There’s a new gun-control lobby in town called Georgians for Gun Safety, which ironically, gets its money from the Boston University’s School of Public Health.
They’ve been running a series of advertisements on local television calling viewers’ attention to the impending repeal of the Assault-Weapons Ban. The ads are narrated by a Hispanic baseball player and reference the DC sniper shootings, which is odd because the rifle used by Mohammed and Malvo was a Bushmaster semi-automatic, not a weapon even covered by the Brady Bill’s nebulous and vague definition of “assault weapon.” The ads rely on a hodgepodge of half-truths and emotional exaggerations to make their point.
What these folks hope to achieve is vague at best, but given that the fastest-growing segment of our population is Mexican, I can see where having a Hispanic narrator would be a shrewd (if not despicably manipulative) touch.
I checked out their page, and as usual, we’re fed a bunch of vague and unsupportable “factoids” to stir up the emotions. I’ve pulled a few off their site’s main page for rebuttal. Here goes:
Georgia gun safety laws are among the most lax in the country making it easy for straw buyers to resell weapons.
“Gun safety” laws? I’m not sure what they mean, or how they make it easier for 2nd-party sales. Incidentally, how does one make it HARDER for straw buyers to resell weapons? I’D really like to know, and so would alot of responsible retailers. It just can’t be done, short of strengthening and enforcing the existing laws more dilligently. Both gun-shops I frequent have big posters advertising the fact that in Georgia, if you play the straw-man, you get a non-negotiable 10 years in prison, and here that means 12 hour work-days in the swamps of South Georgia, not fancy jail.
Georgia law enforcement seems unaware of the state’s central role in gun trafficking and has no strategy in place to stop the flow of guns to criminals.
Incorrect. I know for a fact that the GBI and ATF are routinely involved in huge stings in Northwest Georgia. As far as this “epidemic” of trafficking, I’ve never heard about it. Most of the guns used in crimes are passed-around weapons that were stolen from private citizens locally or (in one memorable case) stolen from a private gun-buyback program’s coffers. God bless Hosea Williams.
Georgia is strategically located on several major interstate highways making it convenient for traffickers to transport guns to other states.
Okay, let’s tear up the highway-system and go back to horse-and-buggy! Find me one state that DOESN’T have such a system. Don’t California and New York have them fancy interstates, too? As a matter of fact, I’ve heard that a couple of those highways even lead into CANADA. God save our half-French brothers and sisters in the North. I love the way they take an unconnected fact and attach an a priori conclusion to make a Rube Goldberg rheotorical device out of thin air.
Federal law enforcement rarely cracks down on corrupt gun stores so dirt gun dealers operate without fear of being caught.
So, now it’s a FEDERAL problem? I though we were talking about Georgia problems. As far as it goes in Georgia, they’re extremely hard on gun dealers who screw up, and undercover sting operations are very common.
Certain gun stores sell very inexpensive guns that appeal to criminals and are not sold in most legitimate gun stores
Again, how is this different from any other state? IIRC, most “junk guns” are manufactured in the People’s Utopia of California, not Georgia. The last time I checked, the Lorcin factory, from which 6000 unserialized handguns were stolen and leaked out to criminals nationwide, is based in Costa Mesa, and not Atlanta. Perhaps these folks should be expending their energy there.
(For that matter, exactly what IS meant by “inexpensive?” Are we talking about a J-22 or the used Rossi .38 that’s all a single mother of three in Techwood can afford to fend off the meth-dealers down the street? Perhaps the noble intentions of the liberal gun-control lobby only apply to nice neighborhoods and high-income families.)
The interesting thing about Georgia (and Atlanta in particular) is that the people are, of a majority, staunch conservatives. You wouldn’t know it from the venomously liberal media and slanted reporting we get on television, but listen to the radio sometime if you’re here. If someone so much as raises the idea of gun control, they’re besieged by an army of angry (and about half the time, well-spoken) callers in rebuttal. Luckily, people here have a healthy distrust of the media, and this’ll most likely be overlooked as an annoying footnote.
Like most law-abiding gun owners, I’d like to see every last Lorcin and Mac-10 off the street, but restricting the rights of ordinary citizens won’t do that. New gun laws only affect the folks who are willing to follow the law, which is something criminals do not do. The only long-term solution to criminal gun violence is to firmly enforce the laws we currently have (which are more than adequate), and for the judiciary to hand out maximum, non-negotiable penalties for gun-related crime.
Still, what bothers me is that an organization with a money-trail back to Massachusetts is attempting to tinker in our state affairs. Even more troubling is the fact that, as a not-for-profit 501(c)(4) organization, they’re not supposed to be getting involved in political affairs As a 501(c)(4), they are ineligible for Federal grant money, but may collect private funding.
The whole shebang is run by Alice Johnson, who can be reached at
Georgians for Gun Safety
c/o Atlanta/Fulton Commission on Children and Youth
100 Edgewood Ave. NE
Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: 404-527-7426
04/11/08: It appears that she has not received any traceable outside funding since 2004. The organization’s only political donation was $200 to the State Democratic Party that year.
However, after 2004, Join Together disinvolved itself from any gun-related issues, thus leaving Ms. Johnson to her own devices. Join Together had received slush money from a $40,000 grant given to the Boston University School of Public Health by the Joyce Foundation. Join Together has been a regular beneficiary of the Joyce Foundation since at least 1996 ($56,946).
Though she was quite vocal during the recent HB 89 hearings, she is incapable of gathering substantial support or causing any real damage. In time, she’ll find another pet cause and go away.