Category: Activism

One Man Can Make a Difference

Ordinary Ohio citizen calls out illegal Cincinnati festival gun ban — and wins! [More]

This is advocacy activism at its finest.

Having seen the alternative, stories like this restore my faith and inspire me.

We all see ways every day where we can make a difference. Anyone who can’t think of any isn’t trying and anyone who doesn’t try isn’t helping.

[Via Michael G]

Thumbs Down on Activism

[More]

Too bad, because it’s a knee-jerk assessment on a great comment I agree with, and represents the kind of self-motivated activism I wish more readers would take on themselves to engage in. Otherwise what’s the point of reading the article?

It’s disappointing but hardly surprising. Grudges and squabbles appear to take precedence over unity in purpose and shoulders to the wheel, and that’s got to be encouraging to the antis.

It’s fair to wonder how many of the down-voters — who would be big potential beneficiaries if they helped instead of harassed — spent even so much as the second it took them to click a thumbs down on promoting the Earle-Sears campaign and telling NRA and Trump to get off the stick.

And that’s why I don’t think Trump finally-kinda-sorta coming on board was due to “2A supporters tagging him on X about Virginia.” Nobody has been writing about this but me, and I can tell you from the lack of comments and shares I’ve seen, this has been one of the biggest echo chamber pieces I’ve ever written.

(And yeah, I see comment links don’t scroll you to the exact one and nothin’ I can do about that, but the ones I’m citing are easy enough to find.)

Ohio Action Alert

The Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA) was shelved last December, and lawmakers have done nothing to advance it in nearly a year. Which means the critical time for action is NOW! … With complete republican control in Ohio, there is no excuse for the lack of pro-gun wins in 2025, so let your elected officials know you are displeased with their lack of support for the Second Amendment. [More]

Yeah we can expect better than redundancy and “Only Ones.”

Crossroads

Montana Shooting Sports Association is at a crossroads. Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA) needs to either grow substantially or begin spooling down. I just had my 79th birthday and will not be able to carry the MSSA load much longer. To set MSSA up to carry on will require money and members, lots of both. [More]

Gary Marbut has been the engine that has kept things going in more ways than I could summarize. If Montana gun owners don’t appreciate the sacrifices he has made on their behalf, the innovation in his thinking to protect their rights, and the sheer determination of pulling the load every day, step by step, with unflagging devotion, if the greatest enemy of the animating contest for freedom, apathy, prevails, they’ll bring Mr. Churchill’s terrifying assessment down on their own (and our) heads, and Mr. Adams’ judgment on their souls.

Montana gun owners have the choice of doing things the easy way or the hard way. Not doing anything is simply surrendering that choice to those who would leave them none– under force of arms.

Reigning on His Parade

“I lack a proper proofreader,” too. Does that make me an “amateur”? 😊 [More]

Worse than that, my spellcheck is woke.

Typos: We all make ’em (and sometimes intentionally, because in case anyone hasn’t noticed, I love to play with language and my toys, my rules). That said, people chronically not knowing the difference between “you’re” and “your” just seems lazy.

What really irritated me about Nicholas’ post was this:

I encourage whomever reads this, if you agree with anything I wrote, copy and paste it and send it on to any or all of the above, because if we’re to gain any traction here, we need more than a couple voices speaking up.

No one did. None of his X.com recipients responded, and I see a lot of them who get promoted here, yet somehow it never occurs to them to reciprocate.

Add to that most of the comment posters to my articles that he cited were either preoccupied with childish ad hominem attacks or changing the subject from a conversation nobody else was offering to hijacking the thread to talk about stories on all the DSM sites. Yeah, that’ll bring about substantive change.

And the thing is, lifting the needed finger would be as easy as swatting flies.

Really.

If I ever just say “Screw it, I’ve got mine” and go enjoy my dotage in a life of ease, it won’t be because of the antis.

Got a Minute?

That’s how long it took me to take the White House up on it’s invitation and send it Executive Order idea requests to include gun owner representatives on the Second Amendment Task Force, end the ban on private arms at military bases, and order the Army Corps of Engineers to finalize and implement the rule to allow guns on lands it controls.

Literally less than a minute for each of these. Of course, the various options for communicating I’ve already included in my articles are also easily doable.

