{"id":48289,"date":"2014-10-21T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48289"},"modified":"2014-10-21T11:10:53","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T16:10:53","slug":"undercover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48289","title":{"rendered":"Undercover"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Yesterday, Gabby Giffords came to town.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You’d only know it from the media, naturally.\u00a0 When “Everytown” scheduled Rep. Giffords’ appearance, they made a point to keep the location secret, and to only invite media that could be trusted to report the event exactly the way Michael Bloomberg was paying for it to be reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n

GOCRA sent out a press release:<\/p>\n

Gun control advocate Gabrielle Giffords will\u00a0[met] secretly [yesterday] with politicians, inviting only the press, while excluding the public, especially any dissenting voices.<\/p>\n

The press event was announced to news outlets only [yesterday] morning. This is a common tactic from gun control groups, which enjoy lavish funding but little popular support.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I get it; Bloomberg and “Everytown” want to control the media environment around Rep. Giffords.\u00a0 They want absolute control over how Giffords is presented, so that her message <\/a>isn’t diluted by any inconvenient dissent.\u00a0 It’s standard PR optics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s the point where optics meets reality that is always a problem for the Orcs:<\/p>\n

“When an event is announced in advance, gun rights supporters outnumber gun controllers, 20 to one,” according to Professor Joseph E. Olson, who founded GOCRA 25 years ago. He pointed to gun control hearings in 2013 and 2014, where Second Amendment supporters in maroon shirts flooded the state capitol. “Our legislature is not for sale. Why is Gabby trying to buy it?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, clearly part of\u00a0 our legislature is <\/em>for sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

GOCRA President Andrew Rothman agreed. “Gun control in Minnesota has always been driven by out-of-state interests,” he said. “For years, it was the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation that funded gun control efforts in Minnesota. More recently, New York City’s billionaire former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has bankrolled gun control lobbyists. Follow the money.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m just into my third decade of observing the irony of the fact that the Democrat party is, and has always been, about waving the bloody shirt of class warfare – and yet on the gun issue, it is they who have always been on the side of the patricians, against the unruly plebeians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And those plebeians must be kept out of the public eye at all costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Yesterday, Gabby Giffords came to town.\u00a0 You’d only know it from the media, naturally.\u00a0 When “Everytown” scheduled Rep. Giffords’ appearance, they made a point to keep the location secret, and to only invite media that could be trusted to report the event exactly the way Michael Bloomberg was paying for it to be reported.\u00a0 GOCRA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grass-roots","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48289"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48304,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48289\/revisions\/48304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}