TTAG reader SIGCDR took Southwest’s No. 1 to task recently for his characterization of guns (well, gun taxes, to be more specific) in an article written for the airline’s back-of-the-seat time-waster. Kelly, like anyone responsible for maximizing shareholder value, opposes whatever increases his operation’s costs and thus, his product’s demand. So while pumping a national airline industrial policy (which he hopes would lead to reducing – or at least not raising – “punitive” ticket taxes and improving the air traffic control system), he lumped the excise tax charged on firearms into the same class as those levied on booze and smokes, calling them “sin taxes.” Mr. Kelly apparently felt the sting of SIGC’DRs rapier keyboard strokes and has responded via someone in Southwest’s communication shop. We reprint his email in its entirety after the jump . . .
Mr. Farago,
I work in the Communication Department at Southwest Airlines, and our CEO Gary Kelly asked me to respond to you on his behalf regarding your recent blog post that included an excerpt from one of his recent columns featured in our onboard magazine, Spirit. The primary focus of the column was on his support for an Airline Industry Policy, as well as his new role as Chairman of the A4A Board.Any misrepresentation contained in the column was unfortunate and certainly unintentional. I wanted to extend our apologies to anyone who may have been offended by the word choice.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly if needed.
Have a great day,
Todd
That’s actually a good response, all things considered. He didn’t mean to jump into the firearms fray, and just wants out. I wouldn’t boycott Southwest or anything. There’s plenty of other reasons to be angry at airlines (where else would you pay that kind of money to be treated like herded cattle?).
That is what we call backpedaling which shows people are thinking twice about messing with people who support the 2A.
That’s a stand up thing to do.
I thought Frank died years ago, but I guess that was only his brain. What an enemy of the state and our Constitution.
The original “offending” passage was
Gary Kelly has nothing to apologize for.
While it may have been technically wrong to label excise taxes as a “sin tax”, it was not in any way a malicious attack on gun owners or gun ownership.
I think that gun rights activists are so used to looking for the slightest thing to get offended about, in order to feed their addiction to self-righteous indignation, that they are too willing to get their panties in a bunch simply because they enjoy it.
Let’s focuse our attention and efforts on our real enemies. There are enough of them out there that we don’t have to invent more.
PS: The more I think about it, the more I believe that Robert Farago owes Gary Kelly an apology.
Kelly is absolutely right that “sin taxes” are designed to discourage use; that’s what existing and proposed fees and regulations for gun owners are. Several readers have compared gun controls to the “poll tax” that was nominally a revenue generating mechanism for governments, but was really intended to disenfranchise African-Americans, Native-Americans, and poor people from exercising their right to vote.
Getting married is like a time bomb, its the number one cause of divorce. I wont be setting that timer ever again.
Retired or not, he is not coming off of my “Liberals I Wish Were Dead” List.
I would understand offense at subtle negligence if he called firearm taxes “sin taxes”, even in the context of an entirely different topic, but he did use the term “so-called”, and put “sin taxes” in quotes.
Ummmm, what? Where did this come from to begin with?
This guy is funny. To reduce suicide you are supposed to leave yourself defenseless by not having a gun? Oh yeah, thats a plan. Can’t wait to see whats next, Randy
This is actually more helpful than simple farce showing the common misconception of the spirit of the 2A. It is a good way to illustrate that the mention of a militia in the (real) 2A does not constrain the RKBA to militia members. The fact that A and B are not exclusive shows that the militia clause need not constrain the application of the right to keep and bear arms.
Moreover, I’ve always tried to argue that the 2A gives pretty clear guidance that we will not long remain free without a militia. Pointing that out can have a chilling effect on a reasonable debate opponent who is trying to argue that the 2A applies only to the militia. It’s fun to say, “Thanks for bringing up the militia. Not only is the militia clause not restrictive in the application of the RKBA; our constitution reckons we must have a militia as a prerequisite to freedom. Shall we get started and form one?”
Dorner was psychotic, easy to identify, alone and had an entire state/nation after him. I thought he did pretty good lasting as long as he did although I do not condone his killings and am getting pretty sick of Dorner being compared to all of us gun enthusiasts. Dorner was a god sent for liberal media, it helped kept the anti-gun debate going and fresh in everyone’s mind while at the same time the media projected Dorner as one of us.
But when a group, small or large, of well trained and prepared folks decide to take on the law or whoever, the outcome will be nothing like this. Just think if only a few more Dorner’s came out of the woodwork and began their campaign while Dorner was on the run, it would of changed the outcome greatly. Isolating a single man to a specific region who wishes to be killed anyway really isn’t a good example of how fighting tyranny is impossible, it’s a good example of how people like Dorner who wish to die will go out. This wasn’t some epic battle, it was a murderer who snapped because life shafted him and the largest and most militarized law enforcement agency declared war on him. Who honestly thought he had any change of surviving more then a week?
Most of us are not like Dorner. Even though the media and law made it out that he was some special forces guy, which he was not, he guarded ports for some time and saw no action, they still attempted and succeeded to some degree, to make it look as if we all support this type of behavior.
Liberal media and politicians love people like Dorner.
The real sad thing, Dorner was actually a good person until the LAPD incident. He once found and returned $8,000 in cash he found in a bag. Who of us would even do this? When asked why he said the military and his mother taught him honesty and integrity. And now the media and others are bashing his mother for his actions.
They used Dorner the same way they used all those innocent dead children from Newtown. We are dealing with some very sick people who want to disarm us all.
Never going to go back to them, because of their self-imposed ban on firearm sales.
Too bad too, they had some things I had trouble finding elsewhere. But I told them I’d never return, and I aim to stand by it.
“What’s the motto, ladies?!”
“From our cold, dead hands!”