Mark Follman of Mother Jones has written a post about advocates of loose gun laws who harass female gun control advocates. They stalk. They make death threats. They threaten rape.
Here's what Follman tells us about one victim of these men:
AS JENNIFER LONGDON STEERED her wheelchair through the Indianapolis airport on April 25, she thought the roughest part of her trip was over. Earlier that day she'd participated in an emotional press conference with the new group Everytown for Gun Safety, against the backdrop of the National Rifle Association's annual meeting. A mom, gun owner, and Second Amendment supporter, Longdon was paralyzed in 2004 after being shot in her car by unknown assailants, and has since been a vocal advocate for comprehensive background checks and other gun reforms.The fact that Longdon soldiers on after abuse like this puts me in awe of her bravery.
As Longdon sat waiting for her flight, a screen in the concourse showed footage of the press conference. A tall, thin man standing nearby stared at Longdon, then back at the screen. Then he walked up to Longdon and spat in her face....
Longdon is no stranger to such attacks. Last May in her hometown of Phoenix, she helped coordinate a gun buyback program with local police over three weekends. On the first Saturday, a group of men assembled across the street from the church parking lot where Longdon was set up....
Some of them approached Longdon. "You know what was wrong with your shooting?" one said. "They didn't aim better." Another man came up, looked Longdon up and down and said, "I know who you are." Then he recited her home address....
After a fundraiser one night during the program, Longdon returned home around 10 p.m., parked her ramp-equipped van and began unloading herself. As she wheeled up to her house, a man stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed in black and had a rifle, "like something out of a commando movie," Longdon told me. He took aim at her and pulled the trigger. Longdon was hit with a stream of water. "Don't you wish you had a gun now, bitch?" he scoffed before taking off.
"It was like a mock execution," Longdon says....
But I have a disagreement with her.
The majority of gun owners in America are good people, she adds. "I wish that more responsible gun owners would step into this conversation and say 'Look, those guys don't speak for us.'"No, she's wrong. The majority of gun owners in America are not good people, and she just told us why. They don't speak out about this. They don't distance themselves from people like this.
Now, I understand that a lot of ordinary gun owners don't know that this kind of intimidation is taking place. But there's been plenty of publicity lately for acts of garden-variety intimidation -- the guy who defiantly waved a gun near a Little League field, or people having a brandish-in at a Starbucks in Newtown, Connecticut. When are supposedly decent, well-meaning gun owners going to put some distance between themselves and people who do things like that?
Follman's article quotes a couple of gun advocates who seem to have a problem with all this, but the problem they have is that they don't think it's good for them strategically:
Some staunch advocates of expansive gun rights recognize that this kind of bullying is bad for the movement. In March, a talk radio host and self-described gun enthusiast in Wisconsin called the "in your face open-carry playbook" tactics "perfectly legal, and perfectly stupid." After the Arlington restaurant incident, the editor of BearingArms.com wrote that Open Carry Texas had achieved "a public relations disaster."The latter is a reference to an incident in which forty members of Open Carry Texas "armed with assault rifles showed up outside an Arlington, Texas, restaurant where four women from Moms Demand Action were having lunch." That's not a "public relations disaster" -- that's thuggery. If members of the gun community won't say so -- if they continue to look the other way -- then, no, they're not good people.
10 comments:
In which I disagree with Steve M....
I'm not a gun owner - well, I do still have my granddad's old shotgun, but it hasn't been fired in over two decades and I'm not sure it'd even work. I admire Ms. Longdon's courage and myself support strict controls on firearms, a ban on assault weapons and a rewriting (via the constitutional mechanism) of the 2nd Amendment to better comport with modern society and weapons technology.
I also work and socialize with a lot gun owners, and by and large they're good people. If I had to generalize, I'd even say they tend to be slightly more trustworthy and likely to help in a pinch than a lot of other acquaintances who don't own guns.
I think that the same personality that's attracted to gun ownership is also attracted to the ideal of rugged individualism, and likely to expect an adult who puts him- or herself in the public eye as an advocate to take care of themselves when it comes to some harsh words or stupid pranks. Which isn't to say they condone these terrible acts, or wouldn't run to help if they saw Ms. Longdon in danger from a real physical attack. I hope.
At the bottom line - and I suspect this same feeling may be behind Ms. Longdon's statement - we're not going to get anywhere on gun reform if we make it personal, and villify gun owners as a group.
At the bottom line - and I suspect this same feeling may be behind Ms. Longdon's statement - we're not going to get anywhere on gun reform if we make it personal, and villify gun owners as a group.
That's a nice sentiment, but I've never known a gun owner to say or write anything about gun control advocates that didn't vilify us as a group. Never. Not once.
Maybe we should be civil, but it would be nice if civility were a two-way street.
Whatever do you mean "...we're not going to get anywhere on gun reform if we make it personal, and villify gun owners as a group."
