TTAG reader TT provided our headline. It’s his take on Mother Jones’ celebratory article These Women Are the NRA’s Worst Nightmare. There’s a lot of amusement to be had therein, but check out the artfully crafted (to make a small group look large) photo above. It’s a pic of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America’s march across the Brooklyn Bridge. Ever heard the expression “selling the Brooklyn Bridge“? It’s common parlance for scamming the public. So right away we know Mother Jones doesn’t “do” irony. Hagiography? That they do . . .
Today, Moms Demand Action has teams on the ground in all 50 states, elbowing their way into policy hearings and working to motivate “gun sense voters” fed up with the carnage. In less than two years, the organization has compelled more than a half-dozen national restaurant chains, internet companies, and retailers to take a stand against lax gun laws, and has joined forces with one of the nation’s most deep-pocketed political operators to hold elected leaders to account.
Many groups have taken on the nation’s 30,000 annual firearm deaths—and this latest effort bears resemblance to the Million Mom March in the wake of the 1999 Columbine shooting, whose organizers also sought to be “a MADD for guns.” But no group has risen so far, so fast, influencing laws, rattling major corporations, and provoking vicious responses from hardcore gun rights activists. With its ambition to turn out a million voters for the November midterms, Moms Demand Action may be emerging as a potent threat to the National Rifle Association’s three-decade-long stranglehold on gun politics.
Define “teams.” If we’re talking about a single Facebook follower, I can just about verify their 50-state claim. If not, know this: Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA) has never assembled anything remotely resembling a “proper” turnout for an anti-gun event. Where pro-gun rights groups can assemble a thousand supporters at a rally, MDA struggles to hit a hundred. Often, they manage less than a couple of dozen – even when they’re paid.
Truth be told, MDA’s existence – such as it is – depends entirely on what British PM Margaret Thatcher called “the oxygen of publicity.” Mother Jones, The Huffington Post and MSNBC have done more to keep MDA alive than Mayor Bloomberg (who bought the group earlier this year). Without favorable press coverage, MDA would have been, would be, DOA.
Yes I know: TTAG has given MDA plenty of O2. But this is where they live – on the Internet. And this is where their misdirection, mischaracterization and malicious lies must be countered. Not just their misegos, of course. Also that of their mainstream media pimps, who give Moms a free ride on everything, such as . . .
When CEO Howard Schultz announced in mid-September that firearms were no longer welcome on Starbucks’ premises, he declined to discuss the steady pressure applied by Moms, whose 54 Facebook posts over three and a half months had reached more than 5.5 million people and spawned a 40,000-signature petition.
Facebook recently redefined ‘reach’ as a viewer clicking on a post (rather than just watching it slide by on their news feed). The move reduced TTAG’s “reach” by 90 percent. Even if Moms’ Facebook posts reached 550k, that’s still a lot, right? Uh, I’m from Missouri. MDA’s been playing fast and loose with their support stats since day one. Anyone who takes their claims at face value needs to look into that Brooklyn Bridge purchase program.
Equally, the MDA campaign to get Starbucks (and Target, Chili’s, Chipotle and Panera) was a failure. Starbucks simply asked gun owners not to bring their guns to their stores. That’s it. No ban on legal concealed carry. No ban on legal open carry. To call the request a “success” would be calling the The Battle of the Little Bighorn a military victory (for General Custer). It’s almost as absurd as MDA’s claim that they’re not anti-gun, an idea that Mother Jones parrots with its usual analytical aplomb.
Key to Moms’ message is that being a socially responsible gun owner has nothing to do with being anti-gun. In fact, some of the leadership is deeply experienced with firearms. As an ER nurse in Seattle, Moms regional leader Kelly Bernado has cared for patients physically shattered by gun violence—but as a police officer in the 1990s, she often rolled up on armed suspects and faced split-second decisions with her weapon drawn. “I find the people who carry weapons and think they can be some sort of hero in these situations absolutely ridiculous,” she told me. (Though she came “very, very close” in one domestic-violence situation, Bernado never fired on anyone during her career.)
