We came. We saw. We kicked a$$.
Below is a snyopsis I wrote and emailed to our group here in Houston regarding the MMM and Texaans Against Gun Violence (TAGV) meeting help last night.
_____________________
It's now "the morning after" we all attended the TAGV "First Monday" public meeting. I hope to accurately summarize the meeting as I saw it.
Without a doubt, the pro-rights folks outnumbered the TAGV group. I would guess there was about 60 total people there, with at about 40 being on "our" side. The meeting started with the viewing of a 30 minute film called "America: Up in Arms" narrated by Martin Sheen. This film was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to watch. I sat there shaking with anger at the idiocy of what was being said. It depicted the U.S. as some type of 365 day-per-year battle of Mogadishu. It made references to "statistics" that were absolutely absurd. The film interviewed a few "victims of gun violence" and heard their story. In each of these agreeably tragic stories not one mention was made about the individual responsibility of the person pulling the trigger -or- the responsibility of the parents of those victims. In each case the gun was said to be totally responsible for all the evil involved.
Next came the "Panel Presentation". These "guests", of course, were well hand picked and were all loaded with mounds of "statistics" that were probably derived from the local bathroom stall. Thankfully, Shelia Jackson Lee and HPD Police Chief did not attend. The speakers spouted "information" that must have made all of our blood boil. All of these speakers spoke, and delivered their stats, in a way stating that there were NO - not a single - defensive use of a handgun. It seems that we, law-abiding gun owners, are "27X more likely to kill ourselves or our loved ones with a handgun in the house - rarely EVER are handguns used for defensive purposes". In addition, it seems we are also 68X more likely to commit suicide because we own guns. One highschool student speaker came right out and said that if not for guns about 68% of suicides would simply not occur. Again, the gun "makes" them end their own lives. Debra Danburg took about 10 minutes to flat-out insult any gun owner as being callus to the "victims". She referred to "the opposition" as people who complain about their "rights" (she actually held up one hand to simulate quote marks while rolling her eyes skyward when doing this) and have no regard for these victims. She took the time to insult Gov. George W. Bush who "signed into law a bill that would not allow the people to sue gun manufacturers"- which is completely false. SB717 would prevent municipalities from suing gun manufacturers unless they had the permission of the State AG. The "people" still have every right to sue if they choose. Another speaker was from the Baylor College of Medicine. She spoke more of "statistics" like, "households that contain guns are more likely to have deaths or injuries from guns than houses without guns"....(huh?) She conveniently avoided items like automobiles, furniture, scissors. knives, glass windows, garden tools, lawn mowers, bathtubs, 5 gallon buckets, bicycles, rollerblades, skateboards, dogs, glass drinking cups, etc..
Each of the 5 or 6 speakers made it quite clear that handguns have **NO** positive defensive use at all. None. Strangely enough, when Jackson Lee's Legislative Director spoke he mentioned more than once that the right to keep and bear arms was indeed and "individual right". Mark that on your calendar. We may very well need to use that again.
Next came the "Audience Discussion", which was a complete joke. Questions were to be submitted on 3x5 index cards so they could be well censored and controlled. Several pro-rights attendees stood up to ask why we were not able to simple ask the questions verbally. After initially being completely ignored for a few minutes the speaker finally said "it is much easier this way".
We were being completely shut out of the "discussion" and the pro-rights attendees were not happy about this. One man, regrettably on our side, was quite verbal the whole night in a manner that was not representative to our group. Although he had perfectly valid questions his tone and volume of voice was, a bit rough. As the censorship continued, more and more of our group had reached their limit of patience and began to stand up and ask questions.
Again, we were ignored.
The host of the meeting finally did read a couple of questions from our side then proceeded answer with more completely false and deceptive lies. At this point the meeting really started to go downhill as our group was not going to be ignored anymore. The TAGV began to get nervous as they knew they were outnumbered and outmatched. I finally was able to get the attention of the TAGV leader and asked the following:
"The TAGV makes not a single mention of the millions of proper defensive uses of handguns. Why does the TAGV not at least acknowledge this? The TAGV is asking for the cooperation of Americans to help reduce gun violence and yet you do not facilitate that cooperation by acknowledging the successful uses of handguns or even allow us to discuss the matter with you."