The definition of personal means we are not vilifying gun owners as a group. Groups aren't personal. But the NRA corportists are working overtime to keep us seeing all gun owners as a group with one intent and to protect every gun owner with anonymity. Stalkers aren't wearing name tags. Responsible gun owners must realize that the onus is on them to differentiate from not gun thugs and not tolerate their behavior. Birds of a feather...
Self-regulation among gun owners doesn't seem to be happening.
>That's a nice sentiment, but I've never known a gun owner to say or write anything about gun control advocates that didn't vilify us as a group. Never. Not once.
>
I tried for a moment to think of a counterexample, but....point taken. But another way to look at it is that they're leaving us the high ground, for the taking. There is subset of voters who are put off by vulgar extremism, and more sympathetic to polite reasoning. Not a large subset maybe, but I don't see how gun control advances without its support. My hope is that eventually the hardcore gun nuts will be sufficiently marginalized that we can make the turn and say, "Hey, these guys are just nuts and they need to knock it off or go to jail." But in terms of popular opinion, we're not there right now.
> Self-regulation among gun owners doesn't seem to be happening.
>
Self regulation is widespread. But as a culture, gun owners are less likely than the average American to advise their fellows on a course of action.
Not an endorsement or defense of their worldview - file under "know thy opponent."
Did you miss that guys with assault rifles etc whipped into a Jack-In-The-Box in Texas last week to make a point about "Open Carry"...The only "point" made was that they terrified the public for a cheap thrill. Apparently the right to a gun nut's perverse thrills now exceeds the right not to be scared s**tless by possible mass killers with assault rifles.
"...gun owners are less likely than the average American to advise their fellows on a course of action." (mar925 above)
Their gun fellows maybe, but gun owners have certainly and emphatically "advised" me!
I have been berated because:
I will not acquiesce to the gun owners argument that I must protect myself with a gun. I have been told that I am prejudiced to the point of stupidity because I do not open mindedly "trust" all of them-gun owners-to act safely and responsibly.
"...The only "point" made was that they terrified the public for a cheap thrill. Apparently the right to a gun nut's perverse thrills now exceeds the right not to be scared s**tless by possible mass killers with assault rifles."
Doing that warmed the cockles of his tiny cock, he had his rage-gasm, and afterwards, he could return home - spent.
He had a cigarette, and went to sleep.
Such little men, wanting to be the BMOC.
Try that with me and I'll shoot you. One less ignorant white dog spoiling the world my grandchildren are growing up in. If that leaves me racist, so be it.
No fear, just contempt.
mtar925 said..
Bullshit, to all that you said upthread. If gun owners in this country weren't a wholly owned tool of the NRA and the gun manufacturers they would already have changed the debate about guns in this country and renounced most of the NRA's demands about guns. We would have a gun registration and licensing system comperable to that which we have for cars. We would have strict gun laws preventing the private ownership, open and concealed carry, for felons, people with domestic violence complaints, people with young children or teenagers in the home, people who can't pass a test for mental acumen, people suffering from various mental diseases.
The is that your imaginary "good gun owners" are the same people who protest any attempt to make guns less likely to fall into the hands of criminals and idiots. They are the same people who flooded the political airwaves when, after Newtowne, there was a minimal pushback on the private ownership of tools of mass murder.
There is literally no logical or moral reason why any American citizen should own any gun not used on a regular basis for hunting or any of the automatic and semi automatic weapons that gun nuts now fetishize. None. And any gun owner who supports the NRA in the quest to arm all of America should hang their head in shame and be shamed by the public for joining with mass murderers, anti-government lunatics, and these asshole limp dicked, losers who parade their insecurities behind their guns while attacking women, children, and the parents of murdered children.
Also: please fuck off with your baseless assertion that gun owners are any more moral, or helpful, or independent than the rest of the country--the majority of whom have come to adulthood, raised their children, fought for our liberties and contributed to society without ever having to clutch a gun to do it.
Aimai,
My own personal experience with gun owners -- and I have quite a few as friends -- is that NRA members run about 20-25% of the entire population. I think I can add maybe another 5% of friends who lean towards the NRA position on many issues but stake out an independent position on others.
That leaves about 70% who own guns for a limited set of reasons:
1) Protection -- they live in rural areas where the nearest cop or animal control agent is a good half hour to hour away, and thus are regularly visited by animals you or I would consider dangerous. Even then, most of my friends would hesitate to yank out a rifle or shotgun and confront a bear or cougar.
2) Hunting -- again, often its cheaper and even environmentally conscientious, to kill a deer or two at the appropriate season.
3) Professional reasons -- if you are a cop or even an ex-cop, there are people who will target you for killing. They could be people you've arrested and have served time, people you are investigating, or any number of folks who will shoot first and deal with the problem later. Or the guns belong to doctors whose offices and homes are regularly burgled in the event they may have a stash of prescription drugs lying around.
These folks, who are for the large part sane and rational folks who would prefer not to have a gun around but feel it's a need, these are what I would consider "good guys with guns," but that's a far cry from La Pierre's model, I'm sure.
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