Gun Nuts Media

If someone is not a convicted felon or hasn’t been found to be a danger to themselves due to mental illness and they believe they can handle a firearm, we support their right to purchase one.”

That’s an awesome quote, coming from this article. It’s great to see that people are supporting the rights of disabled Americans to own firearms.

What makes it more awesome is that the above quote isn’t from the NRA, it’s not from a hunting organization – it’s from Peter Hamm of The Brady Campaign, America’s most irrelevant lobbying organization. Think about this for a minute: the Brady Campaign, which once pushed for a nationwide gun ban, has now lost so much ground on the national scene that they’re forced to debate (and lose to) amateurs, and issue statements in the media supporting the right to keep and bear arms!

I don’t know about you, but for Christmas I’m getting Paul Helmke a bottle of Wild Turkey, and a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I just wrapped up my 5 minutes on Fox News this morning, and I wanted to post the clip here so you could get a look at it.  The segment is about 5 minutes long, and it was a very fast five minutes.  The key points to remember is that the HTO’s database is exactly like a sex offender database in it’s intent, inasmuch as it’s profiling people as a public safety risk.  The difference is that sex offenders are a public safety risk, whereas law abiding citizens exercising their freedom of personal decision and right to keep and bear arms are clearly not. Here’s the video, with my comments on the other side.

Due to the format, I didn’t have the time I would have loved to really respond to some of Dennis’ assertions, namely his last point about how “500 gun owners in Indiana” have been identified as having “criminal backgrounds.” Two salient points to address that, 1) there are over 360,000 permit holders in Indiana – those “500 gun owners” account for 0.13% of that number. Secondly, those “criminal backgrounds” that Dennis is alluding to are in most cases things like minor intoxication tickets, traffic violations, and non violent crimes. Convicted felons, violent criminals, and people that are barred from owning handguns are not getting carry permits.

The bottom line is that this database, any database of carry permit holders is a massive invasion of privacy. It characterizes gun owners like sex offenders or criminals waiting to happen, and exposes people with a need for privacy to the risk of criminal activity, stalking, or other crimes.