Town hall meetings are Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America’s bread and butter. The Demanding Moms love to show up when senseless violence shakes Suzy Soccer Mom out of her suburban comfort zone. Just like sleazy, ambulance-chasing lawyers . . .

In case you didn’t know, the gun grabbing divas claim “easy access” to guns, not violent criminals, lead to the unseemly violence. If we only had more gun control!

Like so many “town hall” meetings on “gun violence,” the Champaign, Illinois meeting was triggered by a firearms-related incident. Gang violence struck in a supposedly safe area. In this particular case, shots fired after a high school basketball game left three people wounded.

Needless to say, sponsors of the event felt they needed to hear from gun control groups – because gun control did so well stopping the initial near-tragedy in the first place. [/sarc]

While organizers promoted the event as a town hall format, the panel of nine members only answered a few pre-selected questions and one or two others from the audience. And that meant after the Illinois leader of Moms Demand Action repeatedly citing false claims bordering on defamatory, her falsehoods stood unchallenged and un-rebutted.

The local newspaper, the Champaign News-Gazette offered up these  mainstream media take on the meeting:

CHAMPAIGN — Six weeks after shots were fired as a of the basketball game was letting out at Central High School, nine panelists assembled at a town hall meeting agreed: Gun violence is a symptom of broader issues.

Sherri Williamson, president of Unit 4’s PTA council, said she felt compelled to organize Wednesday night’s event after watching how people reacted to the incident on social media.

“The problem is that we disengage and blame local leaders,” Williamson said. “We want to educate the public on how you can get involved and how you can support the leaders up here.”

While PTA head Sherri Williamson billed it as a town hall, but attendees by and large didn’t even get their questions answered, much less an opportunity to address the speakers.

Ahead of the meeting, audience members approached members of the panel.  Some interactions went better than others.  This Moms Demand Action woman had a very interesting welcome to Champaign County Chief Deputy Allen Jones.

But alas, she only flashed her t-shirt.  Thank heavens.

Soon after, the meeting came to order following some sound system issues.

Not only did the meeting not start off with the Pledge of Allegiance, but there was no flag. Instead, some high school dancers shared a short performance to Black Eyed Peas “Let’s Get It Started“.

After Sherri Williamson asked the first question, the entire panel just sat there. Nobody answered.  It looked and felt awkward, but nobody wanted to tackle “why” this was happening.

One or two probably wanted to, but they probably didn’t want to melt the large number of snowflakes in the audience.

The purple-haired woman on the left is Sherri Williamson, the president of the local PTA. The whole time during the event as she spoke – and she spoke a lot – I kept thinking of the old song, Harper Valley PTA.

While Ms. Sherri invited not one, but two gun control activists, the invitation to the gun rights community must have gotten lost in the mail.

From left, Nicole Anderson-Cobb and Lauren Quinn came to promote gun control.

A few years ago, Anderson-Cobb worked for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence as their “outreach coordinator”. Either she sucked at outreaching or ICHV ran out of money to keep her on the payroll. Either way, her tenure with ICHV did not last long.

One of Anderson-Cobb’s claims to fame was trying to bring grassroots anti-gun activism to Champaign, IL. Amazingly, they tried to launch a monthly grassroots meeting in Guns Save Life’s backyard. It didn’t go well for them.

Note the Guns Save Life member sitting directly next to the woman speaking.

Included in the audience were Anderson-Cobb and Mary Kay Mace (second from right), the mom of one of the Northern Illinois University students killed when a lunatic opened fire in an auditorium full of unarmed targets.

We made sure their first couple of meetings were well-attended, including the first one where library security and staff tried to throw me out of the library for taking photos from outside of the room.

ICHV chose to hold their meetings in a room at the local public library that only seated about 20. My lovely bride noted how they had some pretty low expectations if they thought twenty seats would serve their needs.

The other gun control advocate present in Champaign: Lauren Quinn.

Ms. Quinn has risen in the ranks of Moms Demand Action to become the Illinois Director. Quinn made a number of rather dubious claims from her seat on the panel. She stated that Moms Demand Action has four million members. (Hint: MDAFGSIA count Facebook likes as members.)

