VPR-Gunsense-20131021

“We have a very long view on this. Two years ago, there wasn’t any way any gun provision would be debated. This is a long-term campaign to really change the conversation, so we can pass legislation to keep guns out of the wrong hands.” – Gun Sense Vermont’s Ann Braden in Gun Control Supporters Concede Defeat on Background Checks [at sevendaysvt.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

85 COMMENTS

    • Playing the long-term, long-game? I rate your survival chances outliving your stupid actions against guns by maybe a non-leap year. Play the long-game backwards. Look to the past, even the recent past as to how this plays out. Just since the formation of America, France has cratered 2x under a-holes like you, as well as Russia, Germany. . .
      Like her child, her comments/opinion on guns are ugly, red-headed, step, and unwanted.

      She doesn’t want to chuck ‘guns’, she and her kind want to chuck America. We have a Constitution, it’s how and why we get along. Chuck this little bit if you want and someone else will chuck the rest.

      • That’s pretty low and cowardly to make such disparaging remarks about a small child.

        You ought to direct that anger to where it’s deserved and there are plenty who deserve it.

        • Someone did that as a courtesy, I expect, to keep the child’s pic off the world-wide web. Someone stopped their car and got out and took pics of my kids fishing one time, my wife really got upset about it, I expect she’s not the only one who might feel that way.

        • Oh, I know you can’t use pictures of minors without parental consent. I was just poking a little fun at Joe R. for calling the kid “ugly”.

      • Yep. Every country that has tried the socialist/progressive utopia has always failed. Usually with millions of deaths as a direct result. After the population has been disarmed.

        Oh well. Just another example of education not equaling wisdom.

    • The Chairman also had that view. It was called the Long March and they marched over the BODIES of 60 MILLION Chinese citizens in the process.

  2. I was debating gun “provisions” two years ago… Remember the whole a post Sandy Hook back and forth?

    Your view might be long, but your memory is very short.

    • Two years ago, there wasn’t any way any gun provision would be debated.
      No. She is right.
      Liberals do not debate, they repeat the same crap over and over as the sheep do in Animal Farm.
      Or…as Shannon Watts does at Mommies Needing Some Action.
      All are useful idiots.

  3. That means we must be ever more vigilant to look up for the likes that will take away our rights reminds me of a quote for evil to triumph all it takes is for good men to do nothing

  4. Take note, constitutional-carry-or-bust types.

    Also: the price of liberty is eternal vigilance – because our opponents have nothing but time, and are willing to be patient enough to outlast us, if we fail to remain vigilant.

  5. I guess stay-at-home moms need something to do in order to get out of the house from time to time. I wish they’d pick a different hobby.

    There’s just something about “moms” that somehow makes them more apt to use their time however someone else tells them to instead of taking some of it to do some basic research.

    • There are plenty of moms and stay at home moms who are POTG despite this type of marginalizing sentiment your purporting.

      • I don’t think they live in Vermont. That once-great state has been over-run with ex-hippies and wanna-be survivalists ever since Ben and Jerry started making their ice cream there.

      • It’s marginalizing in the same way young men in the Middle East are more likely to join ISIS than old women in Wisconsin. Not all of those in that segment do that, there are plenty of young men in the Middle East that don’t join ISIS.

        The question remains, why do we keep seeing moms doing this? Seems like it’s always a politician, journalist, or mom pictured under any of these articles, and only the moms can be considered under the “average citizen” category. So can this be considered a male vs female discussion? Where are the dads? Do men just not care about safety as they define it? Do men even know what their wives are doing?

        • I think that there are some men in the Anti groups. The explanation is, I suspect, that the Antis want to put the most sympathetic plaintiff on the platform; that’s a mom in our culture.
          I really don’t much care one way or the other who the Antis are or what they do. What I’m interested in is having a positive marginal impact on the vast numbers of un-committed voters in the middle. The people who will never be standing up and shouting; but, who vote.
          We PotG need to keep polishing our image and using effective tactics ourselves. We ought to have our own mamma-bears protecting their cubs out-front talking about self defense. We ought to have our own daughters who carry showing their sisterhood that a handgun is a tool of feminism.

          • Do a search:

            Cornered Cat
            Well Armed Women
            Women and Guns
            One Million United, INC
            Women Against Gun Control
            Second Amendment Sisters

            There are a lot more of us than you think. We can always use more of the same.

