About Those .50 Caliber Rifles

"Gunfire at the U.S. border is the latest incident disproving the false claims the NRA makes to keep .50 caliber rifles legal." So sayeth Timothy Johnson of Media Matters.

Except as Kurt Hofmann points out in his excellent fisking of Johnson's hysteria-filled post, it was .50 BMG machine gun fire that was aimed at Border Patrol agents that came across the border from Mexico. In other words, it wasn't a Barrett .50 BMG rifle or any other .50 caliber rifle. 

I would have to say that Timothy Johnson learned his lessons well in how to twist the truth. His internship at the Brady Campaign combined with the tutelage he received from CSGV's Ladd Everitt have prepared him well to be Media Matters designed gun rights hitman.

Quote Of The Day

Jonah Goldberg, writing in the National Review Online yesterday, has perhaps the best characterization I've ever read about the far lefty ne'er do wells at Media Matters for America. It comes from his article about President Obama's backtracking on ObamaCare.

Media Matters for America — David Brock’s sweatshop for twentysomethings who couldn’t get an internship at the DNC

I think that about says it about a group whose sole mission seems to promote Obama, demonize the NRA and gun owners, shout "Koch Brothers", and deny Operation Fast and Furious. Oh, yes, and to trash Fox News at every opportunity along with CBS's Emmy Award winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson.

An Unholy Alliance

An unholy alliance of gun prohibitionists, politicians, and certain church groups is pushing a so-called documentary called "Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence" that will air on certain NBC owned and affiliated stations. The documentary is part of the Horizons of the Spirit series which airs on that network. The documentary is presented by the National Council of Churches and was produced by the Presbyterian Church USA.

The documentary features such gun control luminaries as Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Colin Goddard, and Dr. Garen Wintemute talking about how "gun violence" (sic) impacted their lives.

In the United States more than 30,000 people are killed every year by gun violence and the disaster caused by gun violence is seen in almost every community. We may hear briefly about the victims and survivors of these shootings, but what happens after the media attention moves on and the wider public becomes numb to "just another shooting"? Drawing upon conversations with lawmakers, emergency room chaplains and surgeons, survivors and victims'' families, former ATF officials, police officers, community leaders and others, "Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence" shares the story of how Gun Violence impacts individuals and communities and examines the "ripple effect" that one shooting has on a survivor, a family, a community, and a society.

 The trailer to "Trigger" is below:



Trailer for "Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence" Coming to NBC from Trigger Documentary on Vimeo.

Gun prohibitionists such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and Timothy Johnson of the Media Matters for America have been pushing the documentary today and are pointing people to a sample script/letter that they are asking be sent to program managers at local NBC affiliates. The script is being hosted on a Presbyterian Church USA website.

Dear Station or Programming Manager,

I am a viewer living in your market area, and I care about the issue of gun violence.

I am aware of an upcoming program titled Trigger: the Ripple Effect of Gun Violence, which is part of the NBC Horizons of the Spirit series. The documentary is free and can be aired from November 11th through May 2013. I have been told that the technical information and blurb about the program is on the NBC Universal APT system (Affiliate Partnership Tool) that every NBC affiliate station has access to.

Trigger is timely, considering the many acts of gun violence that have happened across our nation. It is not a politically driven documentary, but rather it is a documentary that allows people affected by gun violence to share their stories of how one shooting has impacted a survivor, a family and a community — after the shooting incident is no longer on the front pages or on the news channels.

This documentary explores the issue of gun violence through a multifaceted lens of family members, law enforcement, hospital personnel and clergy, to help build an understanding of the ripple effect. It will hopefully encourage awareness and conversation about how our communities can help.

Will you please schedule the showing of Trigger at a time that is convenient for viewers? It would be good to air it more than once to allow as many people to view it as possible during the 6 months it is available.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

To say this is not a politically driven documentary is absurd. When you have leading gun control advocates and politicians such as Carolyn McCarthy who has made her career on gun control as stars of a documentary, it is political.

