Over at guns.com, writer S.H. Blannelberry engaged in an exclusive email exchange with John Feinblatt, the new public face of the [relatively] new gun control group known as Everytown for Gun Safety. While the format of the “interview” gave Mr. Feinblatt ample, unchallenged opportunity to do what antis do – obfuscate, change the subject, ignore the question, deploy bogus statistics, wave the bloody shirt, mischaracterize the opposition’s position, etc. – it’s still interesting to see how civilian disarmament advocates roll. Wait. Did I say disarmament? That’s libel! Because Everytown doesn’t want to take your guns. Here’s the Everytown president’s big lie statement on that key point . . .
We don’t want to take your guns! With rights come responsibilities, and most gun owners agree that kids and felons should not have access to guns. We want to reduce senseless and preventable gun deaths across the country by keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people. Too many innocent Americans – men, women and in too many cases children, are being needlessly murdered with guns every day in their homes, their offices, their places of worship, and their schools. Just this week we released a report that shows there have been 100 unintentional child gun deaths over the course of one year, and 70 percent of those could have been prevented with safe storage.
Everytown’s Trojan horse approach to gun control depends on a simple rhetorical trick. When they say “we don’t want to take your guns” they’re saying they don’t want to take your guns. They want to take the guns of “kids and felons” and “dangerous people.” And who, exactly, is a “dangerous person”?
Back when Everytown was Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the gun control group argued that all Americans on the Department of Homeland Security’s Kafkaesque “no-fly” list should be banned from purchasing firearms. That would be the same list a federal court recently struck down as unconstitutional for denying Americans due process. So MAIG/MDAGSA/Everytown is happy to deny Americans their gun rights without due process.
Despite Feinblatt’s reassuring tut-tutting, Everytown’s definition of a “dangerous person” could easily put you – yes you! – in the frame for gun confiscation.
Accused (and only accused) domestic abuser? We want to take your guns! Committed a non-violent felony? We want to take your guns! Called a danger by a member of your immediate family? We want to take your guns! Don’t feel like you have to lock up all your guns because your kids are responsible? We want to take your guns! Hurricane emergency? We want to take your guns!
And that’s just what they admit now. At some future point, Everytown and its political beneficiaries may decide that the NRA is a terrorist organization (say, if a spree killing were somehow tied to the gun rights group). We want to take your guns! Or that owners of “assault weapons” are dangerous persons. We want to take your guns! Militia member (portrayed as insurrectionists)? We want to take your guns! Etc.
Just like most gun owners exercise responsibility when handling and storing guns, many support common sense measures to reduce gun violence. These solutions, something as simple as a background check, can reduce shootings and enhance everyone’s personal safety and security without infringing on the Second Amendment. If you are a proud gun owner and tired of daily reports of needless killing by criminals misusing guns, then please join us as we fight to reduce gun violence. We’re on the same side.
Well there’s a bunch of bullshit if ever I’ve read it. Americans who cherish their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms are “on the same side” as Everytown for Gun Safety in the same sense that the National Socialist Party was on the same side as German Jewish veterans of World War I.
The fact that Feinblatt made the comment to guns.com – a pro-2a site – tells you just how dangerous Everytown is. Would I deny Feinblatt his gun rights? Of course not. But make no mistake about it: he would deny mine. And yours.