    • To be fair to Ms Braden, I don’t fault her for working for something she believes in.
      I just fault the media and the gullible or mendacious among them who push the propaganda.
      Its pathetic “Potemkin villages all the way down”, to quote one famous blogger,
      and any reporter could as easily do the research I did on Google in 15 minutes or less.

      Here is something from Vermont- a bit of background checking-
      Gun Sense Vermont outspent all but two other very large corporations in one quarter, with something like 2/3 of that coming from outside Gun Sense.

      Necrason, the PR firm Gun Sense hired is a revolving door of politicians in VT – and staff include former employees of George Soros CAP.

      So, while Ms Braden may be a nice well meaning stay at home mom, she was quickly picked up by the big money, that propped her up, and sold her and her kids as the force behind this obvious chapter of Bloomberg’s failed sock puppets groups Everytown, MDA and MAIG.

      http://watchdog.org/164758/vermont-gun-control/

  6. Yeah, we are aware of the “long-term” idea too, ya know …

    In 1986:

    1 constitutional carry state
    8 shall-issue states
    25 may-issue states
    16 no carry states

    In 2014:

    5 constitutional carry states
    37 shall-issue states
    8 may-issue states

    Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bloomberg & co.

    • Exactly.

      It seems to me that Ann Braden has not gotten the memo that “Gun Sense” is last year’s term and that Bloomberg’s money has moved on as well. “Mom’s” and “Gun Sense” did not stick. Her “long view” prognosis is to continue to be irrelevant and if anything…more so.

    • I came here to say the exact same thing. While the gun grabbers were pissing away their time in Vermont, the Kansas State Senate just passed a Constitutional carry bill with a veto proof majority. So soon there will be 6 states like Vermont, with more on the way.

      • Bold prediction; ‘Constitutional carry’ will sweep the nation like ‘shall issue’ has over the last 25 years. State legislators don’t like being pioneers, but as more and more states pass constitutional carry the fact that their won’t be blood in the streets will be more and more obvious. Virtually every state with shall issue will have constitutional carry in another decade or two. Of course the good folks in New Jersey will still be banned from carrying a firearm, let alone one loaded with hollow points.

      • West Virginia also has a realistic shot at constitutional carry this year. So hopefully there will be 7 constitutional carry states before the year is finished.

        I’d like to see the others who have bills pending (New Hampshire, Indiana, Idaho, etc.) get ’em passed, but I don’t see it happening this year. Perhaps they’ll get ’em done next year.

        • Hadn’t heard about North Carolina. AFAIK there were proposed laws this year in:

          Colorado
          Idaho
          Indiana
          Kansas
          New Hampshire
          Pennsylvania
          South Dakota
          Texas
          West Virginia

          What’s the law proposed in North Carolina?

          And did I miss any?

        • S 410 was introduced in 2013 and died in committee, but the issue itself has not died.

          2013 saw NC make a lot of improvements in terms of firearms law; this one was not ready yet. It will come back. The momentum here is what I classify as “positive.”

          Too bad right now that too much of GRNC’s efforts are going to fighting local .govs to hold their feet to the fire on state pre-emption. It’s distracting and dividing resources, so to speak.

        • Ah, ok.

          The states I listed above have legislation that was introduced this year. Hopefully NC will get it reintroduced and passed soon.

          (although I’m still puzzled by the “pistol permit” thing and the apparent partial preemption in that state)

  7. Part of the “eternal vigilance” is fighting the ever expanding definition of “criminals” and “the wrong hands.” The fight is to keep those ever expanding definitions from swallowing us all, with the approval of the general population who, OF COURSE, don’t want “criminals” or “the wrong hands” to have guns. Too many are happy with the expanded definitions, as long as it doesn’t include THEM – and does promise to keep them all “safe.”

    And never mind what other things they can be killed or mangled with in the meantime.

  8. As fun as it is to drop the witty quip, there is a lesson for we pro gun rights supporters. She has reaffirmed the antis religious zeal in which they will never stop trying, pushing, manipulating, and most importantly, demonizing and vilifying. Despite the progress made over the last few decades, the threat will not go away. It may lessen at times, but they’ll always be waiting and scheming. And they only need to succeed once, just ask Colorado and Washington state.