I don't belong to a church that is a member of the National Council of Churches nor am I a Presbyterian. If, however, you are a Presbyterian (PCUSA) or belong to one of the NCC member churches, you might want to make your views on this documentary known within your own denomination. You could ask just how much of your weekly offering went to produce this agenda driven political piece which seeks to hamper you in protecting your own family. I'm sure you can think of other questions to ask.

MAIG Doesn't Like The Light Shone On Their Activities

It looks like blogger Sean Caranna of All Nine Yards and Florida Carry has struck a nerve with Mayor Bloomberg's Illegal Mayors. They seem to be scurrying around like cockroaches when the light is turned on.

The Daily Caller has the details.

Two days before Media Trackers Ohio requested an interview with Coleman, Bloomberg staffer Christopher Kocher emailed a story by a Florida blogger to Glaze, Roberts and several other MAIG regional coordinators. Kocher warned MAIG leaders that Sean Caranna, the president of Florida Carry Inc. — a pro-Second Amendment organization — had published a story criticizing Orlando MAIG coordinator Linda Vaughn.

Caranna found that a grant from the left-wing Joyce Foundation — which is managed by Bloomberg’s office — was insufficient to cover Vaughn’s salary. He reported that MAIG was leveraging taxpayer funds to reduce its overhead costs, by installing MAIG lobbyists in mayors’ offices nationwide — effectively using public dollars to lobby for gun control.

Kocher preceded Caranna’s story with a note instructing MAIG coordinators: “if anyone contacts you about the article or if anything like this has come up previously for you, please let us know.”

What I find most interesting about this story is the interconnections between MAIG, Bloomberg's office, MAIG Executive Director Mark Glaze, and Media Matters for America. When you add in the known connections between the White House and Media Matters, these linkages between the so-called progressive groups gets very interesting. If one was an expert in social network analysis, I'm sure he or she would have a heyday mapping all these linkages.

The Incestuous Relationship Between Media Matters And CSGV

Last week we saw another hit piece on gun rights issues by Media Matters for America. This one concerned Operation Fast and Furious. It accused former S.C. Governor Mark Sanford of being the latest to push the "paranoid conspiracy theory" that Project Gunwalker was an effort to build support for more gun control in the United States.

Or put more simply, Sanford is saying that "a lot of people" want to know if "Fast and Furious" was a plot hatched by Attorney General Eric Holder to curb gun rights in the United States. The answer to this question is a resounding no.

This conspiracy was recently laid out in the book Fast and Furious: Barack Obama's Bloodiest Scandal and its Shameless Cover-up, authored by Townhall news editor Katie Pavlich. The theory is so far-fetched that even Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has expressed skepticism, calling it a "conspiracy thing." Media Matters has previously debunked several other outrageous claims contained within the book.

Attacks on gun rights and on gun rights organizations like the NRA are not new for Media Matters. The NRA-ILA had a post a day later that noted for the month of April alone MMfA had run 32 hit pieces on the NRA. Attacks on the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious by the House Oversight Committee are also common as alluded to in the quote above regarding Katie Pavlich's new book. They had one just yesterday accusing Rep. Darrell Issa and Fox News of trying to politicize the scandal.

What is new is the author of these last two pieces for MMfA's County Fair blog - Timothy Johnson. If his Facebook page is to be believed, he now works for Media Matters.

Prior to joining Media Matters, he worked for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (sic) and ran the MeetTheNRA website for their 503(c)3 counterpart the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence (sic). He can be seen in his hoodie, second from the left, in this photo of CSGV staffers. The MeetTheNRA website is where they take quotes out of context so that they can accuse NRA leaders, past and present, of being "a group of individuals who promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-immigrant animus, religious bigotry, anti-environmentalism, and insurrectionism."

Attack pieces seem to be Mr. Johnson's forte as evidenced by an article that he and Ladd Everitt published in the Neiman Watchdog entitled "'Is the NRA paying mainstream reporters by the hour?'" Neiman gave the article this synopsis.

Two gun control advocates say that misstatements and fuzzy data coming from the National Rifle Association often are accepted by the press unchecked, and then disseminated, incorrectly, as trends and facts in American life. They point out, among other things, that gun sales are not perpetually rising; that neither are sales of guns to women, and that lax 'carry laws' have not been shown to lessen crime. There’s a lot of misinformation being spread, hardly examined at all by the press.

