Our analysis of the current stalemate in the national debate over gun control has led the Ed Fund to believe that activists must challenge the idea that guns protect freedom and democracy. We have begun to fuel a debate among academics, journalists, progressive leaders, and the general public over the relationship between guns and the values that define us as Americans. By demonstrating how the “insurrectionist” philosophy of the National Rifle Association has helped to build and sustain the conservative movement, the Ed Fund hopes to drive a wedge between the highly partisan and ideologically extreme leaders of gun rights organizations and moderate gun owners, as well as the non-gun owning public. We believe this strategy will give policy makers the best chance of enacting sound, progressive gun laws at the federal and state level that will ultimately save lives.
Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence
Objectives for Fiscal Year Beginning 01/01/2007
[They are correct about driving wedges but not about saving lives via their wedges. They need to answer Just One Question and reevaluate their objectives.–Joe]
In the interest of being a helpful fellow citizen, I’d like offer some pointers to the Ed Fund:
* You have to explain what is “gunviolence”, because a lot of us aren’t exactly sure what that means. Put down the Disarmer’s Dictionary, and pick up Webster’s.
* You will save yourself a lot of time if you realize that the NRA is already “driving a wedge” between the memberships of the “gun-owning public”. See: Zumbo, Jim, and Jackson, Joaquin. Also: “Gun-Free Zones” and LaPierre.
* You will have to convince a lot of people that they can still exercise their other personal liberties when they’re dead. Prepare your arguments now, ladies and gentlemen.
* I find visual aids helpful with presentations. Here is a graph that shows what happened in this country since New Jersey first attempted government-takeover of all legal firearm transactions — in the name of “public safety” — starting in the mid-1960s. The federal government and other state and local government soon followed with their own restrictions, some of which amounted to de facto bans. Just look at this rise in Public Safety!.
You can thank me later!
They stumbled into a grain of truth in that statement– they lump “academics, journalists, progressive leaders” together on one hand, and the “general public” on the other.
Notice too how they consider education as an arm of their “progressive” movement.
As for the NRA being “insurrectionist”; the NRA was founded in 1871 by some veteran Civil War commanders who were frustrated by the insufficient marksmanship skills of U.S. citizens. Read all about it here:
http://www.nra.org/aboutus.aspx
The NRA was and is, first and foremost, a promoter of marksmanship skills for the purpose of maintaining security, peace and freedom– exactly the purpose of the Second Amendment.
Some will be shocked (shocked I tell you) to learn that the NRA’s lobbying arm, the ILA (Institute for Legislative Action) came much later and is only a small part of the NRA’s broad range of functions. The NRA’s Legislative Affairs Division was created in 1934 (that ring a bell?) and the ILA was formed in 1975, over 100 years AFTER the NRA was founded. You socialists out there always deliver the first blow, and you think we’re supposed to give up? Think again.
It might also come as a shock to the less learned that early black civil rights leaders joined the NRA as a means of helping their neighbors defend themselves against murdering race bigots, or to put it another way, to help “protect freedom and democracy”. “Freedom and democracy” then, are themselves “insurrectionist” in the eyes of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, it would seem.
We could go on about a mindset that would lead people to consider themselves as properly in charge of things while defining anyone who disagrees with them as being “insurrectionist” but I’ll have to leave that to their psychiatrists.