The bastards must be doing happy dances and having orgasms in pure, unbridled, debauchery with Allabama elected…
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E mail received today from Aunty Fifty’s Stupid Relatives – Firearm Fellows – those Gelded Gunners
Warning, Some go directly to an Aunty's site
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Air America National Interview With Freedom States Alliance / GunGuys.com About What Obama’s Election Means To the Gun Issue
(Air America host Lee Rayburn, filling in for Thom Hartman, interview GunGuys.com / Freedom States Alliance communications director, Scott Vogel on Monday, Nov. 17th, about the election of Barack Obama as President, and how it impacts the gun issue. See an edited transcript below).
Lee Rayburn: My name’s Lee Rayburn, sitting in for Thom Hartmann today on Air America radio. Joining us this afternoon from Chicago from Gun Guys.com – he’s the communications director for the Freedom State Alliance – Scott Vogel. Good afternoon, Scott.
Scott Vogel: Thank you so much for having us, Lee – I really appreciate it.
Lee Rayburn: It’s good to speak with you again. I use GunGuys.com all the time to keep up to date on how they’re trying to take my guns away! (Laughs).
We just detailed a slew of stories that seemed to come out. Just about every national, regional and local newspaper ran a story about how the election of President Barack Obama has led to a run on guns. Really?
Scott Vogel: What I think happened is that the gun industry used the election of Senator Obama, as the President-elect of the United States, to say to their customer base: ‘Why don’t you buy another gun? Go buy another assault rifle because you just might get them taken away.’
We first noticed these stories about two weeks before the election. And sure enough, one paper after another after another started running these stories.
It was, in many ways, and in a very cynical sense, the perfect public relations strategy from the gun lobby and the gun industry. Every local TV reporter, every local newspaper, could go down to their local gun dealer and ask them, “Have more people have come to buy guns?”
There’s no verification whether that many people have or have not. But the gun dealers said, “Yeah, of course. A lot of people are buying guns.” And the story spread like wildfire.
Now, having said that, it’s possible that there may be an uptick [??] in gun sales. But the critical thing to understand is, from our analysis, these alleged gun sales are from people who already own guns and they probably own several. What it looks like to us, is they’re buying their fourth or seventh or ninth gun [to add to their arsenal].
I think the gun industry has used the election of Barack Obama to its advantage to resell their market. And that’s exactly what this is.
We saw these same fears after Y2K, but the surge of gun sales didn’t happen. After the September 11th attacks, we were told there was a massive and dramatic surge of gun sales. It didn’t happen. People said that after Hurricane Katrina – this fear, this paranoia that law enforcement officers were rounding up and confiscating guns in New Orleans. It didn’t happen.
The gun industry has saturated their market, and they constantly need something to sell more products. And fear, you know, driving fear helps sell. In the way that many industries use sex to sell, I think the gun industry uses fear.
Lee Rayburn: I think that has become obvious with each and every time that the American people are scared – the new story we hear is get your gun, or buy another gun. But that doesn’t happen. If it didn’t happen after 9/11, would it ever?
You say that if we look into the numbers of background checks being conducted [from this supposed run on guns], we may be seeing gun owners just “upping their arsenal” a little, as opposed to people who aren’t gun owners going out and getting their first assault rifles just to see what it feels like?
Scott Vogel: I think there are some troubling signs on the horizon. I heard you talking about the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center that there are at least an estimated 200 hate-related threats that have been committed since Barack Obama won the election.
They’re reporting that there’s been a dramatic surge of threats of violence, racist graffiti, and burning crosses on people’s property.
Lee Rayburn: Hate crimes.
Scott Vogel: What we’re worried about is that nexus between radical and right-wing fringe groups, and access to weapons and guns. And there’s certainly a correlation between the two.
Now I’m not saying that just because you’re a gun owner, you’re a racist, or anything like that. But there are extreme organizations and individuals who are very well armed, and that is a major cause of concern.
Lee Rayburn: We’ve heard from the Center for Media and Democracy on this show about the PR spin that goes on. You’ve alerted us with the gun industry using Barack Obama as a PR chip.