How does that work? How can you be for “socially responsible gun owners” at the same time that you’re for forcing people to disarm (e.g., inside Kroger’s)? Socially responsible gun owners don’t have the right to bear arms in public? What’s more socially responsible than using a firearm to defend innocent life against criminal attack? Oh right, Shannon’s home is “protected by dogs and an alarm system.”
Who protects us from MDA? We do. By exposing their hypocrisy, by funding pro-gun groups like the NRA (who benefit financially by having an MDA bogeyman) and by voting for pro-gun politicians. Mother Jones is right about one thing: MDA’s our most public, most prolific enemy. If that keeps us focused on the battle to defend and extend our natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Right? [h/t T]
“Again?” Have they ever not smoked crack at Mother Jones?
Back when they had money, they used the good stuff: fine heroin, good champagne, and pure Colombian coke. Nowadays, it’s meth, crack, and cheap hooch to keep their brain cells numbed down to a level where their philosophical drivel makes sense to them.
Generally, it takes a bit of time to refill whatever they use to smoke it with, and relight. During those few minutes, they are not smoking crack. Technically.
Perfect place for a photo to make 17 vapid fools look like a legion.
I think that should be the official word to describe MDA members from this point forward. Vapid. No other word that I have heard describes them quite as accurately.
pretty sure they shoot up on heroin since Shannon would never allow herself to go to the ‘hood to be among the colored folk to purchase that “stuff”. . . . .
I have no clue who Mother Jones is and why should we be worried about her/them?
Just another witless mom demanding action, apparently.
Mother Jones was a labor leader for coal miners in the early 1900s who also, ironic enough, lead the largest uprising since the Civil War.
Mother Jones, for whom this so called news magazine is named, was also an ardent and vocal socialist and anti-capitalist.
Historically, pretty much every “labor leader” in the early 1900s (and late 1800s) was an ardent socialist. Given their present-day fealty to the Democrat party, today’s labor leaders aren’t much different.
A “news” site. Imagine if slate.com had less of a grip on reality.
Started out as a dead-tree “counterculture” magazine in the 70s, as I recall. Apparently they were permanently affected by all those mind-altering drugs they were advocating for general use.
Shudder…..that is a chilling description…..lol
“Today, Moms Demand Action has teams on the ground in all 50 states, elbowing their way into policy hearings and working to motivate “gun sense voters” fed up with the carnage.”
LOL
Funny, I didn’t see or hear of a MDA gathering in Milwaukee when gangbanger Sylvester Lewis killed 10 year old Sierra Guyton in a crossfire trying to shoot a rival banger. MDA didn’t do anything regarding this carnage. Guess they weren’t as fed up as the article wants readers to believe. Or maybe the suburban, affluent, lilly white moms wouldn’t be caught anywhere near that part of Milwaukee. Ah Mother Jones, one of many reasons I buy gun and ammunition. Got to protect oneself against those who lack emotional control like writers for Mother Jones.
Shannon is all For The Children (TM) unless those kids are black or brown and then they are SOL, that is unless the kids present an opportunity to dance in their blood when the national news media shows up, and only for such sufficient time so as to provide re-hashed talking points to said national news media on camera .
It’s Moms Demand Action Because White Kids Got Shot.
The more I read about MDA’s autocrat tactics, the more I’m convinced that they’re just the worst bunch of egotistical, racist, delusional, sexist & hypocritical people out there.
You can’t have a “sensible discussion” with fascist idiots like Bloomie’s ilk, and it pretty much looks like it would be a waste of time.
Freakin’ idjits.
They don’t want a “sensible discussion” about gun control. They are pissed that there is a largely bipartisan consensus against gun control in this country and the peons have stubbornly refused to accept their framing of the discussion, unlike for other issues like gay “marriage” or whether or not this country is allowed to have a border.