    • James, you are absolutely correct. The struggle between gun rights vs. gun control has continued from the early English kings; always depending upon whether the king was more worried about foreign invaders or his own subjects at the moment. It will never die.
      Fundamentally, our struggle is for the hearts and minds of The People. The Antis can’t ban guns in either rural States nor in the inner cities. They plan to make them NON-PC in polite metropolitan society. Their long game is the century it took to eliminate guns from the UK.
      Our long game must be to ensure that every voter knows a few gun carriers to be peaceful, law-abiding sober advocates for the 2A.

    • You are dead on James. Some states are losing big time and it will take years and lots of dollars to undo the damage done in a relatively quick time. Add to that the ATF’s decision to ban ammo that quite clearly does not meet the definition of armor piercing according to the law that bans armor piercing ammo. There’s a lot of progress for our side lately and meanwhile, they are chipping away on the backside. We have to always be looking for and reacting to their illegal infringements on our rights.

  10. “. . . pass legislation to keep guns out of the wrong hands”. That would be a good idea! How about regulating the practice of plea-barganing away felonious possession charges?
    Here is another idea; how about having an honest discussion about the difficulty of stopping smuggling, illicit manufacture and illicit trafficking of any product (alcohol, drugs, guns, ammunition)? Or the difficulty of diverting the proclivities of criminals?
    Still another idea; how about an honest discussion about the difficulty women, the elderly and handicapped have in fending off young fit assailants?
    Those of us who have considerable familiarity with guns are not hard-to-find. We aren’t hard to talk to. We share a lot of goals with the rest of society. If you want to have a discussion with us, meet us either:
    1) on our blogs; or,
    2) your blogs.
    We don’t censor our blogs; if you Moms would stop censoring your blogs we could have that discussion.

  12. My question about UBC’s is how do you enforce it?

    Scenario 1: Say I decide I want a gun for home defense. I am not a prohibited person. My neighbor, John, is a gun enthusiast with many. He offers me a used XD9 for $250. I give him the cash and take possession of the gun. How will the authorities know I bought a gun w/o a background check?

    Scenario 2: I am a criminal with a felony record. My buddy, Jack, is a burglar. He recently hit a house with three handguns, which he stole. He offers to sell me one. How does any law prevent me from getting the gun?

    The only way to come close to enforcing “Universal Background Checks” is to have a complete registry of gun ownership and perform routine searches of peoples homes, including non-gun owners, to be sure they do not have any guns that have not been BGCed. I’m not talking about a quick look around, either. I’m talking about the ATF rectal exam home search, with holes in walls and torn up furniture.

    It just can’t be done.

    • Well, the anti-gun folks have no problem with registration, so they don’t see that as an issue. They also don’t seem to have a problem with law enforcement taking down the “evil gun owners.”

      It’s part of that “everything should be regulated by the government” mentality, IMO.

      Selling a weapon to someone else should not be a crime. Using a weapon to assault another person should – and is – a crime, and the folks who actually do harm to others should not be let back on the street as quickly as they are.

      • “They also don’t seem to have a problem with law enforcement taking down the “evil gun owners.””

        I am quick to point out to them that their house has to be searched, too, to prove that they didn’t buy a gun in a private transaction. It’s not just people known to have guns that need to be searched, it’s also people who don’t have guns. They might have bought one in the last year.

  13. I can certainly understand where these people are coming from, and I sympathize with them. They have a difficult road ahead. With a crime rate near zero, it is difficult to get that first toehold, to pass a law “for the children” which will begin to increase the crime rate, so that they can point to the crime and demand more laws, to increase crime further, starting their wonderful spiral toward a society like that in Detroit or Chicago. What a dope.

  15. Gun owners as a majority were also supporting keeping guns out of the wrong hands, but a vast majority of gun owners realized over time that those hands were becoming their own. No law will stop a criminal from being a criminal.

  17. As much as I dislike it, I see the anti-gunners winning the long game. When I was a kid almost all the guys played with BB guns . . . toy guns were regularly brought to school . . . nobody thought it unusual for a 12-year-old to have a .22 rifle or a 410 shotgun . . . you could hang a deer rifle in the back of your pickup cab or walk down the road carrying a long gun with no second looks . . . our high school had a rifle team and it was no big deal for any of us to have some bullets in our pockets. Now there’s a very visible public effort to demonize guns at every level. Toy guns are frowned upon. Public display of guns of any sort can be met with police action. It’s been a one-way PR trend for forty years. I hate it, but I’m afraid we’re dinosaurs.