We have heard from Media Matters about the right-wing hate that is going on, and the fear that is being stoked, not just from national right-wing talk show hosts on the radio, but local talk show hosts too. But at the same time, the facts just don’t bear out that we’re arming ourselves to the teeth here in preparation for an Obama administration.
The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that gun ownership in the U.S. has actually been falling consistently in the last thirty years.
Scott Vogel: Correct, and quite dramatically at that.
I think it’s interesting to put this into context. Back in 1993 the Clinton administration passed the Brady Bill, and then in 1994 passed the assault weapon ban.
Now part of the reason for Clinton’s push for gun control was that there were significant levels of crime and homicide at the time. Since the early and mid-90s, the numbers of gun deaths and homicides have dropped.
But what’s interesting is that the next year in 1995, after Clinton passed two major gun control bills, there was Oklahoma City – [the horrific bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh, who was an anti-government extremist, a member of the NRA, and part of a well-armed militia].
You have to understand that when you pollute the airwaves with hate speech, and use code words against certain groups of people that the extreme right says are not to be trusted, it’s a problem.
[When you stoke paranoia and fear that “gun control” means confiscation, you have a problem]. Hate radio often accuses some Americans of not being patriotic, that they’re [immoral]. They target certain groups whether they’re immigrants, democrats, African Americans, or [gun control advocates. The fear and paranoia, along with access to guns, is and should be a major concern].
Lee Rayburn: We have one right-wing talk show host that we had on the first hour of the Thom Hartmann Show here today, where he was saying unequivocally that Barack Obama – he’s not a Muslim, he’s not a foreigner; he’s the anti-Christ.
Scott Vogel: That’s what I mean. It’s toxic is what it is. There’s no other way to say it. It’s pollution.
Most people can discern this [violent rhetoric], dismiss it, and don’t listen to it. But there are a few people who do absorb it. And that pollution, that toxicity, can corrode a person’s mind. [Add to that the ease and access to some deadly, and powerful guns and military-style weapons and you have a combustible scenario].
It’s very troubling to us because the truth of the matter is we see gun violence, and violence in general, not in political terms. We understand that [gun control and gun violence] gets filtered through a political prism.
But the truth is that violence doesn’t matter whether you’re young or old, Democrat, Republican, or Independent. There are untold numbers of people who are injured and killed by guns and other forms of violence – and we need to prevent it, pure and simple.
We need to address this issue through a systemic, comprehensive, and thoughtful way – [and get away from the divisive cultural debate].
I think that’s why there’s a lot of hope about President-elect Obama. He is a person, so it appears, who will govern from a common sense, evidence-based approach, which I think gives a certain amount of hope to advocates that he will enact sensible policies to reduce violence.
Now those policies, to a certain paranoid and fringe group, may upset them, and I think there’s a certain worry about that. But that doesn’t mean that President-elect Obama shouldn’t take action, and move strongly and swiftly on measures to reduce the threat of gun violence.
Lee Rayburn: On Obama’s own website, he says the Second Amendment creates an individual right to bear arms. And he respects the Constitutional rights of Americans to do so. He’s going to protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns.
Scott Vogel: That’s right – he does say that. And you can debate the rhetoric of the [Second Amendment] or not.
But the other critical thing about President-elect Obama is that he will become the Commander in Chief, and he will have the responsibility to protect the national security of the United States.
You cannot talk about national security in a thoughtful, systematic way without dealing with the prevalence of assault rifles and .50 caliber sniper rifles.
Lee Rayburn: How about the gun show loophole?
Scott Vogel: If you step back and think about it, the one policy that we need to really effectively clamp down on illegal guns, and gun trafficking, and to reduce gun violence, is mandating a background check on every gun sold in America.
Lee Rayburn: Right now, gun shows get a free pass, don’t they?
Scott Vogel: There’s a patchwork effect among the states with respect to our gun laws. If you went to a gun store, a licensed gun dealer, they would ask you to fill out a form, and they’d run your name through the national instant check system to find out if you have a record as a domestic abuser, or a felon, etc.
If you went to a gun show, most likely, depending on the state, you could likely show up with the cash and just buy the gun – literally no questions asked.