Thumb’s up. Well said.
“But no group has risen so far, so fast, influencing laws, rattling major corporations, and provoking vicious responses from hardcore gun rights activists.”
LOL!
Lots of hot air, and not much in the balloon. Makes for a climb that rivals an F-15 Eagle, or a shuttle mission.
Well I do believe that MDA will bring voters to the polls in November. I just dont think that they will be voting for MDA approved gunsense.
Despite what the Wikipedia entry says the charge of the light brigade, while costly, was a victory.
See Orlando Figes “The Crimean War.”
Good point. Reference changed.
As an ER nurse in Seattle, Moms regional leader Kelly Bernado has cared for patients physically shattered by gun violence—but as a police officer in the 1990s, she often rolled up on armed suspects and faced split-second decisions with her weapon drawn. “I find the people who carry weapons and think they can be some sort of hero in these situations absolutely ridiculous,” she told me. (Though she came “very, very close” in one domestic-violence situation, Bernado never fired on anyone during her career.)
:::shakes head:::
For being an ex-cop and now a nurse, that’s a lot of fail lady.
1) People do not carry guns because they have dreams of being “heroes,” they carry them for personal protection; you might as well be claiming that someone who owns a fire extinguisher has dreams of being some hero fireman or something
2) There are plenty of actual cases of defensive gun uses each year, including crimes in public places that are averted by armed citizens
3) You have no right to be disarming people because of your narrow-minded interpretation of why they choose to be armed
Apparently the Nurse didn’t think much of herself when she was a cop. Unless she differentiates between the washed/unwashed. Nah that’d never happen…
I carry a gun for personal protection. I have no dreams about being a hero. As a matter of fact, if I ever have to shoot someone, it sounds like a pretty bad thing, or several bad things, would have had to have happened. I wake up in the morning hoping to have a good day, and shooting someone means that it wasn’t a good day.
Yes, I’m alluding to Ice Cube. Ice Cube didn’t want to use his AK and neither do I.
Even if the person I shoot richly deserves it, it’s no mean feat to take a life a close range. Anyone on here who has ever shot someone can probably describe the mess.
Her hero statement is akin to me wishing there was a fire in my kitchen so I could finally use my fire extinguisher. “Oh boy smoke damage!” Yeah, just how I want to spend my night.
Nurse = Always in charge, thinks patients are just “meat,” and MDs with 10x the training that they have are ignorant.
Cop = Always in charge, thinks citizens are peasants beneath her, demeans gun carriers with 10x the practice time she had.
Yeah, she’s absolutely right about everything all the time. And probably single.
This is it. Puff pieces are all they have. Sure, they bluffed a few national chain companies into making statements asking people not to bring firearms into their stores, but those statements aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. They’re not legally enforceable and the companies themselves won’t even enforce them. Counter them by laughing and giving them enough rope to hang, I mean, make fools out of themselves.
I keep running around every day with my gun, looking to be a hero… #epicfail
Same reason I carry a spare tire, jumper cables and a few simple tools in my car. Because I have fantasies of being a mechanic.
MDA is nothing more than a Potemkin Village. Articles like the one discussed here do their level best to make them appear to be this massive popular movement with millions of highly active members donating tons of money to their “cause” and winning victories left and right, but at the end of the day, it’s just mini-Mike, Shannon and a few pearl-clutching fellow travelers. I’ve read all of the articles TTAG has posted about them over the last year or so, and I think 100 people was the most they ever attracted to an anti-gun “rally”, the usual number is 5-8 (including sleeping children in strollers who probably would have refused to attend if they had been awake). And I just love how they claim to be pro-2A. Sure they are, as long as it is not an “assault weapon”, holds 10 rounds or fewer, is not carried in public by anyone other than a police officer, and is kept unloaded locked in a safe with the ammunition locked in separate safe and the key also in a separate safe.
With the chamber welded shut.
It’s all about the feels.