More significantly, she flat out lied when she claimed that domestic abusers and criminals could drive across state lines to buy all the guns they wanted. Or that anyone could buy guns at gun shows, no questions asked. Ditto for online purchases.

If gun control was truly a noble cause, why do its proponents feel the need to lie?

Ms. Quinn also claimed that a few dealers in Chicagoland — the “bad apples” as she described them — sell loads and loads of guns to straw purchasers.

Yes, Ms. Quinn was big on claims and short on evidence. Unfortunately, the Suzy Soccermoms in the audience didn’t know any better. And, of course, the audience didn’t have any opportunity to set the record straight. Perhaps that served as a feature, not a bug.

A couple of points became obvious as the night wore on. And on.

This high school social justice teacher wearing her Moms Demand Action t-shirt sort of dozed off.   We didn’t have social justice teachers when I went to high school.

Sherri Williamson and several of the panelists loved to say “gun violence” as part of the usual platitudes.

They talked about so-called gun violence like it was a contagious disease. Not one of the panelists said “gang violence.” In fact, it almost seemed as though panelists avoided using the word ‘gang’ altogether.

The second glaring point I noticed: not one of the panelists wanted to send young men to prison. IN fact, local State’s Attorney Julia Reitz bragged how “diversion from prison is to be celebrated.”

Alternatives to incarceration should be available for non-violent offenders, like a kid who takes a gun to school to protect himself from gang members. However, for those who pull the trigger, well,  that’s the subject of another post . . .

Bottom line: it was a grand day out. To quote Shakespeare said, the assembled group were “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Still, as a display of the ongoing delusions that enable the killers amongst us, it hit the spot.

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34 COMMENTS

    • Pretty sure some of the members of the audience can recommend a nice place to get botox so you can fix that.

    • Two things: 1) What picture are you looking at? Sure can’t be the one in the posted article. 2) Nowhere in the article was race brought up so why are you so compelled to do so? If you have nothing constructive to contribute to the issue please in the future keep your bias to yourself. Thank you. Dave

  3. Holy dancing, hysterical blood dancers!
    Using tragedies to promote an agenda that will do nothing to prevent future tragedies suggests an utter lack of concern for the victims. I suspect they are simply addicted to their own fabricated outrage. Demonstrating their moral superiority in public provides them with a mindless emotional high no drug will ever equal. These are truly vile creatures.

    • Addicted to outrage … Quite possible.

      I’ve known a few sad souls who were like that. If they couldn’t find something to be upset about they’d wind up fabricating something on the spot to get their “fix.”

      I wonder how much of that comes from their genetics, and how much is learned.

      • Huh. Sounds like my wife a couple of years ago; before the therapy, when she felt like being angry (most of the time), she’d complain about every damn thing she laid eyes on. If she couldn’t find something satisfactorily offensive, she’d rehash old grievances or just make something up.
        I must wonder if the husbands of the Mom’s are just as miserable as I was.
        Yes, I am living proof that pills (hers) can save instead of destroy a marriage.
        So… were there at least some doughnuts at this meeting?
        🤠

  5. Doesnt suprise me one bit. After i schooled our local “representative” michelle mushmouth a couple years ago, havent seen her near my house since. She did show up with a few of these mda clowns when the town i live in tried to pass an awb. 10 anti gunners showed up. Over 500 pro gunners were there. It didnt pass. She and her morons stormed out like spoiled brats. Warms the heart.

  7. Oh we had SJW teachers when I was a kid. Had a teacher wear a black armband in 1970 protesting Vietnam. He made it to the end of the year…you can’t get rid of ’em so easily now. Off topic but a possible COUGAR sighting in DuPage County yesterday to tie into the kid/cat story yesterday on TTAG. Carry on…

  8. I am a Federally Licensed Firearms dealer located 15 minutes west of this meeting in Champaign, Illinois.

    This type of “town hall meeting” is very common here in my area of central Illinois.

    Usually organized by Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun puppet Shanon Watts’ mob of Crazy Moms Demand Action lunatic group who through her fake “grassroots” organization, opposes law-abiding citizens’ civil right to defend themselves and hate freedom.

