by There have been many creative responses to the Brady Campaign’s politicization of the anniversary of the shootings in Tucson. Yesterday, through the inspiration of Weer’d Beard, many blogger featured pictures of a lit candle and their means of protecting home and hearth. A couple have gone even beyond that.
The first comes from bloggers Joe Huffman and Barron Barnett who produced a video featured Joe’s daughter and members of the Lewiston Pistol Club.
The second comes from blogger Sean Sorrentino who held a counter-protest in Raleigh, NC across from the United Community Church of Christ. His counter protest garnered interviews from both the Raleigh News and Observer – the largest newspaper in eastern North Carolina – and from NBC17.
Sean writes about both of these stories here and here. Sean lives in Wake County which has a population of over 900,000 people. One person with an effective counter protest garners as much attention from the media as approximately fifty from NCGV.
The creative counter protests seem to be irritating the anti-gunners. As Miguel at Gun Free Zone reports, one south Florida anti-gun lefty blogger equates our countering the Brady Campaign’s plea for attention with that of the Westboro Baptist Church. That’s right – since we believe in self-defense and protecting our loved ones – we are branded as racist, ne’er-do-well homophobes. If that pathetic response is the best they can do, we’ve won.
UPDATE: Barron and Joe’s video generated many comments on the CSGV Facebook page including Joan Peterson’s “OMG”. Barron provides an admirable fisking to their comments here.
Amusingly, Brady bigwig Rachel Smith admits that law-biding people being armed in public is the social norm. From the cited RNO article:
"So how do we change the culture? We want to make it socially unacceptable to be armed, much like drinking and driving and smoking in public."
Have fun tilting at windmills, Rachel.
-Brandon
Thanks for the link. It was fun and I plan on continuing it. I think that with some pre planning and some sending out of the press releases early to all the news stations I could be more effective.
@Brandon: That's exactly the point that I made to the N&O reporter when he repeated that line to me on the phone. I said that they were massively behind the times if they wanted to start a cultural shift. We started that 40 years ago and have basically completed it by now.
My biggest point to him was that if NCGV, the local CSGV group, is saying that they need to give up on the Legislature and move to cultural changes, apparently starting in liberal protestant churches, then they have basically declared defeat. They have moved into just trying to save their phoney baloney jobs. They are at these churches shaking their collection tins trying their best to drum up the $70-75K necessary to pay their two staff members. I honestly think that this is all they are worried about. They just want to get paid. If they don't, then they will have to go out and get real jobs.
I think we have them on the run. It's time to fix bayonets and charge.
John: What's actually pathetic is that you didn't even bother to read my post because if you had you would have seen that I didn't brand anyone as a racist or homophobe. There isn't even a mention of it. You simply repeated GFZ's words.
And because you didn't read the post, you also don't know that it had nothing to do with being pro-gun or anti-gun but everything to do with GFZ's classless presentation on a sensitive day for Americans who have lost loved ones to gun violence.
So the only way I can be pro-gun is by agreeing with everything you and GFZ post? Gee. You guys have such high standards.
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@John, Please pardon how I am about to put this. Sometimes polite words don't really do the trick.
@Rick: Are you fucking kidding me? You went and called us the Westboro Baptist Church (homophobes) and pointed out that MLK Day is around the corner (implying we were racists) and now you are so damn stupid that you think we are wrong to call you on it?
I realize that from your lofty perch as a towering intellect of the Left (where all intellects are slightly above average) we must seem like stupid people. I've got a news flash for you. We are a lot smarter than you think. We are certainly smart enough to know that we've been called racist homophobes by a brain dead leftist.
Sean, as I said…
"So on a day that for victims of gun violence is probably a solemn time of remembrance, GFZ and his minions have become the gun advocate's version of Westboro Baptist Church and have decided that posting callous and inflammatory pictures that are nothing more than gun porn is the best way of delivering their message."
"Callous and inflammatory," Sean, not "racist and homophobic," but YOU tell me what I meant to say because pricks like you always do.
And I could have used Kennedy's assassination or even the attempted of Reagan as another point of reference but since MLK Day is "just around the corner" I thought I would use it instead.
I don't know if you guys are racists or homophobes, but I am learning that you are a bunch whiney ass "tough guys" who, for some reason, love to play the victim.
Cowboy up, Sean. You look silly.
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@Rick: Actually, I did read your post yesterday after it was linked by Miguel. As to being callous, it is callous to keep fighting for victim disarmament.
@Sean: No pardoning needed. And great work with the N&O!
John: "…it is callous to keep fighting for victim disarmament"….and that relates to my post or what I've said anywhere exactly how?
I'm just curious…when someone disagrees with any of you guys about any firearms-related position that you take, even down to whether it's totally appropriate to light a candle next to a gun on a rather sensitive day for gun victims, does that automatically make them liberal, Brady-loving, and anti-gun? Is it really that black and white with gun extremists that you all have to march in lock step and be so absolutely ideologically rigid otherwise risk being grouped with the other side?
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@Rick, I held a candle in that video for both of my parents. They were both victims of violence.
You however are supporting a group who would prefer that they have been disarmed to be at the mercy of people younger than them and out numbered them.
There was nothing insensitive about any of those pictures. Maybe its you who needs to cowboy the fuck up you doughass. Maybe you don't understand the significance of those photos so let me break it down for you since you have the IQ of a rock and the apparent mental defect known as Peterson-Syndrome.
The candles were in the photographs to provide a remembrance of those affected by violence, Brady's may have just wanted Gun Violence, but that's bullshit. Violence is violence. The guns are the tool to STOP violence. The firearm is the light of truth to end violence when someone brings it to your door.
The reason the Brady Campaign and yourself are so upset is we beat you all at your own game. You attempted to dance in the blood of victims and we found a way to come out looking all the better for it. This further exposed you as the irrelevant group you are. It even got CSGV to admit its not interested in lowering violence crime, just gun crime. The anti-rights cultists don't care if overall violent crimes increase while gun crimes decrease.