kidlivesmatter

The Rid-All Green Partnership hosted a toy gun “buyback” in Cleveland at the end of June. People who surrendered a toy gun received a $25 supermarket gift card for the parents and a “Brink City: Kids Lives Matter” comic book for the child . . .

We can sidetrack ourselves and talk about the utter futility of such gestures at preventing real violence. We can point out that you can’t buy something back if you never owned it in the first place. We can reminisce about how we played with Mattel’s Tommy Burst Detective Set  or Topper’s Johnny Seven OMA without incident as kids. We can even speculate on how many parents went out and bought a cheap toy gun just to turn a tidy profit and demonstrate such efforts to be the farces they are.

But the real story is all the media attention given to what was pretty much a nothing event. Naturally, the major local TV stations all covered it.

“Police hold toy gun buyback for parents in Cleveland,” Fox 8 Cleveland reported. NBC affiliate WKYC and 19 Action News also provided reports, alerting their viewers and encouraging awareness and participation.

Curiously, in spite of what was essentially free advertising blanketing the city, people were not persuaded to attend. One after-event photo featured five applauding adults and one child. Another included perhaps a dozen adults and a couple of carried toddlers. That hardly screams “Success,” although it is reminiscent of attendance for Bloomberg’s Magical Misery Tour.

This is but one small example of how the media shapes a narrative much of the public ends up believing. Taken as a whole, it’s hardly any wonder that polls can then be produced to show “popular” sentiment reflecting the sum of what people who don’t know any better have been fed. And the media will then use that to make the case that everyone wants more “gun control.”

When citizens rely on such media to form their political opinions, that, in turn, allows for stunts like Obama’s Organizing for Action urging supporters to “Add your name to fight to make progress on gun violence prevention.” Without specifying how they intend to go about it, those who sign up are essentially giving carte blanche for whatever Intolerable Acts the administration has in mind. It allows The Washington Post to tell readers “Hillary Clinton’s push on gun control marks a shift in presidential politics,” when, in fact, making citizen disarmament noises to distract from unfolding evidence of corruption is a well-worn page from her playbook.

So an unsuccessful toy gun “buyback” was held in Cleveland. The media did everything in its power to make the event seem relevant and newsworthy — just as it will whenever an opportunity to advance a “Guns are bad” message presents itself.

Don’t look for them to bring that story to their viewers’ and readers’ attention, including why it is they do that.

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48 COMMENTS

    • I attended a conference by Dr Stuart Brown on this topic specifically. He was commissioned by the Feds to investigate WHY Charles Whitman did what he did in TX that day, and his discoveries are nothing short of fascinating – and drove him to devote his career and life to this specific topic. It is essentially exactly what you just alluded to. The importance that ‘play’ has in not only healthy human behavior, but also the animal kingdom. Long story short, Whitman was afforded ZERO ability to play by his father and that was the main factor in acting out his deed of that day. Healthy play includes ‘rough-housing’ and acting out fantasy play type behavior (cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, army men, etc). I can’t recommend enough his book (entitled: Play) and there are also some good video clips of him on YouTube to be found as well. What you just said above is perhaps even more profound than you were aware of. I think it should be mandatory reading for every parent, is very germane to the topic of this post (and your comment), and was a real eye opener and almost life-changing experience for me personally. Liberals do not apply any logic to their ideology. If they did, this ‘toy gun buyback’ would actually happen in reverse, and we would encourage our children to engage in fantasy play activities and it would only make them more healthy as children and adults, and greatly DECREASE any potential for them to engage in any illegal gun/violence type behavior as adults. I would be willing to bet my house and all of my belongings right now that if we really researched every one of the ‘spree-killers’ childhoods, that there is a high probability that NONE OF THEM HAD TOY GUNS AS KIDS, and a healthy childhood that afforded them normal fantasy play type activities, or they would have already acted out their fantasies in a healthy way during their childhood and not been driven to commit those horrendous acts as adults.

      http://www.amazon.com/Play-Shapes-Brain-Imagination-Invigorates/dp/1583333789

      • “Long story short, Whitman was afforded ZERO ability to play by his father and that was the main factor in acting out his deed of that day.”

        That explains why it seems most mass shooters come from the left.

        Parents that abhor guns as toys grow crops of leftist mass shooter children.

        • I remember very well the adults on TV in the 1970s having “war toy” turn ins. They complained about toy advertising was well. They hated G.I. Joe and the Dungen’s and Dragons game. Most of the complainers especially the leaders, had no children.

          These people ruined Saturday morning television.

  3. To be perfectly honest, I would have grabbed a cheap dollar store toy gun and ran with the $25 gift card. Case of beer for a buck? Great success!

    • Pity this isn’t anywhere near Portland. I’d gladly gladly milk this looses for every dime I could.

      There’s an old saying about a fool and their money. I’d like to expand that to include statist trash and moron moms too.

  6. You can’t make this stuff up! Really, it’s hilarious! Did you check out the link to “Green In The Ghetto Clothes”? I’m assuming that it’s real and not a parody. If I’m wrong then I apologize to someone. No, not to you, or to you, or to you. But I will apologize to someone. I just can’t imagine who it could be yet.

      • Kids lives matter, but not enough to draw a decent picture of them. It looks like they’re all in the Matrix with all the green tint. Since covers are meant to lure people in to buy the book, it’s a good thing it was a give-away.

  8. I can’t get over that artwork….a giant levitating pistol in the heavens, one kid looking like he’s going to smack the smaller kid (or is he reaching for the gun overhead??), the girl on the swing with a pole up her backside, and another girl blowing bubbles as she sticks her hand through a boy’s head. Awesome.