Lee Rayburn: Do we have any statistics on how many guns are being bought in stores as opposed to gun shows to use the loophole?
Scott Vogel: [The data is incomplete because we don’t have the ability to monitor gun sales to know precisely]. But there’s some indication that around 40% of guns are sold on the “secondary market” , as we say – which means no background check is conducted. [If you buy a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer, a background check is required].
How you feel about the Second Amendment is not relevant to us in all honesty. We have an opinion about it, but it’s not the critical issue. For us, the critical issue is if you’re going to purchase and possess a weapon, we should at least find out and check if you are a felon, a terrorist, drug dealer, gun trafficker, mentally unstable, a domestic abuser, etc.?
Lee Rayburn: We should find out if you are a threat to our national security and our family security?
Scott Vogel: The metaphor I often use is airport security.
When we go through airport security, it’s a certain “shared sacrifice.” We don’t necessarily like it, but we take our laptop computers out, we take our shoes off and show our boarding passes in order to go through security. We’re all safer because of it.
We get on airplanes and know that, for the most part, the person sitting next to us doesn’t have a gun or a knife. We all do it. It doesn’t take that much time or sacrifice, and frankly, we all know that it’s worth it. We all do it, and it’s a thoughtful and comprehensive way by which we’re all safer.
[We look at background checks on all gun sales the same way as going through airport security. It’s not that much of an inconvenience, it takes very little time, and we all benefit from it]. Running a background check on every gun sale – [regardless how you view the “Second Amendment”] – is a thoughtful, sensible policy, and even most gun owners support it.
Lee Rayburn: What I want to bring up before we run out of time here is the issue of the illegal gun market, and how we have seen the surplus or supply of guns in this country create the “illegal market” of guns.
Scott Vogel: People need to understand that, according to some estimates, there are over 200 million guns in private ownership and circulation in the United States.
Lee Rayburn: Wow.
Scott Vogel: If you look at this from the “law of large numbers” theory, inevitably, even a small percentage of those guns are going to wind up in the wrong hands, especially in urban centers like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles, and are going to be trafficked or traded either by drug dealers or gang bangers. Gun traffickers are going international, for example, funneling weapons to arm the cartels in Mexico to fight the drug war.
It’s a difficult political environment for Barack Obama, because there are a lot of Democrats and Republicans that have no interest in dealing with the gun violence epidemic in the United States. But nonetheless, it’s incumbent upon Obama to take strong action and think about what he can do in the short term and the long term to get a 0url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-rose ... 39879.html]handle on this problem, because it’s certainly not going to go away[/url].
Lee Rayburn: You bring up some obvious things that we can do. Close the gunshow loophole and control the supply of guns that has created the illegal market. I think even legal gun owners can agree that they’d want guns out of the hands of those who obtain them illegally.
Scott Vogel: That’s right. The American people have been won over. Most gun owners, and certainly the far majority of the American public, support gun regulation, and gun control. It really is this small, well-funded, well-organized fringe from the gun lobby and the NRA that have stopped reform.
I think hopefully, now that we have a “problem-solver President” as Obama likes to call himself, that maybe we’ll get to that point of solving problems instead of debating ideology, and look at real solutions to reducing gun violence.
Lee Rayburn: Scott Vogel, gunguys.com. Lee Rayburn sitting in for Thom Hartmann on Air America Radio.
Scott Vogel: Lee, thank you very much for the invitation to speak with you.
Excerpts:
Timothy McVeigh, who was an anti-government extremist, a member of the NRA = The way that reads the NRA is also an extremist but to them, they are! But he used explosives (fertilizer) not guns so how does that correlate?
show up with the cash and just buy the gun – literally no questions asked = Lots of questions are asked and if the buyer comes across hinky the seller can always “refuse to sell to the SOB…
There are so many more in this piece of pure dribble, unadulterated pig swallow (bullshite) that I won't go on as nearly every sentence and statement there are plain blatant lies!
[strike]ROT IN HELL, SCUM SUCKING, MINDLESS TURD FOR BRAIN ASSHOLES![/strike] Thank you for your delightful insight! <<Sarcasm Alert>>
