News from the Plains: All this RED can make you BLUE
Armed and Shameless
by Barry Friedman
There was a gun show in Tulsa over the weekend (there are gun shows in Tulsa every weekend) in which the buying and selling of firearms was (and is) only part of the festivities.
Come for the AR-15s; stay for the paranoia.
John Heald of Tulsa, who said he has been regularly attending the show since about 1999, recalled on Saturday that the atmosphere at the November 2008 version of the show was “absolutely hysterical” as gun enthusiasts were eager to buy firearms and ammunition before Obama was sworn in as president.
Really,
enthusiasts? Yeah, I suppose that's one way to describe those who think an automatic weapon is needed to shoot
ducks.
Before going any further, though, a word about David Harper's opening in the Tulsa World.
The Second Amendment is alive and well this weekend at the River Spirit Expo.
No.
The bastardization and mutation of the Second Amendment was alive and well, the comma splice was alive and well. And since when, David, did the NRA start writing your ledes?
We continue.
“President (Barack) Obama is the best gun salesman we’ve ever had,” Wanenmacher said Saturday.
And there we have it. That's why people attend, that's why there are so many carrying weapons and wearing camouflage and waiting to unleash their vitriol over Obama to the first reporter who comes along.
The president is the piñata at these things and nobody's wearing a blindfold.
Wanenmacher remembered that last November’s show, held just days after Obama had been re-elected, had a similar atmosphere amidst the uncertainty about what would happen during his second term.
An uncertainty ginned up by your relentless mischaracterizations and lies about the administration's policy on
guns.
"Obama is leading our country straight to the dependence, lawlessness, unchecked government power -- and the tyranny it invariably leads to -- from which our Founding Fathers fled."
For the love of hyperbole, you're really going to equate attempts to close the gun show loophole with our Founding Fathers cobbling together a new country?
Henry said those two elections “put everyone in a panic. It’s better now, but it’s still not back to normal."
Yes, everyone is in a panic, it should be noted, except the majority of Americans who voted for Obama ...
twice. Could there be something else at play, then, some--you should pardon the expression--dark force hovering over us? Don't even think about answering that. As my dear friend Charles Pierce of
Esquire writes about
Obama and
perception...
"It is Not About Race because It Is Never About Race."
And on this subject, even people who don't agree with Pierce, agree with Pierce.
He’s shaded awfully. I think the shading is rather dramatic on the side of his face,” Scarborough said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe. It just seems patently obvious what they’re doing,” Scarborough added.
It's not about race because it's never about race.
Zombie Industries, a company that sells life-sized targets that bleed when shot, took down the Obama-esque mannequin after having it on display for two days.
It's not about race because it's never about race.
What happened after President Bush resigned from the NRA and wrote...
I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as "jack-booted thugs." To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as "wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms" wanting to "attack law abiding citizens" is a vicious slander on good people?
Wanenmacher didn't talk about how great President Bush was for business, Heald wasn't hysterical, LaPierre wasn't worried about tyranny, Henry wasn't in a panic.
What happened after President Reagan said ...
"I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth or home defense. But I do believe an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon nor needed for home defense"?
Wanenmacher didn't talk about how great President Reagan was for business, Heald wasn't hysterical, LaPierre wasn't worried about tyranny, Henry wasn't in a panic.
And newspaper reporters didn't write about the Second Amendment being "alive and well" in spite of the efforts of Bush and Reagan to gut it.
It's not about race because it's never about race.
Two more things:
Samantha Kane said Saturday that after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings — in which 26 people, including 20 first-graders, were killed last December in Connecticut — ”people were scared that everything could be taken away.”
First graders, FIRST GRADERS, were shot, often multiple times to make sure they were dead, but this is what Kane (and would it be a stretch to conclude what the majority of those attending) is scared of--that some federal agent will come for the Glock squirreled under the bed, that the ATF will limit the number of rounds per clip.
Those in Newtown lost everything--their souls, their teachers, their friends, their futures ... their children. People like Kane don't just miss the irony when complaining abut their loss--they miss the humanity.
This, too--on that gun show business.
Sabine Brown, the Oklahoma Chapter Leader of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, went to this weekend's show.
I went to this with my father-in-law today because I was curious. I picked up an M4 at one of the tables and asked the seller what the background check process was if I wanted to buy it. He shrugged his shoulders and answered, "Nothing...little bit of cash."
Sabine is the mother of two. Her son will start first grade next year.