  9. 1) Why were the police involved? I get why they’re involved in real gun “buybacks”, for legal reasons and so on. But you don’t have to be a cop or an FFL to deal in toy guns, do you? This is what you’re paying taxes for, Cleveland…

    2) Who drew that comic book? That grotesque artwork is a f-cking nightmare factory. “Kids, you can’t play with your toys anymore, but here’s a comic book with grossly distorted children that look like inhuman monsters. Good luck sleeping tonight!”

    • Hmm, the cynic in me says the police were there to help kids get used to the idea of handing their guns over to the boys in blue.

      It is Cleveland, after all.

    • “Power without limit” was Lenin’s ruling philosophy on the state – if a citizen is conditioned early on to believe this, then when it is time for the good citizen to turn in their weapons, he will obey. Just like the Australian program that Obama and the gun control groups have praised.

  10. Gotta get the kids used to the gov knowing what’s best for them at a young age. Once they are conditioned to turning in toys when commanded, it just keeps getting easier. Something about a dog slobbering at the sound of a bell.

  11. The things that pass for “news”??? Just whatever sells beer and tampons.
    [W3]

    • Hey it’s Cleveland, still crying over the Cavs loss, and Johnny football hasn’t done anything stupid lately.

    • I’m sure the dipshit that drew it was terrified of appearing racist no matter which color he drew the horribly misshapen creatures children in the book, so he just bailed and went with green. This is the “progressive” mind at work.

      • They are green from holding in all the shit and lies MAIG has fed them. If they could talk they’d beg for help and claw there way out of that book. I like the giant floating handgun though lol

  14. I miss the good old days when “honest” journalists only started wars and libeled innocent people at will.

  15. “Soylent Green is PEOPLE! IT’S PEOPLLLLLLE!”

    Buybacks are a way to;

    1.)demonstrate how many illegal (that’s why “no questions asked”)guns there are just lying around so cops can

    2.)deny they have any power to stop crime, which would be fine if they didn’t then

    3.)insist on law abiding citezens disarming themselves, too.

    • Buybacks are also a way to sell a cheap airsoft pistol/rifle, or non-functioning gun, and making some money off the tax payers.
      Airsoft guns can look amazingly real without their orange tips, and if you can buy them for $25~$50, then you’re making money on the deal.

  16. Ha I saw a picture of a gun by back program or some MAIG event in Chicago…completely void of any participants. I lol’d hard.

  18. I have a different take. The more the Antis:
    – do absurd things to demonize guns; and,
    – the more absurd the things they do are,
    the more they inflate their bubble making it vulnerable to bursting.

    Imagine Billy coming home from school and telling his parents:

    Jimmy told his mom about the toy gun buyback program.
    He asked her to take him to turn in a bunch of his old toy guns.
    He got gift certificates in exchange for the old toys.
    Then, she took him to Toys-R-Us and he bought a really great Super-Popper
    using the gift certificates.

    Boooooooong! Anti-people aren’t going to get any more Anti because of these staged events. Pro-Rights people aren’t going to feel any more/less Pro- because of these events. Instead, the people who haven’t made up their minds might tip one-way-or-the-other.

    If the Antis could come up with cogent arguments or programs they could tip public opinion; but, they can’t. The more desperate they become the more absurd their words and actions appear. That’s apt to have an impact; one opposite to that intended.

    Now, go buy Jr. another war-theamed video game.

    • “The more desperate they become the more absurd their words and actions appear. That’s apt to have an impact; one opposite to that intended.”

      YES.

      Add to that a kid’s natural tendency to rebel against their parents and we a breeding a nice crop of pro-gunners…

  20. While it’s funny to protray this as a silly failure, it was actually a huge success for the antis. Success isn’t measured in the number of participants, the number of toy guns turned in, the accidents or crimes prevented (as if). Rather, it’s measured in the amount of publicity they got for their anti agenda. With the willing cheerleaders of the mass media, they got themselves lots of publicity. SUCCESS!!

    • Success is measured with being able to shape and brainwash the minds of as many children as possible with this Bolshevik nonsense. I guess they are trying to make sure the media and public school system are doing their jobs.

  22. HEY! We had the Mattel play set…the snubby would get you KILLED now. I miss the 60’s(but not my 60’s). Yeah that has got to be the creepiest comic ever-those black children look like zombies…

  23. Will Grigg wrote about these gun buy backs years ago. His conclusion was that they are laying down the psychological conditioning for a future mandatory buyback. That had to do with real guns, but this is clearly being done to brainwash kids for the same goal. Great find, codrea!

    • I’ll bet the mandatory buyback will work just as good as the NY assault rifle registration. You’ll get the dumb ones turning in all their functioning guns at a huge loss. You’ll get those who turn in only crappy guns while keeping the good ones for themselves. You’ll get people trading in airsoft/bb guns claiming them to be real guns. You’ll also get criminals looking at the event and salivating at the opportunities that await them with victims galore.

  25. Buy 20 toy guns @ dollar tree

    $500 in gift cards

    Buy a cheap 1911

    trolololololololololollololololo

  26. All the coverage of that and no coverage of the triple murder on the university of Maryland Baltimore campus on july 8

  27. Looks a bit like raciest profiling in that only kids that are kinda green/yellow are the only ones who need to be protected? I see one kid on an unsafe swing another pair on a teeter totter (again unsafe) and yet another blowing soap bubbles at another child’s face and head looks like deliberate assault. How many children are killed and injured by in the eye with soap bubbles. I also don’t see any adult supervision on all these dangerous toys…

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