PA Bill Number: HB335

Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.

Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...

Last Action: Removed from table

Last Action Date: May 1, 2024

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Nothing better to do? Attack a gun rights organization :: 01/23/2015

Television sports commentator and former Today show host Bryant Gumbel is back in the news, thanks to comments he made in an interview published Tuesday in Rolling Stone; a story quickly picked up yesterday by Newsmax, in which he referred to the National Rifle Association as “pigs.”

Gumbel, commenting on his reporting last year about the “Eat What You Kill” movement, told Rolling Stone, “There are a few things I hate more than the NRA. I mean truly. I think they're pigs. I think they don't care about human life. I think they are a curse upon the American landscape. So we got that on the record.

“That said,” Gumbel continued, “I'm willing to separate that this story had nothing to do with that. It's not a gun story. So I would like to think that I would have done it, but I don't know. Obviously, that was my first experience around killing and guns and hunting.”

Apparently, Gumbel must be a vegetarian. Otherwise, he simply kills those steaks and drumsticks, hot dogs and hamburgers by proxy, paying for the deed at the meat market or restaurant.

Gumbel has engaged in one of the oldest games of all, demonizing someone you don’t like. There is likely to be some chatter about that today in Las Vegas, where Day Three of the 2015 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show is unfolding at the Sands Convention Center. The NRA is here with a full crew, including Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

Also in the crowd is Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. He’s lately come under attack, too, over his reaction to an incident that occurred one week ago today in Olympia.

About 12-15 open carry activists, standing atop the Capitol steps during a “Rally for your Rights” to protest the problems with Initiative 594, strolled inside, carrying and exchanging rifles in the House gallery. The result of that action has been a ban on open carry in both the Senate and House chambers, which is being discussed today by Seattle Times readers.

Gottlieb had the temerity to call the gun-toters “stupid extremists on our side who not only handled their firearms unsafely, but made hundreds of Second Amendment supporters at the rally look foolish.” Several observers at the rally have complained in the days since about poor firearms handling, up to and including being “swept” by muzzles. In the firearms community, that’s an egregious foul.

NRA and Gottlieb appear to have much in common this week. They’re taking flack, but as one fellow visiting the SAF booth observed, “If you’re not taking flack, you’re not over the target.”

Yet, to see all the people visiting both the NRA and SAF exhibits, one might conclude the critics are in a very small, if vocal, minority. After all, according to a report at the website of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), it appears that what NRA’s LaPierre and SAF’s Gottlieb have been saying for years about gun registration laws has been correct.

Kurt Hofmann, who also writes for Examiner.com, published a report yesterday about the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission in Connecticut. That was the brainchild of anti-gun Gov. Dannel P. Malloy a few weeks after the December 2012 tragedy.

Quoting the Associated Press, Hofmann noted that — predictably, one might conclude — the panel recommended a ban on the sale and possession of “any gun that can fire more than 10 rounds without reloading.” This appears to cover just about any firearm with a detachable magazine that’s ever been made, in any caliber. There are replacement magazines — the SHOT Show exhibit hall is full of them — that will hold 12, 15, 20, 25 and 30 or more rounds for various handguns and rifles.

Indeed, the exhibit hall is full of guns that can accept these magazines. Pistols and rifles are on display by the thousands. And the people want them. They like them. Business is, no pun intended, booming. It’s a scene that drives gun haters nuts.

Ironically, NRA and SAF/CCRKBA get it from both sides. To the devoted anti-gunner, these organizations are the devil’s spawn for defending a fundamental civil right delineated in the federal constitution and in most state constitutions. To many equally devoted hardcore gun rights activists both organizations are not doing enough to defend the Second Amendment.

The irony of this is remarkable. Critics on both sides are engaging in the same kind of demagoguery for which they condemn the other side. What’s different from Gumbel’s “pigs” remark, or the assertions that NRA, SAF, CCRKBA or other gun rights groups “arm criminals,” and accusations of treason or being “tools” of tyrants? Not much, really.

This event is being covered by more than 1,000 journalists, including print, broadcast and bloggers. With two days remaining in this show — it wraps up Friday at 4 p.m. — there is plenty of time for a response to Gumbel’s remarks and other criticisms. On the other hand, such peanut gallery comments might end up being ignored.

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