    • Alabama – I’ll take dinosaur. They lasted 60 million years. Since we’re at about 1 so far, let freedom reign another 59. Funny how everything has two sides…

      • 60 million years? Try two hundred and thirty. If you don’t count birds as dinosaurs (and rightfully, you should), then cut that number back to 165 million years. In other words, the dinosaurs (that aren’t birds) lasted 100 million years LONGER than the amount of time that has elapsed since they died out.

        1 million? More like only 200,000 or so, for us Homo sapiens.

        So your point is a lot stronger than you thought it was.

    • As much as I hate playing the pessimist, I believe you’re right. It won’t have to even be a legal thing, all they have to do is make the idea of firearms taboo and socially distasteful.

    • I’m not convinced of this.

      Have things overall gotten worse over the last 100 years? Yes. But have some things gotten much better in recent times? Also yes. Look at the “right to carry” movement for the obvious example.

      I think that the gun rights movement is better organized and much more aware of the dangers it faces than it used to be, and is more consistently fighting back. The more states that pass constitutional carry laws and fail to see the “wild west / blood in the streets” consequences, the more the cries of the anti-gun movement will be seen as false propaganda.

      We are fighting back against the anti-gun folks. In some cases, we win … in others, we lose. The fight goes on.

      But the more that the gun community diversifies to be more than just OFWG’s (as increasing numbers of women and minorities get involved with firearms), the more law enforcement officers speak out about how citizens carrying firearms is a good thing (e.g. Detroit Police Chief James Craig & Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke), the more “guntry clubs” and virtual ranges and other innovations appear, the better off we all are.

      The culture war is not lost, by any means, nor is the legal fight. There have been too many setbacks, but there are now plenty of people fighting for the RKBA.

    • You know, they supposedly accomplished the same thing with cigarettes. But I don’t see any shortage of smokers where I live.

      • Good point. Or, as my wife commented the other day, there is no shortage of new smokers. As she posed the question, with all that is out there about smoking and tobacco in general, why do teens START to smoke?

        A similar question can be posed for guns: with all the marketing, all the so-called “losses,” why are so many new shooters?

        The answer is fundamentally simple: people don’t care what the laws and social peer pressures are. People will do what they want – to a point, at least.

        This is only bad news for those that seek to be controlling what others do in the first place.

        • Actually, from what I’ve read, the numbers of new smokers don’t tell the whole story.

          New study finds that teen smokers use multiple tobacco products
          http://tinyurl.com/lb79ttc

          The study findings are consistent with other reports suggesting that cigarette use is declining while use of other products, such as e-cigarettes and hookah, are gaining popularity among kids.

          The “law” against teen use of tobacco, etc. has a lot to do with use patterns, but peer pressure has much more influence, as it always has. I think this is true of anything else teens are interested in doing.

          When they become interested in guns, how much better an open and inviting prospect, rather than prohibition and fear mongering.

    • “I see the anti-gunners winning the long game. “

      Disagree. Strongly disagree.

      For that to happen, tyranny would have to win wholesale.

      There are setbacks; there are pockets of control. But, the nation as a whole has not given up completely on the fundamentals, and when one is talking about natural rights, it is instinct not education that wins the day.

      If you focus on the negatives and give up because you believe the fight is a lost cause…yes, they will win. But in no way am I convinced that trajectory is preordained.

      • Nor is it pre-ordained for natural rights to win. There is an excellent article about how gun rights were lost in the UK which is instructive from a long view perspective.
        We are in a good position today and the wind is behind us; but that could change for unpredictable reasons. The most important thing for us to do is to promote the responsible use of guns in metropolitan areas. All the gun owners in rural areas leave little in the way of impression on urban dwellers. It’s the latter who will inevitably grow in number to the point that they could strip the former of their 2A guarantee.

        • “Nor is it pre-ordained for natural rights to win. “

          I disagree, and I think I’m in good company as the Founding Fathers of the US seemed to think about the matter similarly to how I see things.

          Other than recent ones that are currently trapped (ie, ones whose cycle has not played out yet), name one historical enslaved population that has remained continuously enslaved across the dividing lines of the civilization that enslaved them. One could go so far as saying breaking bondage is itself a game-changer in the arena of ‘civilizations.’