Mother Jones once hired Michael Moore as its Editor. Then the publisher woke up one morning, read the masthead, smacked his own head, said “No more brown acid for me!” and fired the fat b@stard.
Well they’re firmly off the f*cking wagon again.
Completely delusional from start to finish.
“There’s 12 GD people on this bridge making changes!”
And they switched the flags too!
[Moms regional leader Kelly Bernado: “I find the people who carry weapons and think they can be some sort of hero in these situations absolutely ridiculous,”]
I don’t want to be a hero. I just don’t want to become a victim.
I thought Mother Jones’ staff always preferred LSD. But maybe their brains were fried and a new staff came on which prefers crack? Obviously, they are on something. Pitiful hippie wannabees.
What is “gun sense”?
OK, I’ll say it– In the case of the “Moms”, it’s “nonsense”.
Robert – have you ever challenged them to a formal debate? Worst case is they deny and the public perception will be that they are hiding something (which they are…) Best case you can nail down specifically what they support about the 2A. Like OC/CC in public? Assault weapons used for hunting? What other firearms do they approve of and in what scenario? Do they believe in self defense? Believe tyranny can never happen? At that point they have two directions to go. Either tell the truth and the fence sitter will see them for who they are (statist) or they can lie and latter recant – in which case the fence sitter will see them as both liars and statists.
Are you kidding?
Here’s how the twitter will go after that request:
“Gunbully RF sent me an harassing email today and continues to stalk me. We are winning. Keep up the fight, Moms!”
That’s a pretty tiny “crowd”. The brady bunch got more(?) than that on Saturday at Chuck’s Gun Shop. But then when 3000 people show up in Springfield,Illinois with less than a day’s notice to protest anti-gun legislation it get’s NO press. Oh well…
It should be “Rational Thoughts Worst Nightmare, MDA”.
When they are done misinforming, exaggerating, posturing and propagandizing, exploiting victims, taking advantage of naive peoples good will, what are they left with? Taking a big fat check from Bloomberg? And maybe not even that.
I once sent a FB message to the MDA-Wyoming page, because I was curious as to who was actually coordinating MDA in our gun-saturated state.
The “coordinator” PM’d me back and gave me her contact info.
With an area code 303 number.
303.
Wyoming’s area code is 307.
303 is metro Denver.
Yeah. Like Wyomingites really listen to Coloradans. (Hint: We don’t.)
It’s astroturf all the way down.
I find it interesting that they compare themselves on their FB page to MADD – another bunch of busybody women with a fanatical agenda.
I hope you’d consider listening to Coloradoans from the 719 and 970 area codes. (Of course you don’t have to do anything if you happen to disagree with what we are saying, but it’s a lot less likely.)
Metro Denver? Yeah, ignore ’em. Denver is conveniently located only an hour away from Colorado.
This is what happens when you smoke crack:
“A majority in the US Senate approved universal background checks for gun buyers, but the bill fell a few votes short of the 60 needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Once again, the NRA had won.”
False. The vote failed 54-46, with even Harry Reid and 4 more Dems voting against it. This was not shot down with a filibuster but was defeated fair and square.
Drinking age laws are anti-freedom. That is what MADD spear headed. Now we have adults still unable to do what they want with their money. All because emotion and faulty correlation (driving got safer because of advances in safety and seat belt usage, not because of drinking age laws). We see through it now. MDA has failed and will continue to fail.
During the NRA convention, we could not even find the MDA rally. My 20 year old daughter had them pegged as only a media event that appears before the liberal news cameras.
Oh and a wonderful shout-out to Mother Jones for deleting my post. I should have copied it, it was pretty good. I didn’t once insult Ms Watts, the MDA, or Mother Jones. I kept it civil and impassioned. I guess they got mad when I pointed out that I wasn’t a OFWG living in the sticks somewhere, but average-weight mixed-race guy living in an urban area near a tropical blue ocean.
