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
Preemptive Surrender on Guns as Futile as Appeasement :: 09/10/2015
USA – (Ammoland.com)- In the past two columns, we’ve been discussing recommendations by the Independent Firearm Owners Association disseminated in a media alert following the Roanoke murders.
In part one we looked at some general concessions. Part two looked at specific recommendations offered as an olive branch of sorts to those insisting “we must do something.”
I went through reasons such assumptions are dangerous. I also said, since their proposals are unacceptable, I’d submit an alternative for consideration.
“Let’s agree to prevent the issues that divide us from moving forward with the multitude of action items that we are united as Americans in achieving,” IFoA recommends, presuming actions that infringe are what unite us.
A question that’s come up is who is IFoA a front for? There’s an understandable assumption that it must be backed by anti-gun interests, as we’ve seen in the past with groups like the American Hunters and Shooters Association.
It’s actually an effort by attorney Richard Feldman, author of the book “Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist,” an exposé that did not endear him to the folks he used to represent at NRA. (Back when he was still brokering deals, he put together the Clinton White House Rose Garden photo op, to name one of his industry-approved “achievements.”)
Still, the media certainly seemed to enjoy calling attention to the break-up, as noted by “The Gun Writer” Lee Williams in a 2013 profile. One point worth mentioning is Williams wrote that he never received a promised copy of the group’s IRS Form 1099, and two years later, unless it files under a different name, a search on the Guidestar nonprofit website produces “0 results.”
I’ve been receiving emails from Feldman for a few years now, corresponding on occasion, and I don’t believe he or his board are doctrinaire anti-gunners — I think when they say “[A]fter Newtown … [w]e squandered an opportunity to discuss the divergent gun-related problems that affect the country,” they actually believe it.
After Sandy Hook, there was a group of interested parties in the gun community I was privy to participate in discussions with, including some media folks, industry reps and activists, that also included, fortunately, some no-compromise state group leaders. An unfounded belief a significant number of participants had come to accept was that politicians would have no choice but to offer their constituents “something” and our best option would be to craft a proposal that would be as benign and defensible as possible. Naturally, I was part of a “dissident” faction that said, not only “No,” but ‘Hell no,” and we put all on notice that any preemptive surrender would be met with just as loud and vigorous an opposition – and counteroffensive – as if it had been proposed by gungrabbers.
I believe that had an effect because, with the exception of the aborted Manchin-Toomey ‘compromise,” talk of capitulation was toned down. I believe that’s because those counseling preemptive surrender realized they’d have a loud rebellion on their hands, where appeasers would face personal accountability.
The alternative position our little band of “extremists” promoted:
- WE WON’T STAND FOR SCAPEGOATING
- NO NEW GUN LAWS
- DENY SUCCESS TO MASS MURDERERS BY ABOLISHING PHONY ‘GUN-FREE’ VICTIM / KILLER ENABLING ZONES NOW
- WORK WITH US OR WE WILL WORK TO RETIRE YOU
What compelling reason is there for that to change now?
As for voices counseling ceding rights to those who have no claim to them, and passing it off as necessary compromise: You get the same answer some of us have already given to the outright antis, who have been stymied by unenforceable-against-mass-defiance edicts in places like Connecticut and New York. You get the ultimate “new paradigm” alternative:
We will not comply… Your move.
If you let the enemy establish a beachhead without a fight, it will simply use that as the launching point for the next incursion into deeper territory. They want it all, but they’ll take it in pieces, should any be naive enough to collaborate with them. To expect incremental surrender will satisfy the antis and persuade them to back off would be as foolish as throwing a scrap of meat at a circling pack of jackals and thinking that will sate their hunger and that they’ll then move on and leave you alone.
But don’t just take my word for it.
Also see:
Part One: IFOA Offers Concessions on Guns Following Roanoke Murders
Part Two: Rotten Olive Branch Offered after Roanoke Murders
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and also posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
http://www.ammoland.com/2015/09/preemptive-surrender-on-guns-as-futile-as-appeasement/#ixzz3lLL8mtFC