Her response was: "No, no, we're not interested in talking about a bunch of vigilantes with handguns. There is no use for handguns in our society and we want to reduce that violence.... blah blah blah..". You get the picture. I felt is was important to extend an "olive branch" and let then know we are willing to talk and work with them. To my prediction, they flatly refused.
At this point more and more of their "panel" members, who were supposed to be answering the questions, suddenly became "sick" and "had to leave". We could see some of the meeting organizers on the sidelines waving their hands to coax the host to end the meeting quickly - and it did - an hour early. In no way were they even remotely open to any type of discussion - NONE.
Although some of our group members may have felt that we should not have been as vocal as we were at the end, I would like to say that - at that point in the meeting, when it was obvious that we were not going to be allowed to participate in any manner - we did the right thing by standing up and made sure were heard. This was a public meeting and as part of the public we have the same right to be heard and participate in the discussions.
They heard us loud and clear and abruptly ended the meeting.
An additional note after the meeting ended - there was a group of us outside (~15) listening to one of our group member's statements of how he was a business owner who often received bad checks from customers. He said, tongue in cheek, that he now wants to form a coalition to sue the ink pen manufacturers because they must be responsible for the bad checks, certainly not hose who actually write them. As he was speaking I noticed several of the MMMer's with about 4 youngsters (ages 8-13) who were leaving the building. Sadly, as soon as the one of the adults heard what this man was talking about she and another MMMer hurriedly **pushed** the children out of earshot of the discussion. In no way was there ANY profanity, etc. This MMMer simply did not want these kids to hear that kind of thinking from our kind of people. So much for teaching personal responsibility...
If any of you have additional comments on things you heard or were able to discuss last night please feel free to forward them to Chris and hopefully he will distribute them to the group.
I want to personally thank each and every person who attended, participated, spoke and submitted questions. A special thanks goes to Chris who got this grassroots movement started. I would like to keep our email list in reserve for the next time this type of "discussion" takes place. We will be ready. We will respond again. (Kind of like Batman, don't you think?...)
________________________
Are YOU ready to organize the opposition in your area?
CMOS
------------------
NRA? Good. Now join the GOA!
The NRA is our shield, the GOA will be our sword.
Below is a snyopsis I wrote and emailed to our group here in Houston regarding the MMM and Texaans Against Gun Violence (TAGV) meeting help last night.
_____________________
It's now "the morning after" we all attended the TAGV "First Monday" public meeting. I hope to accurately summarize the meeting as I saw it.
Without a doubt, the pro-rights folks outnumbered the TAGV group. I would guess there was about 60 total people there, with at about 40 being on "our" side. The meeting started with the viewing of a 30 minute film called "America: Up in Arms" narrated by Martin Sheen. This film was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to watch. I sat there shaking with anger at the idiocy of what was being said. It depicted the U.S. as some type of 365 day-per-year battle of Mogadishu. It made references to "statistics" that were absolutely absurd. The film interviewed a few "victims of gun violence" and heard their story. In each of these agreeably tragic stories not one mention was made about the individual responsibility of the person pulling the trigger -or- the responsibility of the parents of those victims. In each case the gun was said to be totally responsible for all the evil involved.
Next came the "Panel Presentation". These "guests", of course, were well hand picked and were all loaded with mounds of "statistics" that were probably derived from the local bathroom stall. Thankfully, Shelia Jackson Lee and HPD Police Chief did not attend. The speakers spouted "information" that must have made all of our blood boil. All of these speakers spoke, and delivered their stats, in a way stating that there were NO - not a single - defensive use of a handgun. It seems that we, law-abiding gun owners, are "27X more likely to kill ourselves or our loved ones with a handgun in the house - rarely EVER are handguns used for defensive purposes". In addition, it seems we are also 68X more likely to commit suicide because we own guns. One highschool student speaker came right out and said that if not for guns about 68% of suicides would simply not occur. Again, the gun "makes" them end their own lives. Debra Danburg took about 10 minutes to flat-out insult any gun owner as being callus to the "victims". She referred to "the opposition" as people who complain about their "rights" (she actually held up one hand to simulate quote marks while rolling her eyes skyward when doing this) and have no regard for these victims. She took the time to insult Gov. George W. Bush who "signed into law a bill that would not allow the people to sue gun manufacturers"- which is completely false. SB717 would prevent municipalities from suing gun manufacturers unless they had the permission of the State AG. The "people" still have every right to sue if they choose. Another speaker was from the Baylor College of Medicine. She spoke more of "statistics" like, "households that contain guns are more likely to have deaths or injuries from guns than houses without guns"....(huh?) She conveniently avoided items like automobiles, furniture, scissors. knives, glass windows, garden tools, lawn mowers, bathtubs, 5 gallon buckets, bicycles, rollerblades, skateboards, dogs, glass drinking cups, etc..
