted to write a column about the goals of “Never Again MSD;” specifically the laws the group wants passed.
Despite hours of investigation, I couldn’t nail it down. I honestly can’t find any specific proposal put forth by the group or anyone clearly speaking as an official spokesman. I found vague offerings.
“Run by survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shooting. We are sick of the Florida lawmakers choosing money from the NRA over our safety. #NeverAgain”
— Never Again MSD, Facebook
They want a law against the NRA?
“We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of a firing assault rifle to save the lives of students. We cannot allow one more family to wait for a call or text that never comes. Our schools are unsafe. Our children and teachers are dying. We must make it our top priority to save these lives. ”
— NPR story
That’s what they want. But how? What laws will do that? What American school has ever been shot up by someone using an assault rifle?
“We have to vote people out who have been paid for by the N.R.A. They’re allowing this to happen. They’re making it easier for people like Nick Cruz to acquire an AR-15.”
— Cameron Kasky, reported as the founder of NA MSD
That’s a little more specific: vote out anyone taking campaign donations from the NRA. Except the NRA wasn’t who allowed the person allegedly classified as a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness” to pass a NICS check; that’s on the government which failed to report a prohibited person.
“The thing that caused me grief, the thing that had no right to cause me grief, the thing that had no right to happen in the first place, I have to do something actively to prevent it from happening to somebody else.”
— Emma Gonzalez
Fine. But what? Be specific.
David Hogg says he won’t return to school until gun control is passed. Does the Florida legislation not count, or does he demand Congressional action? And what specific law(s)?
Is Mr. Hogg speaking officially for NA MSD? Was he acting in an official capacity when — the group having adopted “Never Again” as a motto, with all its historical context — he posed for a B&W photo wearing an armband strongly reminiscent of the Third Reich?
(I’ve lived in Germany, and worked with someone who lived in Nazi Germany; that image creeped me out.)
“These AR-15s, they’re weapons of war. Going to school, you’re not going to war, you’re trying to get an education.”
“I’m not going back to school on Wednesday until one bill is passed.”
— Chris Grady
Again, what one bill? In this context, is he demanding a ban on AR-15s? Would that be Colt AR-15s, or any AR-pattern rifle? He speaks of “weapons of war;” does he understand that semiautomatic AR-pattern rifles are not generally issued by any country in the world to its regular troops?
“We’re just trying to just not let seventeen of us get shot in the fucking face again.”
— Cameron Kasky again
Fine. How? WHAT LAW(S) are you demanding? Speak up.
NA MSD supports the “March for Or Lives,” with equally indistinct goals:
“March For Our Lives is a movement dedicated to student-led activism around ending gun violence and the epidemic of mass shootings in our schools today. On March 24, we will take to the streets to demand that our safety become a priority. ”
— March for Our Lives
How? What are your specific proposals?
Vague platitudes. Smoke and mirrors; mostly wispy smoke. Nothing solid. I see a bunch of well-meaning children (“He had thought of the name, he later told me, ‘while sitting on the toilet in my Ghostbuster pajamas.’ “) trotted out by the media to spout convenient sound bites seemingly in support of anything on the victim disarmament wishlist, while avoiding getting pinned down on anything that can be rebutted. When someone else proposes something, one or another of the kids — speaking officially? not? — utters a sorta “me, too” without explanation.
I invite Never Again MSD to write a guest column which I will publish here unedited, in which you can get specific. Tell the world what you want and how you want to accomplish it. This your chance to speak directly to the gun owners you want to persuade. Make the most of it. I suggest you consider the following points, but do as you will.
Who is your official spokesman?
Who does not speak officially for your group?
Are you aware of the historical context of “Never Again” and the Shoah?
What new laws do you want?
Purchase age limits?
Weapons bans? How broad or narrow; which weapons? Why?
Universal background checks?
Expansion of prohibited person categories?
Gun-free school zones?
Armed personnel in schools? Who?
Policies that allowed the MSD shooter to go unreported by authorities?
“Fix NICS”?
You may send your column to The Zelman Partisans HERE, at info_@_zelmanpartisans_DOT_com, or to me directly at bussjaeger_@_zelmanpartisans_DOT_com.
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could seriously use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
For someone shrieking “Never Again!” he sure seems to want it to happen again.
If you must wear something, I suggest THIS, in hopes the little bastards might catch on to exactly what they’re demanding.
Added: The armband was so far over the top, that I checked other sources. But if anyone has data showing that it was fake, let me know. Some of the links showing it to be legitimate include:
Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and bills.
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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