A fun exchange with an MDA eunuch:
Junctionshamus: Nicee pic – 12M people in NYC, and all MDA, aka: “Bloomie’s B*****s,” can rally are 15 dolts, and two photo-bombers? Yeah, some fine trick photography there.
anthonylast > junctionshamus: What’s this? A gun nut, who is, additionally, a misogynist? How rare.
junctionshamus > anthonylast: After an exhaustive review of my statement, (1) I could not find the word “gun” or any synonym in it. (2) Count the number of persons in the photo – 15 + or – 1 with a guy in the back looking like a photo-bomber. Yes, MDA members, for the most part, appear to be laden with hysteria – suffering from an exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, especially among a group of people.
And does the Queen Bee, Shannon “The Monsanto PR Wh*re,” go out without armed protection? Nope. Ask her, next time you both are in the Ladies’ Room.
Furthermore, look at any MDA page on Facebook. Do you see any dissent? Are you so deluded that everyone agrees with MDA? Nope, these harridans (I’ll wait while you look it up….) permit no opposing points of view, but THEIR trolls (yourself, perhaps) are free to log on to pro-2A sites. Seems they hate the 1st Amendment more than the Second. Do you actually believe the agenda is responsible gun ownership? If so, I’ll sell you that bridge those ladies were standing on.
Instead of being rightfully afraid of the .0003% of persons who do commit using crimes, they’re wrongfully targeting the 99.9997% of responsible gun owners. You know what, I bet if you ask real nice, some woman in your life will give you your testicles back.
anthonylast > junctionshamus: Like I said, you bloated oaf.
junctionshamus > anthonylast: 9001 comments, let’s talk about bloviating… Like many of your ilk, it’s impossible for you to argue the facts or issues properly, so ad hominem in both your initial and subsequent responses, is your “go to.” All that’s left is for you to do now post some anti-2A agitprop, and you will have won the heart of Ms. Watts, herself. Thank you for making my argument about the anti-2A movement so perfectly for me, sir.
In closing – grow a pair and be your own man.
Even I can see how contrived that photo is!
As my late dad would say, that’s pretty stout . Seriously, it is flagrant, isn’t it? Must be all of two dozen marchers on that bridge.
It’s important for them to tack that “gun sense in America” on the bottom or their message will be very misinterpreted.
I can’t believe that a police officer would say essentially that a good person with a gun can’t make a difference in a bad situation. That ‘s somebody who should’ve chosen a different career.
In any case, as for MDA, if your “grass roots” organization needs a sugar daddy to fund it, you are clearly standing on Astroturf.
“In less than two years, the organization has compelled more than a half-dozen national restaurant chains, internet companies, and retailers to take a stand against lax gun laws…”
Wow, a whole six companies in two years? That’s like… three per year! *slow clap*
“…and has joined forces with one of the nation’s most deep-pocketed political operators to hold elected leaders to account.”
I thought big money in politics was a nefarious evil, according to progressives. I guess it’s only evil when it opposes their causes.
“Wow, a whole six companies in two years? That’s like… three per year! *slow clap*”
Well, let’s be clear here.
At least four of those companies did nothing to take a stand on guns. They have not done the one thing they could do to take a stand: post a ‘no guns’ sign in their stores.
Also, don’t forget the two, at least two that we know about, companies that told them to take a hike when confronted.
So, really…their big win is a lukewarm “meh.” They are just hot air….empty words.
I tried and I couldn’t finish that article (JPFO had posted the link as well).
OMG! 40,000 signatures on a petition! OMG!
Just to put that in perspective, roughly the same number of people signed a petition to the White House to build a 850 Quadrillion dollar death star. Yes, the one from Star Wars. Spoiler alert, the White House now does not get out of bed for less than 100,000 signatures.
Get the skinny from mother jones as she rips on her own team:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/we-the-people-white-house-petitions-obama-administration
Wow. MotherJones is classic soviet style agitprop. Who’d a thunk it?
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