    “…she flat out lied when she claimed that domestic abusers and criminals could drive across state lines to buy all the guns they wanted. Or that anyone could buy guns at gun shows, no questions asked. Ditto for online purchases.” is their standard modus operandi.

    With them, it is always about the guns and “gun violence”, never about the criminals or gang violence.

    Their latest has been the Illinois Gun Dealer licensing scheme, which would put most small gun shops out of business, even though most of have never even sold a firearm that turned out to be crime gun or found at a crime scene.

    These dishonest people are the scum of the earth.

  10. Most sanctuary cities will not display an American flag at any of their functions nor can you expect them to recite the Pledge of Allegiance …..Champaign, Illinois and all of the towns from Chicago to Carbondale, IL that lie along the I-57/Amtrak corridor are seeing a major influx of refugees from the now failed housing projects that Chicago had built in the 60’s…..the college towns(and that includes Champaign, IL) that lie along that corridor are getting especially hard hit due to the many housing vacancies in those towns due to Illinois being the nations number one exporter of college students…..landlords and other property owners are bleeding cash and bringing in folks to fill these vacancies using federal housing vouchers…..Champaign is pretty much a sanctuary city as the local State’s Attorney herself proclaimed that diversion from prison should be celebrated…..we have another Chicago right in the middle of the state.

  11. There are about 201,000 people in Champaign. Looks like maybe 100 people attended this event. That’s 1/20 of 1 percent of the population. On a weekend you’ll find more people in some bars than that. These are at best feel good events. Nothing comes from them, but many of the participants will go away with the We Showed Them attitude. Reminds me of a little mutt barking in circles around a Rotte. Yes it’s annoying but not worth the effort of chomping on.

  13. Let me guess…at none of these meetings was there any mention of the 75%+ single parent rate….am i right?

  16. Hey this is for CURTIS(abominable comment system). A cougar was KILLED in Logan Square 10 years ago. Cook co. population over 5000000…and I’ve spotted coyote and herds of deer in southern Cook. Plenty of room in DuPage(or Rockford)…

  17. I fail to see how ambulance chasing lawyers are sleazy and are connected to this nonsense. That soundge

  18. Gang violence can be reduced a little by permanently cutting off all Welfare and SSI to households containing gang members or thugs who were caught illegally possessing or using a firearm.

    • It’s going to happen eventually to all those folks who are receiving entitlement funds including welfare payments, food stamps, SSI, and those who collect federal, state and local pensions too …..Illinois is broke and the federal gov’t is nearing a meltdown …..once the checks stop coming in just remember that anarchy is just nine meals away and the thin veil that holds society together will be ripped away ….best be prepared when the SHTF ….good piece of advice next time you buy ammo…”Buy cheap stack’em deep”.

  19. “Not only did the meeting not start off with the Pledge of Allegiance, but there was no flag. Instead, some high school dancers shared a short performance to Black Eyed Peas “Let’s Get It Started“.”

    I’m at a loss for words.

  20. MY SOLUTION – I PROPOSE NEW COMMON SENSE GUN LAWS

    In addition to banning the deadly supposed “gun-free” killing zones, passing constitutional carry nationwide (or at least national concealed carry reciprocity), and conduction repetitive and regular searches of people on probation and parole (and their homes), I propose a mandatory minimum 10 years hard time in prison for any member of government, Federal, State, County, or Municipal legal system who fails to enforce our EXISTING criminal laws or firearm regulations.

    If the legal system would enforce our existing laws and repeatedly drug test and search all offenders that are on parole or probation on a regular basis, and lock them in a cage if found to be in violation, the violent crime problem would be vastly diminished, if not all but eliminated all together.

    According to authorities, there are about 1,400 violent thugs in Chicago alone who have been identified; get them off the street. Many of them have warrants, do warrant sweeps. Many of them are on paper, on probation, snap them up; find out all of the actors. Start doing home searches, under the law, which you can do for people on probation and parole and get these individuals off the street. Statistics show that a large percentage of violent crimes are committed by the same thugs and street gangs who are already known to police. Prosecute them under the RICO Act. 
    Stop going after law-abiding Americans and prosecute gang members, felons and repeat offenders instead of empowering them.

    For people who are not programmed to think in terms of facts and logic, no amount of facts or logic will convince them.

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