Money Talks...

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mehavey

New member
Don't ever believe it doesn't:

Gun control advocates vow to take fight into 2014 elections, spend millions

> Gun control advocates acknowledged Sunday that they were disappointed
> with efforts this year to tighten firearm laws across the country but vowed to
> continue their fight, including spending millions on their candidates in next >
> year’s elections.

There is no faster way to win the short-term battles (as has been the case over the last year) and then lose the whole war than to forget that money continues as the driver of modern elections.

It funds campaigns. It funds advertising. It funds workers. It funds canvassing. It funds "studies" that invariably present one side of the coin. It funds "volunteers" who literally drive people to the polls and "inform" them how best to vote. And it drives turn out... which is the end-all/be-all name of the whole game.

Never discount the exhaustion/thankGodit'sover factor of those who have apparently carried our water in this last year. And never forget the fact that LawDog's Cake never seems to regenerate. It just gets more and more bites taken from it in the name of "bipartisan compromise."

It's never over.
It's never even slowed down.
 
The funny thing is, they outspent us by a 7-1 margin throughout 2013. Bloomberg claimed that the NRA outspent him, but his Independence USA PAC threw over $14 million in the pot.

The result? A few state law changes, one of which resulted in the ouster of three sitting politicians.

Money is one thing. Influence is another. Bloomberg and his ilk have the former but not the latter. We have both.
 
Well said Tom
To this day they continue to use the victims from Newtown and anything else they can.
These people are not stupid they know any new gun laws are not going to stop this type thing from happening. But they use this stuff to try to gain support when all the time the goal is to disarm the American people and turn us into sheeple
Remember we all have to get out to the poles and vote.
 
I find it interesting that in all the hoopla about "stricter gun control, background checks, weapons-type bans, magazine restrictions, mental health checks, underage children getting access..... ad astra nauseum

Only the NRA recommendation of armed staff would have had any effect at Arapahoe High School shooting this week.

As it is, the high school's armed deputy and security officer stopped it in 80 seconds.





