Bill Banning Del Mar Gun Shows Moves Forward; More of the NRA’s Depravity Revealed
It’s been a bad week for the gun lobby in California, nationally, and even internationally. Thirty five years worth of expositions in San Diego County are under the gun. And a series of gob-smacking scandals have the National Rifle Association reeling.
A Sacramento effort led by Democratic Assembly members Todd Gloria (San Diego) and and Tasha Boerner Horvath (Encinitas) prohibiting the sale of guns and ammunition at the Del Mar Fairgrounds cleared a significant hurdle this week, garnering approval by Assembly’s Public Safety Committee.
The committee vote was 5-2, with Republicans Tyler Diep (Orange County) and Tom Lackey (Palmdale) opposing AB 893.
More than a dozen San Diegans traveled to the Capitol to urge the committee support the measure. Opposing the bill were the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of California, and the California Rifle and Pistol Association.
AB 893, if signed into law, would prohibit gun and ammo sales at the Fairgrounds starting in 2021.
Protests aimed at the Crossroads of the West gun show by the Del Mar-based NeverAgainCa, were among the factors leading to decision by the 22nd District Agricultural Association board overseeing activities at the state-owned venue to suspend the five times a year expositions starting in January, 2019.
Board President Steven Shewmaker talked about attending a Crossroads event, saying he’d seen automatic weapons kits and crates of ammunition being sold, along with hollow-point and armor-piercing bullets for sale.
“I don’t know if that’s illegal, but it’s wrong,” he said. Hollow-point bullets are designed to expand rapidly when they hit flesh, causing more serious wounds, and armor-piercing rounds will penetrate a police officer’s vest.
No new gun-show contracts will be approved until the board decides whether to adopt a proposed new policy allowing events only “for only education and training safety purposes and bans the possession of guns and ammunition on state property,” along with alignments of recent changes in state and federal law, an enhanced security plan, a new safety plan, consideration of age appropriateness, and an audit to ensure compliance with state law.
From the Union-Tribune
The fair board staff has until the directors meet in December 2019 to develop the policy and present it to the board.
Crossroads also operates the gun shows at numerous other large venues in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah.
Crossroads owner Bob Templeton and his son, Jeff Templeton, both have past felony convictions for federal firearms violations that prevent them from operating the shows. To avoid that, Bob Templeton has ceded control of the show to his daughter, Tracy Olcott, who has no record.
The operator of the Crossroads of the West Gun show filed a federal lawsuit against the Del Mar Fairgrounds in January, alleging first amendment violations. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction, plus compensation for loss of business.
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It would appear as though the National Rifle Association’s bad karma is catching up with it.
The father of one of the children killed in at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, and two survivors of last year’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have committed suicide over the past week or so.
While these deaths may have been caused by survivor’s guilt/PTSD, it’s also true that those persons near to such shootings have been continuously targeted for harassment and sometimes even death threats by conspiracy theorists.
The survivors of those tragic events have also been at the forefront of calling for gun law reforms, which have led to them being disparaged in the media by National Rifle Association spokespersons.
And now we know there may be connection between the two groups.
The families of four children and two educators killed at Sandy Hook are suing some of those plot mongers, and have prevailed in gaining access to documents via discovery from Alex Jones’ InfoWars.
The first revelation coming out of those documents concerns communication between an NRA official and one of those Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists following the Parkland, Florida shooting.
The evidence came via emails discovered by Brooke Binkowski, managing editor for truthorfiction.com, while working as a consultant to the attorneys of one of the Sandy Hook parents.
From HuffPost:
NRA officer Mark Richardson emailed Wolfgang Halbig, a noted harasser of parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, to float a conspiracy theory about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed last year.
“Just like [Sandy Hook], there is so much more to this story,” Richardson said in an email dated Feb. 15, 2018 ― just one day after the Florida shooting. Twenty children and six adults were killed during the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. “[The Parkland shooter] was not alone.” The email was sent from his official NRA email address.
How to spin a mass shoot for fun and profit, via an Al Jazeera investigation in Australia.
The NRA's playbook on mass shootings came to light during the course of a three-year undercover sting by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit. Rodger Muller, an Australian undercover reporter who infiltrated the gun lobbies in the US and Australia, used a hidden camera to record a series of meetings between representatives of the NRA and One Nation in Washington, DC in September last year.
The secretly filmed footage provides a rare inside view of how the NRA deliberates over mass shootings and seeks to manipulate media coverage to push its pro-gun agenda.
Australia's One Nation party, led by Senator Pauline Hanson, has long sought to relax the country's gun laws, which ban almost all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.
In a secret recording, two One Nation officials -- Chief of Staff James Ashby and Queensland party boss Steve Dickson -- sought up to $20 million from the NRA's US supporters to fund their gun lobbying in Australia.
But, wait! It gets even worse, via Boing Boing:
The NRA also boasted about the viral "self-defense" videos they posted to social media.
The real meat of the meeting started when One Nation's Dickson asked for advice on spinning his belief that "African gangs" were "coming into the house with baseball bats to steal your car" and the NRA's Dalseide replied that "Every time there's a story there about the African gangs coming in with baseball bats, a little thing you can put out there, maybe at the top of a tweet or Facebook post or whatever, like with 'not allowed to defend their home', 'not allowed to defend their home'. Boom."
Racism and gun control… just like two peas in a pod.
https://twitter.com/SenGillibrand/status/1111024866914914306
The road from racism to misogyny is a short one for these reactionary types, and it should surprise nobody that the NRA is on board with opposing the latest version of the Violence Against Women Act.
Via Rolling Stone:
The National Rifle Association is preparing to punish lawmakers for voting to protect women from their stalkers and domestic abusers. The gun lobby announced this week that it will dock its grades for politicians who vote to renew the Violence Against Women Act. The legislation, first passed in 1994, is up for reauthorization this session — augmented by a provision that could give law enforcement officials the power to confiscate guns from men who hurt or menace women.
NRA spokesperson Jennifer Baker told the National Journal that this “red-flag” provision — intended to protect women against gun violence from men who are exhibiting violent or dangerous behaviors — is an unacceptable encroachment on individual gun ownership rights.
Mark Follman, writing at Mother Jones—Why the National Rifle Association Is Under Fire Like Never Before-- whips up a damning list of the organization’s woes:
Nine Democratic senators recently called for the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether the gun group illegally coordinated political advertising with several Republican Senate candidates and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The NRA’s tax-exempt status is drawing scrutiny from regulators in New York, whose new attorney general remarked last October that the NRA isn’t an authentic charitable organization but “a terrorist organization.”
A steady barrage of acrid political commentary from NRA national spokeswoman Dana Loesch and other NRA media figures has stirred a backlash among the organization’s own ranks and reportedly provoked concerns even for LaPierre.
There are signs of financial woes, if not for NRA executives. These troubles come as the NRA faces rising opposition from advocacy groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords.org, leaders of a national gun-reform movement ignited by the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre and further energized by the teen survivors of last year’s mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida...
The NRA-Russia connection is now a subject of at least five congressional investigations looking into the gun group’s finances and leadership, including a sweeping House Judiciary Committee probe launched earlier this month.
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Finally, quote du jour:
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1111279317303132160
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