Gun control activists' cheap gimmicks

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Gun control activists' cheap gimmicks Bloomberg and his allies are campaigning against Target, pressuring Congress and attacking the NRA instead of confronting firearm violence at its roots

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 4:30 AM

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In the week before gun violence in Chicago left 14 people dead and another 68 wounded over the holiday weekend, it’s worth asking what the gun advocate groups were busy doing.

Many were engaged in an all-out assault on mass retailer Target for refusing to ban legal guns in their stores.

Moms Demand Action and Everytown For Gun Safety, the two groups spun out of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s first failed anti-gun group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, took their fight to — where else — Twitter.

Sending a flurry of tweets urging people to boycott Target using countless hashtags, Moms Demand Action flaunted photos of consumers buying their paper plates and hotdogs elsewhere. When Target finally capitulated, MomsDemand was victorious, retweeting supporters like CT Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who posted, “I’m shopping @Target today because they’re doing the right thing on guns.”

Then, over the weekend, the very same weekend that Chicago was erupting in gun violence, ABCNews aired a package featuring Moms founder Shannon Watts proudly touting her wins over Target and other retailers. “They listened to us when we said we don’t want loaded assault weapons around our children when we’re shopping.”

It’s a good thing Moms and Everytown are on the case, keeping us all safe from the army of legal gun owners who shop at Target, drink lattes at Starbucks and eat barbacoa burritos at Chipotle.

This is what counts as “productive” if you are a gun control advocate today. Watts may be proud of her group’s efforts, but the sad reality is that today’s anti-gun activists are nothing more than political operatives, no more noble than any other kind of lobbyist, and generally less informed about their own issue.

They may have been operatives by trade, who wandered into gun control as a lucrative issue to back. Others might start as victims of gun violence but by virtue of the strategies, tactics and channels they employ, they end up investing a lot more in gun politics than they do in meaningful community outreach, the real bedrock of activism, the kind that doesn’t rely on hashtags.

The problem with gun violence isn’t the woman with a concealed carry license at her suburban Target or Chipotle, or the prepper in rural Kansas with a handgun collection. And it isn’t the legal gun owner in Westchester County, N.Y., whose name and address was published by the Journal News after the Sandy Hook shooting.

And yet this is where gun control groups are directing their resources. This and, of course, toward the NRA. Moms and Everytown’s latest initiative is to score politicians on their commitments to gun control, the way the NRA scores on commitment to gun rights.

How does any of this even begin to solve gun crime in cities like Chicago? It doesn’t.

If the gun control groups were less interested in scoring meaningless political points and disarming lawful citizens, and were more interested in reducing gun crime, they'd be on the streets of Englewood, starting community programs to occupy inner-city children and teenagers and pull young men out of gangs and into jobs.

Talk to any Chicago principal and they will tell you their biggest fear isn’t what happens during the school year, it’s what happens over the summer when school is out, when many of their students either engage in violence or are the victims of it.

Credit goes to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for acknowledging as much, saying in a statement on Monday, that we “have to give our young people alternatives to the street, and as a community we need to demand more of ourselves and our neighbors.”

I doubt he means by boycotting the Highland Park Target or scoring Sen. ####### Durbin on a questionnaire.

Of course, when Moms Demand Action finally got around to addressing the violent weekend in Chicago, its response was predictable (and on Twitter):

“Weak federal gun laws led to deadly holiday weekend in Chicago. #momsdemand #gunsense”

Lazy. Ineffectual. Political. Exploitative. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe the irresponsible approach these hashtag advocates take to gun control.

By coercing businesses to cave into utterly meaningless demands, and by focusing largely on lawful gun owners — the only people who will submit to background checks, gun registries, magazine restrictions and other legislation — gun advocates may feel productive.

But the real problems — and victims — are left behind.

Contact Cupp at www.thesecupp.com.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/gun-control-activists-cheap-gimmicks-article-1.1858651#ixzz38EnufCM1

[spookyturtle 9,466]

If the gun control groups were less interested in scoring meaningless political points and disarming lawful citizens, and were more interested in reducing gun crime, they'd be on the streets of Englewood, starting community programs to occupy inner-city children and teenagers and pull young men out of gangs and into jobs.

Talk to any Chicago principal and they will tell you their biggest fear isn’t what happens during the school year, it’s what happens over the summer when school is out, when many of their students either engage in violence or are the victims of it.

Credit goes to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for acknowledging as much, saying in a statement on Monday, that we “have to give our young people alternatives to the street, and as a community we need to demand more of ourselves and our neighbors.”

I doubt he means by boycotting the Highland Park Target or scoring Sen. ####### Durbin on a questionnaire.

This is the root of many problems, not just gun violence. But most would rather attack legal gun owners and try to restrict their rights instead of attacking the source of the problem.