You may remember that we ran a piece a couple days ago where a member of the Hudson, New York common council, Dave Marston, heaped abuse on Johanna Johnson-Smith for daring to show up at a council legal committee meeting in opposition to a proposed gun control law. The specific terms he used for gun owners and Second Amendment supporters were “radical lunatics” and “gun toting Tea Party psychotards.” Marston ended his poison pen email by inviting Ms. Johnson-Smith to attend the next meeting of the council’s legal committee, vowing that “we’ll be happy to beat you barbarians back with the clubs of reason & responsibility.” So Ms. Johnson-Smith took Councilman Marston up on his offer and she invited a few friends to come along. The Gateway Pundit has the scoop . . .
On February 27 the Committee was forced to change their regular meeting from Hudson City Hall to the Central Fire Station main room to accommodate the larger than normal crowd expected to oppose the measure.
But even that was too small and attendees dragged their chairs, if they’d been fortunate enough to get one, into the firehouse truck bay after the engines were moved out.
The crowd was massive, opinionated, and dead set against the proposed law banning guns on city property. Things were not looking good for the committee members. In an attempt to limit the tongue lashing they were about to receive, they tried to limit discussion to 10 minutes for that topic. Even then, the proceedings appeared to be more stressful than intended for the committee members.
Committee President Moore said the group was upset at being confronted by such a large and angry crowd who were obviously “against us” and stressed the committee was not trying to “do anything sneaky.”
Here’s some free advice to politicians and legislators who are considering imposing laws that restrict the civil rights of their fellow citizens: be prepared for a massive public backlash. Those who favor more gun control laws might appear significant in polls, but when it gets right down to it, most of them they don’t really care. Gun rights advocates, on the other hand, are rabid defenders of their civil rights. As all Americans should be. And when provoked, they are a force to be reckoned with.
Oh, and Councilman Marston? He appears to have changed his tune a little:
Before the crowd of hundreds of infuriated gun rights activists Marston told a different story. He apologized, saying he had drafted his response to her in “the heat of the moment” and he acknowledged the email had been inappropriate. “I let my lesser self get the better of me,” he said.
As one commenter on the article put it: “No that was not his lesser self, that was his true self.”