          Focusing attention solely on the current state in the UK is too short term.

          People inherently yearn for freedom of self. There is no government or social construct that can change that. By the same token, people can see when they lack such freedom and they can absolutely see when governments and social systems around them are lying to them (as the anti-gunners are doing).

          Take, for example, the very group you mentioned…urban population. They can see they are not free and they have rightfully concluded distrust in the government and socials systems that continue to ensnare them. They have not worked it out yet, but my point is these facts are not hidden to them.

          Disarmament never works “long term.” Disarmament has one purpose: control and ultimately tyranny. Tyranny does not last, or at least none has been permanent so far. People will ALWAYS rebel. This is why individual liberty is the true, natural state of man and can be the only form of governance than can last is one whose purpose is to protect individual rights.

          • I appreciate your train of thought. I beg to offer, however, that it isn’t particularly comforting. How long can tyranny prevail in your historical view? How long can one tyranny be followed by another?
            Could you say that the Chinese have fought their way out of tyranny? How about the Japanese?
            If a tyranny endures for 3 generations, is it of much comfort to the 1st that their great grand children will free themselves?
            I accept that there always remains a force for liberty just as there remain forces for tyranny.
            Maybe the best we can say is this. In civilizations past and even today in many other locations (ME, Asia, Africa, LA) the lack of wealth and access to the mechanical arts have constrained the masses. It has been far easier for a tyranny to dominate the masses with a lopsided access to arms.
            In the US, in the 21st century, this balance of wealth and access have tipped in favor of the masses. One need merely consult the data in GunPolicy.org; the relative wealth of the population has enabled them to arm themselves to a degree unprecedented in history. The used market for mills and lathes reveals the ability to make – or if needs be manufacture – arms. Again, this is unprecedented.
            What remains unclear in the US is where we are – and where we are going – in resolving the tipping point among the 3 groups: the Loyalists; the Indifferent; and, the “Revolutionaries” – i.e., those who want to revert to the constitutional order. We should see the outcome at the polls first.

        • Submitted a nice (so I thought, anyway) reply referencing historical civilizations in general and the Founding Fathers in particular and the commenting software apparently ate it.

          Short version: Freedom will always win; all historical tyrannies have been temporary, and people WILL rebel…eventually.

          Even the ‘urban’ people you reference…they recognize the problems. Working solutions have not happened – yet – but the instinctive niggling that “something is not right here” exists there as it always exists.

  18. Vermont is so close, geographically, to so many gun-free utopian states. Gotta wonder why she doesn’t just move to one.

    Maybe because of the crime?

    • She very likely came from one of the utopian locales of CT, MA or NY, to raise her children in the safe, low crime “country playground” of VT. She appears to be now doing her best to fix “things” for us locals now that she and her family have arrived.

  19. Shame about the kid’s face. It looks like he stuck it too close to the muzzle brake on a Barrett. Maybe that’s why she wants them gone.

  20. This could be fixed quick fast and in a hurry if we,
    1. Reintroduce the poll tax. Only land owners can vote.
    2. Reverse universal sufferage.
    3. Disallow anyone on government assistence to vote.
    4. And my favorite: public caning of village idiots.

  21. On the timely and pressing matter of “Gunsense” ( in context )…
    A thinking person could reasonably assert that, if a ‘gun’ in-and-of-itself, did in fact, have any ‘sense’ and as combined with the necessary capability of individual animation — it would naturally seek out an actual person who would fully appreciate its inherent value, care for it, learn how to safely and appropriately utilize it for both its own and it’s dutiful owner’s best self interest and of course, protect and defend its ‘Rights’.
    ( editor and proofreader needed, inquire within, or not.)

  22. Actually, I think she looks like a pretty nice, if clueless, lady, and I’m betting that’s a pretty cute kid behind that digital masking. And I think she needs to spend more time raising that cute kid and less time playing politics with an issue she doubtless knows nothing about.

  24. This “conversation” you want to change, is that the one the peasant disarmament lobby is always wanting to have, where you talk and anybody who disagrees has to sit down and shut up?

  33. Hoping this goes the other way: VT is one of the few remaining states to still ban suppressors; even though VT has no other firearm laws to speak of.

Comments are closed.