But THAT fact will never be the center of the discussion on CNN and its ilk


~~~~~~
Never underestimate the ability of a mob -- that you might think is on your side -- to turn against you in a heartbeat.
 
Obviously, I support the armed teacher.

However, I must comment that quite a few shootings have been prevented by programs that instruct students to report others who discuss plans for rampages. This doesn't make the news that much but it has happened. Many potential shooters discuss their plans before. Some don't. But if someone does, breaking the habit of students not to snitch in this important area has worked.
 
When I was in high school, a kid from my class was expelled for making bomb/shooting threats towards people our school. The person reporting him seemed to be effective in preventing anything from coming of it.

I will say, it can be hard for kids to report something like that, as some may not take it seriously. Maybe it would be taken more seriously by students now.
 
Only the NRA recommendation of armed staff would have had any effect at Arapahoe High School shooting this week.
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That's a hard one to prove. It seems to make sense, but to some folks, reducing the number of guns in civilian possession also seems to make sense. We would (unfortunately) need a pool of several foiled or aborted shootings before we could really assess the effectiveness of such a program.

This brings us back to the subject of the thread in a way. We (through Wayne LaPierre-thanks, jerk) made the claim that we could better protect our schools by turning them into Eastern Bloc border stations. To those not already versed in the gun debate, it conjured a dour and dismal image that only made things worse. Add strident sloganeering about Stalin and Pol Pot and black helicopters, and the rhetoric got out of hand.

Our response to Sandy Hook should have been, "let's have that conversation on mental illness. Let's talk about solutions that haven't already been proven to fail." Unfortunately, the chance was lost. The other side turned the issue political within hours of the shooting, and the claim was that we had the blood of those kids on our hands, that we should be ashamed of ourselves for being gun owners, and that we should accept just and righteous punishment.

So we dug our heels in and fought, and discussion of the real issues fell by the wayside in favor of a brutal us-vs-them political battle. The point we (and LaPierre) should be making is that the post-Newtown proposals don't work, have been shown as failures when enacted, and distract us from pursuing the real issues.
 
Thinking back through this I'm left with some very disturbing facts:

- There was no mental illness here.
- There was no prohibited weapon here.
- There was no prohibited person here.
- There were no prohibited "high capacity magazines" here...
- There were no warning signs immediately before..., just the opposite. "...everything was normal"

In short there was nothing to talk about, much less center any discussion around reducing the number of guns in civilian possession (especially those Joe Biden himself recommended be retained in civilian hands); or which weapons should be allowed to which people, under which conditions; or after which background investigations.

The only solution I can conceive of at this point to halt such an attack out of the blue, by a reportedly Eagle Scout, is to stop it immediately upon its start.



postscript: If someone's got some better ideas -- ideas that don't send us down LawDog's slippery slope -- I'd love to entertain them.
 
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There was no mental illness here.
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It's certainly not sane, healthy behavior to shoot someone who isn't an immediate physical threat to me. Is the mindset in question something for which we can find a label in the DSM V? Maybe not, but there's a sickness there nonetheless.

Let's look at that before we accept that only over-under shotguns are suitable for self defense.
 
Yawn

I remember similar threats in most every national election since 1980, and expect it goes back further.
 
mehavey said:
There is no faster way to win the short-term battles (as has been the case over the last year) and then lose the whole war than to forget that money continues as the driver of modern elections.
Click to expand...

Its not just money alone, its who carries forth the debate. We are at fault (who advocate for the 2nd amendment keep dropping the debate). We must carry forth the battle and the dialogue instead of just responding to the anti's. No one else is to blame. As Tom Servo pointed out, "The funny thing is, they outspent us by a 7-1 margin throughout 2013." The anti's typically have the media and the talking points. That's what we need to work on changing.
 
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As Tom Servo pointed out, "The funny thing is, they outspent us by a 7-1
margin throughout 2013." The anti's typically have the media and the talking
points. That's what we need to work on changing.
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If you have the Media, you will eventually have the message. Unfortunately the Media is both ideologically AND money driven. Worse, the money is on the side of the Left -- as Tom Servo notes.

Irrespective of the strength of the 2A base that has apparently prevailed over the money for now, the message that it buys is like acid -- drip, drip, drip on the immovable marble.

No, it doesn't wash the marble away.
It inexorably eats it.
One generation at a time

It doesn't take a genius to project the eventual corrosive effect of such well-funded message campaigns as discussed HERE
 
- There were no warning signs immediately before..., just the opposite. "...everything was normal"
Click to expand...

Nope. That last case he had threatened to kill the teacher. As usual no one had taken action.



Money is one thing. Influence is another. Bloomberg and his ilk have the former but not the latter. We have both.
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That is what it comes down to on the surface. It is hard to keep people motivated to give their rights away. Once they get a chance to think about it they decide they don't like it.

The only way they will be able to succeed is through a sneak attack or complete breakdown of opposition leadership in political office.
 
he had threatened to kill the teacher.
As usual no one had taken action.
Click to expand...
> Pierson's original target was believed to be a librarian who coached the
> school's speech and debate team. Pierson was on the team, and he was
> disciplined in September by the librarian for reasons Robinson said were under
> investigation. Pierson made some sort of threat in September against the
> librarian, whose name was not released.
>
> Students and a teacher said Pierson was an Eagle Scout who finished at the
> top of speech competitions. He competed in extemporaneous speaking - in
> which students prepare short speeches on current events - in the National
> Forensic League's national tournament in June in Birmingham, Ala.
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/1...g-police-seek-motive-98095.html#ixzz2ndo4mkN0

As usual, 20-20 hindsight is so clear. On the other hand if we were take action on all utterances made by kids in the heat of the moment three months prior, pretty soon we'd suspend them for finger pointing, pop-tart biting and "bang-bang" on the play ground. All indications -- including classmates who saw him the day before -- were that he was in his normal outgoing personality mode. The fact that we are still trying to work his motive out demonstrates how out-of-the-blue this thing is perceived.

It is hard to keep people motivated to give their rights away. Once they get
a chance to think about it they decide they don't like it. The only way they
will be able to succeed is through a sneak attack or complete breakdown of
opposition leadership in political office.
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I can think of no more dangerous an outlook as that. "It can't happen here," is the most sorrowful of all reminiscent laments after-the-fact. Right up there with "...if only...."

We will give it away....
and the generation that does so will have been programmed to do so.






postscript: My better half was a elementary school teacher for 20 years in a reasonably 2A protective state. I asked her "...how many teachers in your last school were protective of the individual citizen retaining the right to weapons?"

Answer: "Two."
 
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On the other hand if we were take action on all utterances made by kids in the heat of the moment three months prior, pretty soon we'd suspend them for finger pointing, pop-tart biting and "bang-bang" on the play ground.
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All that stuff already happens. If someone is making a reasoned threat that is a whole other thing.
 
If someone is making a reasoned threat that is a whole other thing.
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Apparently it was not reasoned enough that anyone thought anything of it.

That's the question that is bothering everyone.
 
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