By David Codrea
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “As a gun violence survivor, I feel betrayed by Everytown,” Kate Ranta complained in The Huffington Post, objecting to the gun-grabbing group’s sponsorship of the Fraternal Order of Police conference. “Everytown volunteers like me are now leaving the organization in droves, disgusted that our leadership would partner with an organization that has been a steadfast ally of the National Rifle Association and defender of racially-motivated police brutality. “
While it’s nice to know there’s trouble in paradise, it would be helpful if Ranta could quantify the term “droves.” Based on the pathetic numbers Everytown subsidiary Moms Demand Action manages to muster at NRA Annual Meetings, they don’t have that many “members” to lose. But give her credit — she did a slick job establishing a logical fallacy there, the one that conflates NRA as an ally with racists, right underneath a photo of Donald Trump.
Finding political common ground aside (NRA has a substantial Law Enforcement Division), the two groups have plenty of differences, and FOP has had a mixed record on citizen disarmament going back at least to the Handgun Control, Inc. days. They’ll also on occasion share interests, as when FOP joined ATF in opposing the release of trace data. Using Ranta’s “logic,” ATF must not be anti-gun enough, which kind of gives you an idea of infringements she’d like to see.
Here’s what’s not enough for her:
“Our laws right now definitely don’t protect women and children. When I was granted a restraining order against my estranged husband, police seized handguns and shotguns from the house. A judge arrested him in court for violating that restraining order. He was booked, a mug shot was taken, so he had a record. How was he able to obtain the gun he used to shoot us? Where was the protection for us?”
What more is there, besides a total ban for everyone? I mean, it’s not like some people might take responsibility for protecting themselves.
But Ranta has more talking points to parrot:
“I’ve never been a fan of guns. I didn’t grow up with guns in the house. I’ve never understood America’s fascination with and vehement defense of guns. I don’t understand the gun lobby, and 2nd Amendment supporters who believe that by passing gun control laws that make sense and properly protect people, the government is coming to take people’s guns away. That just makes no sense at all. Nor does the ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ mantra or ‘the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’ rhetoric. Those are sound bites from a gun lobby that makes a lot of money by keeping people in fear that their guns will be confiscated.”
In other words, she admits she’s ignorant about people who reject having their choices taken away and who refuse to be victims. She knows first-hand that those “laws that make sense” don’t protect. Despite ridiculing confiscation fears, she saw government seize guns from her ex (without full due process), and even that wasn’t enough. And there was no “good guy with a gun” to protect her, because as she admitted, she grew up in a gun-free home and her defenseless father was unable to do anything but get shot along with her.
This isn’t so much being unsympathetic as wondering how much wrong a person can go around spouting without realizing they contradict everything they say practically every time they try to make another point. In a way, it’s understandable that such a horrible experience would produce an overwhelmingly emotional response, and the natural human reaction is to feel sympathy and to want to help.
In that spirit, here’s hoping the reality that police can never be there in time to protect her sinks in, and she accepts that she is the primary person responsible for defending herself and her young son. Here’s hoping she admits the fact that there are tools that can help with that, and that she gets the training to keep and bear them competently. And perhaps it will also occur to her that the abuser who shot her had his guns confiscated and that still didn’t work – and there is no “next step” after that.
And let’s hope she considers the implications of her own words:
“For too long, gun control groups like Everytown have implemented top-down organizational models that treat gun violence prevention advocates like servants and gun violence survivors like fundraising fodder, giving us little or no say in our own advocacy. That must end now.”
It won’t, Ms. Ranta. Bloomberg’s money, Bloomberg’s show. He’s the one who approved the hirelings at national and set up individual nonprofit filings with state attorneys general throughout the land, and those were all ultimately plugged into a handful of his New York apparatchiks. Plus, come on: the guy wants to control salt and sodas, too—you didn’t realize he’s a control freak?
That should provide gun owner rights advocates at least a ray of hope, because we’ve seen the Moms Demand faction getting more and more chummy with radicals. Add in Shannon Watts setting herself up to carpetbag her way into a Colorado Congressional seat, and we may see more schisms develop and a “feminist” rebellion against the Bloomberg “patriarchy.”
On the plus side for Everytown, they won’t have to issue any refunds for “members” who jump ship. Still, one unanswered question remains:
If you really believe “racially-motivated police brutality” is widespread and systemic, why would you ultimately want the police to be the “only ones” with guns?
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.