Funny thing is, all three articles have generated plenty of comments, mostly petty squabbling, but I’m having a hard time finding more than a handful saying “Yes, I have done this and urged my friends to do it, too.”

[Via Henry Bowman]

Where There’s a Shill There’s a Way

How do you know they’re “active and effective”? I haven’t seen any press releases. If you have, can you please post a link? [More]

We don’t hear from them directly to see what they’ve discussed or sent up the ladder — or been told to send up the ladder — for consideration. What we see comes from the administration they report to and hardly gives us oversight.

So when follow-up queries to assertions like the 2A task Force is “Hard at work” are made, we get the same kind of non-response as I got when I asked for substantiation on how the FTC leads by example if their actions and statements don’t show us that they do.

That’s what we can expect when representation is excluded. If that doesn’t change, assume all that warm liquid isn’t rain. By not insisting on a seat at the table with regular feedback, the 2A groups are failing their members.

Now tell me just trust them and they can’t say anything because that would not be smart 3D chess to show what they’re up to. Don’t worry our pretty little heads about it. And send money.

My rights aren’t theirs to negotiate with, certainly not in secret, and a truism you just can’t get around no matter what excuses you come up with: We can’t have self-government without representation.

The Animating Contest

Don’t be content to just bellyache, instead do something. And by “do something”, I don’t mean the half-assed leftist version of “do something”, I mean give some serious thought, and come up with something potentially meaningful you can do, to help our cause. [More]

Stumped for ideas? Pick one or more, or come up with something that suits you.

Or just plain lazy…?

Daily Defense

Go to the AAR website to watch/listen live/find a station near you.

Points/Counterpoints

I see some comments on my new piece on Brian Fitzpatrick that I’m going to address here. I rarely add comments over at AmmoLand because I’ve had my say, it’s the readers’ turn, and I just don’t have the time to get drawn into debates. That and I can better handle things here when trolls attempt to disrupt and redirect by going off topic, or hijacking the conversation I’m inviting completely with insulting squabbles (see “Comment House Rules” in right sidebar).

Bucks county is the burbs of Philly, lots of wealthy liberal democrats. Getting a pro 2a to run much less win in that area is practically impossible.

The reality is, and I included a link in my article, Fitzpatrick won 56+% to 43+%. Republicans will win there. This defeatist presumption presupposes, without evidence to back up the assertion, that such Republicans must be overt gun-grabbers, spreads a “there’s nothing we can do about it” attitude that several readers upvoted and agreed with, and signals the GOP that Lee (“Who else are they going to vote for?”) Atwater was right and it can continue to ignore and even sabotage gun owner interests.

This is not the way we fight to win. But the Democrats love it.

https://foac-pac.org/ is the only 2A group I know of in PA. Residents should be a member.

2A is about more than “crime,” they only have 570 x.com followers and haven’t posted to it since 2023. They do somewhat better with 14K Facebook followers, which is still a head-scratcher considering the number of gun owners in PA (and is not the same as active organization membership), and haven’t posted anything this year but a “Happy New Year” message, with nothing about what is going on at the municpal, state, and federal level.

You could come up with similar dismal analyses for Pennsylvania Gun Rights, GOA-Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania Firearms Association, leading me to ask in my piece, “And for that matter, why is it so hard to find any information on any Pennsylvania pro-2A groups alerting their members to mobilize against Fitzpatrick?”

In fairness, such groups can only do so much with most gun owners not picking one and supporting it, and with (generously) 10% of the members doing 90% of the work.

Back to the first comment: It’s not that there’s nothing PA gun owners can do about it. Of course there is. It’s just that most won’t try.

My greatest failure as an armed citizens advocate is I’ve never figured out what to do about that.

Blast from the Past Part II

We talked a few month back about  George Gramlich, Editor of the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel sending me one of the few remaining signed magazines from Mike Vanderboegh’s smuggling exploits. [More]

I wasn’t sure how I was going to preserve it and decided over the weekend to put it in a hangable shadow box along with a sample of Threeperware from years gone by.

Arts and crafts were never my strong suit, but I like what I put together just fine:

I’ll get an engraving plate to affix to the bottom to read “Defy. Resist. Evade. Smuggle.” and my project will be complete.

I think my friend would have gotten a kick out of this, and I found the perfect place to hang it.

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