Prior to this stint with CSGV, Mr. Johnson was an intern with the Brady Campaign's Legal Action Project in the Fall of 2010.

Legal Action Project Intern Tim Johnson, a current Georgetown Law student, joined the Brady Center for similar reasons. Tim explains, "Interning for the Legal Action project has shown me the importance of pro bono legal work as a way to assist victims injured by the negligence or intentional conduct of corrupt gun dealers." In the wake of the McDonald and Heller Supreme Court decisions has allowed Tim to take part in the ongoing debate over the Second Amendment.

Johnson is listed in the Georgetown University directory but no info as to year or area of studies is given.

Nonetheless, Mr. Johnson does seem to have a long history of working with gun prohibitionists. Prior to his work for the Brady Campaign and CSGV, he worked the now-defunct Iowans for the Prevention of GunViolence in his home state of Iowa.

To conclude, given the left-wing and rabid anti-gun biases of both Media Matters and CSGV, is it any wonder that Media Matters sought someone from CSGV to be their new, pun intended, hired gun? If anything, his hiring just serves to confirm the incestuous relationship between these groups.

"This Was Purely A Political Operation" - Judson Phillips, Tea Party Nation

Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, was interviewed on FoxNews this morning about his group's call for the GOP leaders to get moving again on Operation Fast and Furious. He disagreed with Fox's Jamie Colby that this was a botched sting operation. Instead, he said "this was purely a political operation" meant to increase support for gun control in the United States.

When asked specifically what he wanted GOP leaders to do, Phillips said, "I want them to get more aggressive on this and get more aggressive with the Obama Administration."




The Joyce Foundation-funded Media Matters said of the Fox interview that Phillips was a "right wing extremist" who "spent the interview promoting the right-wing conspiracy theory that Fast and Furious was a plot to promote gun control instead of a failed law enforcement investigation." Mike Vanderboegh, as might be expected, had a diametrically opposite view of the interview. He had more to say on the GOP leadership and Project Gunwalker in this earlier post.

Speaking of Mike, please keep him and his family in your prayers. He will be operated on tomorrow for a gastrointestinal stromal tumor or GIST. From what Mike has written, they don't know for sure if this tumor is benign or malignant and won't know until the pathologists test it. Either way, it is serious stuff.

Interesting Statistic

John at the Boats and Bullets blog had the fortitude both to read through a Media Matters article and then to find something useful in it. He's a better man than I!

The MMFA article was quoting "research" by well-known anti-gun Harvard researchers David Hemenway and Matthew Miller regarding firearms used in suicide attempts. What John found was interesting.

Let's read that last sentence again... "Attempts involving drugs or cutting, which account for more than 90% of all suicidal acts, prove fatal far less often." So guns are used less than 10% of the time... and they're the biggest problem? Interesting...

As the "Coffee Talk" lady used to say on SNL... "Talk amongst yourselves."

Go and read John's blog post for the full story.

Meanwhile, The Anti's Are Spinning

Joyce Foundation funded Media Matters for America is desperately trying to spin the recent Gallup Poll as support for gun control. After attacking the question on handgun bans as outdated, they try to say that most people support "reasonable gun control".

In other words, the vast majority of Americans support reasonable gun control measures; only a small fraction is actually opposed to gun control.

This finding is confirmed by other recent polling that shows that Americans support measures to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals. According to one poll, 89 percent of respondents support requiring all gun buyers to pass a background check at gun shows, 94 percent support requiring gun owners to alert police if their guns are lost or stolen, and 69 percent support requiring those buying ammunition to pass a criminal background check. Another poll showed 86 percent of respondents supported background checks for every gun buyer.

And what are the polls that they use to "confirm" this? None other than the discredited push polls commissioned by Mayor Bloomberg and his Illegal Mayors. I think that says about everything.

UPDATE: Thirdpower has more on this and examines some of the comments made supporting the Media Matters' spin on gun control.