If I get something wrong, I'm going to get called out for it. Hell, even when I don't, if some anti-gunner just thinks I did, they're going to try and make a thing about it.
Which is fine. I'm not perfect, after all, and I've been called out more than once in my nearly nine years writing here at Bearing Arms. Considering how much I write, it's inevitable.
But turnabout is fair play, and when the anti-gunners get it wrong, I'm going to call them out, and not just when I don't agree with their interpretations of things, but when they're intentionally misinforming people.
Take Brady's Kris Brown and Rep. Robin Kelly.
They co-wrote an op-ed taking issue with the so-called gun lobby and trying to claim that there's some tragic lesson about Minnesota, gun rights groups, and gun rights themselves.
But there's a whole lot of assertions without support, omission of important facts, and out-and-out fabrications in this.
Even though national attention has shifted away from Minneapolis in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s so-called “Operation Metro Surge”, the community there is still reeling from the tragic deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents. And the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, remains in a government shutdown as Democrats in Congress continue demanding guardrails to prevent future bloodshed in our streets.
Against that backdrop, we must confront this fact: Second Amendment extremists spent decades laying the foundation for our current landscape.
Because illegal immigration is the fault of gun rights advocates, who have typically opposed illegal immigration?
And let's note that both of those incidents are currently under investigation, though the death of Renee Good looks pretty clear-cut to me. Pretti's death is a lot less so, but hopefully an investigation will get to the bottom of things.
But let's see if this twosome does anything to defend this claim that gun rights groups laid any sort of foundation.
For decades, the gun lobby sold the myth that personal firepower is the only check against a tyrannical government. They have marketed fear as a civic duty and a firearm as the only insurance policy. And now, the very same individuals exposed for years to violent gun industry marketing we have called out and sought to regulate are being directly recruited to join ICE.
What marketing?
They keep talking about gun industry marketing, but they forget that the firearm industry doesn't remotely market as broadly as a lot of other companies, including those with ties to far more pressing issues. The tobacco industry still runs ads all over the place, and while it's not on TV, they're in so many magazines and other publications that people read, ironically, at the doctor's office that they have far broader reach and tied to so many more senseless deaths.
The gun industry markets to the outdoor market. They're not in Newsweek or People. They're in magazines tailored to the gun community or the hunting and fishing crowd.
Unless these people are part of that, they're not being exposed to any marketing at all. If they are, then the marketing is about meeting them where they're at, not where they'd like for the consumers to be.
Here’s how. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) social media is deploying white supremacist and anti-immigrant messaging to recruit new ICE agents online while agents are being recruited from gun shows. These new recruits are then given military-style training, without a focus on de-escalation, and issued firearms paid for by our tax dollars. Just last year, DHS spent over $120 million on weapons contracts that help pad the pocketbooks of gun industry executives.
Even if ICE is engaging in racist messaging online, the fact that they're going to gun shows--where a lot of people, not just are likely to agree with ICE's overall mission, but likely have an interest in law enforcement--isn't an indication of a damn thing except going somewhere they have a chance of recruiting new agents.
They also attend job fairs and college campuses.
If you want to take issue with ICE, that's one thing, but what ICE does or doesn't do has nothing to do with the so-called gun lobby.
Minneapolis, though, has exposed the gun lobby and its allies in government as a fraud. After furthering the lie that a firearm is the key to personal safety, members of the administration, including President Trump, described Alex Pretti as an “agitator,” even an “insurrectionist” for carrying a holstered, legal weapon for which he had a concealed carry permit. The NRA initially blamed peaceful protesters, and other organizations like the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the gun industry’s trade association — avoided the subject.
While the gun lobby lionizes Kyle Rittenhouse and Mark and Patricia McCloskey, conservative individuals who pointed guns at peaceful protesters, they are silent when the state’s power is turned against Minneapolis’ peaceful protesters. When Philando Castile, a Black, law-abiding gun owner in the Minneapolis area was killed by law enforcement in 2016 for disclosing his legal firearm, the gun lobby was silent.
Funny how they say other organizations avoided it, but failed to note that everyone called out Trump and company for claiming that Pretti was responsible for his shooting simply because he had a firearm on his person. While not everyone on this side of the gun rights debate took that position, unfortunately, they maintained that Pretti had a right to keep and bear arms that was not negated by his carrying of a firearm at a protest. At most, his failure to have his permit on his person was a misdemeanor, and not a violent one, so that is still no grounds for him being shot.
But things aren't that cut and dried, and not speaking out about an officer-involved shooting when the only facts you have are from the media that has been known to cut down video to tell a story different from what really happened.
Yeah, the NRA failed to speak out about Philando Castile--it should be noted, though, that the gun rights community as a whole had an issue with that, for the record--but to pretend they offered nothing about Pretti's shooting is a lie.
And the gun lobby has been equally silent about the disproportionate impact of America’s gun obsession on Black and Brown communities — by first blaming them for gun crime, and then encouraging individuals who live outside of these areas to buy even
more firearms. When the gun lobby does talk to these communities, it’s to market deadly firearms to protect families of color from racist attacks the gun lobby itself has encouraged.
What racist attacks did the "gun lobby" encourage? Show your work here, because if this is so common, it shouldn't be difficult to cite not just the attacks, but precisely how the "gun lobby" encouraged the specific targeting of black or brown Americans due to their race.
For the record, noting that a disproportionate number of the black and brown victims Brown and Kelly mention being shot by black or brown killers isn't racist. It's a simple fact, especially as people like them try to make gun ownership a racial issue time and time again, like right now.
Look, I could go on with the rest of this piece, but we're already seeing how these two have managed to leave out so much to try and make a point, despite the fact being very clear, and so they should be ignored completely. Brown is a joke all on her own, and if Kelly is the best ally she can manage to try to make this inane "point," then the gun control movement is screwed.
Yet this is par for the course from this bunch. They ignore polls that go against their views, citing old ones until a new one they like comes out, they blame "marketing" for ills they can't even show were seen by the supposed evil-doers, and try to stoke up racial tensions, all while ignoring the racist history of gun control itself.
Funny, ain't it?
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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