Each of the 5 or 6 speakers made it quite clear that handguns have **NO** positive defensive use at all. None. Strangely enough, when Jackson Lee's Legislative Director spoke he mentioned more than once that the right to keep and bear arms was indeed and "individual right". Mark that on your calendar. We may very well need to use that again.
Next came the "Audience Discussion", which was a complete joke. Questions were to be submitted on 3x5 index cards so they could be well censored and controlled. Several pro-rights attendees stood up to ask why we were not able to simple ask the questions verbally. After initially being completely ignored for a few minutes the speaker finally said "it is much easier this way".
We were being completely shut out of the "discussion" and the pro-rights attendees were not happy about this. One man, regrettably on our side, was quite verbal the whole night in a manner that was not representative to our group. Although he had perfectly valid questions his tone and volume of voice was, a bit rough. As the censorship continued, more and more of our group had reached their limit of patience and began to stand up and ask questions.
Again, we were ignored.
The host of the meeting finally did read a couple of questions from our side then proceeded answer with more completely false and deceptive lies. At this point the meeting really started to go downhill as our group was not going to be ignored anymore. The TAGV began to get nervous as they knew they were outnumbered and outmatched. I finally was able to get the attention of the TAGV leader and asked the following:
"The TAGV makes not a single mention of the millions of proper defensive uses of handguns. Why does the TAGV not at least acknowledge this? The TAGV is asking for the cooperation of Americans to help reduce gun violence and yet you do not facilitate that cooperation by acknowledging the successful uses of handguns or even allow us to discuss the matter with you."
Her response was: "No, no, we're not interested in talking about a bunch of vigilantes with handguns. There is no use for handguns in our society and we want to reduce that violence.... blah blah blah..". You get the picture. I felt is was important to extend an "olive branch" and let then know we are willing to talk and work with them. To my prediction, they flatly refused.
At this point more and more of their "panel" members, who were supposed to be answering the questions, suddenly became "sick" and "had to leave". We could see some of the meeting organizers on the sidelines waving their hands to coax the host to end the meeting quickly - and it did - an hour early. In no way were they even remotely open to any type of discussion - NONE.
Although some of our group members may have felt that we should not have been as vocal as we were at the end, I would like to say that - at that point in the meeting, when it was obvious that we were not going to be allowed to participate in any manner - we did the right thing by standing up and made sure were heard. This was a public meeting and as part of the public we have the same right to be heard and participate in the discussions.
They heard us loud and clear and abruptly ended the meeting.
An additional note after the meeting ended - there was a group of us outside (~15) listening to one of our group member's statements of how he was a business owner who often received bad checks from customers. He said, tongue in cheek, that he now wants to form a coalition to sue the ink pen manufacturers because they must be responsible for the bad checks, certainly not hose who actually write them. As he was speaking I noticed several of the MMMer's with about 4 youngsters (ages 8-13) who were leaving the building. Sadly, as soon as the one of the adults heard what this man was talking about she and another MMMer hurriedly **pushed** the children out of earshot of the discussion. In no way was there ANY profanity, etc. This MMMer simply did not want these kids to hear that kind of thinking from our kind of people. So much for teaching personal responsibility...
If any of you have additional comments on things you heard or were able to discuss last night please feel free to forward them to Chris and hopefully he will distribute them to the group.
I want to personally thank each and every person who attended, participated, spoke and submitted questions. A special thanks goes to Chris who got this grassroots movement started. I would like to keep our email list in reserve for the next time this type of "discussion" takes place. We will be ready. We will respond again. (Kind of like Batman, don't you think?...)
________________________
Are YOU ready to organize the opposition in your area?
CMOS
------------------
NRA? Good. Now join the GOA!
The NRA is our shield, the GOA will be our sword.
