I know that Everytown for Gun Safety isn't about to just sit aside on the issue of national reciprocity. Their entire mission is to curtail gun rights in this country, after all, and this is an expansion of those rights. A restoration of our gun rights, more accurately.
But I'm not going to excuse them lying or engaging in the same hyperbole the media uses to try to burn our nation to the ground.
See, in Washington state, there are a number of anti-gun bills in the works, including an ammo rationing scheme, mandatory storage for cars, an 11 percent tax, and an insurance mandate that will make it impossible for many people to exercise their rights.
At the same time, as Dave Workman points out at Ammoland, Everytown is inflaming the situation with an ad buy, taking issue with national reciprocity.
Against this backdrop, Everytown has been posting a series of advertisements on Facebook promoting restrictive gun control, primarily aimed at H.R. 38, a congressional bill on national reciprocity.
But Everytown rhetoric asserts, “H.R. 38 would create a federal mandate that would force each state to allow people from other states to concealed carry in them—even in states that wouldn’t otherwise let them. Our lawmakers should focus on keeping communities safe, not making it easier to carry hidden, loaded guns in more places.”
For those who want something a bit more offensive, Everytown declared in one posting: “The gun lobby and MAGA extremists want to override your state’s gun safety laws — making it easier for more people to carry hidden, loaded guns in public. Over 200 lawmakers in Congress are pushing a bill that would make every community less safe — letting people from other states with dangerous histories carry hidden, loaded guns in states that wouldn’t otherwise let them.”
Look closely and the same sort of incendiary rhetoric can be found popping up in daily news bulletins from established newspapers. For example, on the day after an ICE agent fatally shot a woman who allegedly drove a car at him in Minneapolis, the Chicago Sun Times promoted its coverage thusly: “A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent gunned down a woman who the feds say tried to run them down with her vehicle during a Minneapolis deportation operation, but — as in Chicago incidents — that narrative is being challenged.”
The term “gunned down” has a negative connotation. The actual story reported the ICE agent “shot and killed a Minneapolis driver on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major American city — a shooting that federal officials said was an act of self-defense but that the mayor described as reckless and unnecessary.”
Now, I agree with Workman's assessment of the media coverage of Renee Good's killing. She was clearly operating a motor vehicle, which is a deadly weapon, and she hit a federal agent with it as she was shot. It seems pretty cut-and-dried to me.
As for Everytown's rhetoric, though, what bothers me is that last line in their spot, which is exactly the same kind of rhetoric that we're seeing from the media. People with "dangerous histories can carry hidden, loaded guns in states that wouldn't otherwise let them," is it?
What dangerous histories are we talking about here? I ask because people with actual "dangerous histories," such as violent crimes, not only can't carry concealed in their home states, but they usually can't even own a gun lawfully. What's more, Everytown knows this. They know all about this and what they really object to is that some people who haven't actually done anything wrong but make police feel uneasy can carry guns.
Plus, if national reciprocity carries the day, they won't be stopped from exercising their rights at the state line.
Reciprocity is actually pretty damn common in this country. States have reciprocity agreements with one another, so a Georgia permit is respected in a number of states all across the country. The same is true of a Florida permit, or an Alabama permit, and so on.
So far, there have been no real issues with reciprocity. People aren't crossing state lines with permits and then shooting up a state other than their own.
What national reciprocity would do is merely remove the patchwork nature of current reciprocity agreements, plus force states like New York and California to start playing nice with visitors who want to carry firearms. That's it.
It doesn't make it so felons or domestic abusers can carry guns lawfully. They can't even own them, so how could they carry them without breaking the law?
The problem here is that Everytown, as they so often do, hyperbolizes things to a point where it stops being hyperbole and starts being outright falsehoods.
Their entire mission seems to be to scare people into begging to be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms, to ask Daddy Government to keep them safe and sound, even as they demonize the law enforcement officers they want to charge with doing just that.
No, it doesn't make sense, but that's Everytown and every other anti-gun organization in the country for you.
