Gun Politics New York

Huffington Post has an interesting story on their site, “The Real Reason One Side Seems Louder in the Debate About Gun Violence,”

“… The fact that a large number of “grassroots” gun control organizations have suddenly sprung into existence doesn’t necessarily mean that the country is more or less supportive of gun restrictions versus gun rights than it was twenty years ago.  There’s simply no way to compare the noise levels from one communication environment to the other.  What we can compare is the volume of pro-gun versus anti-gun sentiment through an analysis of social media to get some idea of which side might be outshouting the other … The Facebook connections made by gun people are so much higher than the anti-gun Facebook connections that we appear to be playing in different arenas … Guns are a lot more important to people who own them than to people who don’t … An organization called Moms Rising recently brought five groups together on their blog to issue statements about gun violence, including the Children’s Defense Fund … Together the Facebook pages of these five groups total slightly more than 100,000 supporters and this number probably represents numerous duplicates.  The NRA is just shy of 2.5 million.  That’s a joke, and not a funny joke …”

Considering the crap HuffPo is known for publishing this is a halfway decent analysis.  What the author fails to really address is the level of commitment.  It takes no effort to simply like a page or follow a feed.  Our side follows through by acting upon what they read on social media sites, either by contacting their elected officials, writing letters to the editor, making donations or deciding who to vote for.  Antigunners don’t do any of that.  Author Mike Weisser acknowledges that “… in the age of digital communication it doesn’t take much to secure a presence in the public debate …”  This is true.  Weisser now just needs to go the extra step and admit the fraudulent nature of the gun control movement.

Another bunch of State Senators were on the receiving of a protest by people upset with their SAFE votes yesterday.  As Capitol Tonight reports:

“The power of the SAFE Act backlash has not diminished over time … A trio of senators got a rude awakening to the organizing abilities of the anti-SAFE Act movement during an event held in Buffalo yesterday afternoon.  Senate Co-Leaders Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein traveled to Western New York to attend a policy event hosted by Sen. Mark Grisanti in the afternoon, and then headline a fund-raiser for the Buffalo Republican in the evening.  The afternoon event was supposed to focus on efforts in the Senate to help unemployed veterans, but it was hijacked by angry anti-SAFE Act protestors, who shouted down the senators when they tried – largely in vain – to stick to the scheduled program …”

This is the second protest this month of Senators who voted in favor of the SAFE Act.

Much has been made recently about Mayor Bloomberg using City funds for his antigun initiatives (see here and here).

Of course, he isn’t the only one.  The Clown Council approved a $30,000 line item on page 4 in the FY2014 budget for New Yorkers Against Gun Violence with the money directed towards, “Anti-gun violence services related to employment training, job and internship placements, program development and evaluation, and organizational capacity building.”