Gun “Safety” 102 ½

The term is “camo-speak,” and it is definitely not complimentary; it is more in the nature of a fraud accusation and pretty much labeling something an outright lie.

They’re all part of the canard, the gun prohibition lobbying groups, their buddies on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures, and especially those in the media who daily deal in the deliberate misidentification and wrongful portrayal of the ongoing effort to demonize guns, gun owners and the Second Amendment.

Throughout my career, I’ve watched this prevarication evolve from the acknowledged term of “gun control” to whatever the spin doctors suggested in an effort to make what they’re up to more acceptable to the rubes, er, voters. First, it became “gun safety,” and then “gun violence prevention,” followed by “gun responsibility” and more recently, “gun reform,” but it all smells the same, and if you step in it, you’ll need to scrape the soles of your shoes.

Certainly, some people have suggested my own use of the term “gun prohibition lobby” instead of “gun safety group” is misleading. However, once an individual or group crosses the line from simply regulating firearms to advocating for outright bans on an entire class of firearms (i.e., so-called “assault rifles”), it becomes a prohibition effort, not a mere control scheme, and proponents of said ban can’t wiggle their way out of it with semantics.

Go to your favorite search engine — Google is really good for this — and type “gun control” or “gun reform.” When I did in preparation for this column, one of the first things to pop up was a link to Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” with a reference to the group’s latest camo-speak: “Gun Safety Policies Save Lives.” Well, maybe not so much, the data suggests.

“Top Eight”

You’ll find a list of the Top 8 national leaders in the realm of “gun law strength” on Everytown’s website. They are:

• California (89.5, whatever that means)
• New York (83.5, ditto)
• Illinois (83)
• Connecticut (82.5)
• Massachusetts (81)
• Hawaii (79.5)
• New Jersey (79)
• Maryland (75)

There’s just one tiny problem with this list. Body counts. California has lots of gangs and assorted other dirtbags, and in 2022, according to statista.com, the Golden State reported 2,197 slayings. New York piled up 762 murder victims. Illinois (primarily Chicago) gave us 881 corpses. Maryland produced at least 511 killings. New Jersey reported 254 murders. And so on; not exactly a testimonial to the effectiveness of all of those strong gun laws.

Gun “safety” groups may tell fibs about the laws they promote, but raw data doesn’t.

Somehow, I got onto a mailing list for a congressman from New York state, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-25th District), whose website carries this statement: “I’ve spent my entire career fighting for gun reform, and it’s one of my top priorities in Congress.” Until then, I’d never heard of this guy. Evidently, Joe needs to work a little harder on his priorities.

Word Games

These word games played by anti-gunners have admittedly been very effective. Some 10 years ago, I co-authored a book titled “Dancing in Blood: Exposing the Gun Ban Lobby’s Playbook to Destroy Your Rights.” It was one of my seven collaborations with Alan Gottlieb, the veteran Second Amendment advocate and one of the best.

Quite by accident, Gottlieb discovered this manifesto one afternoon while cruising the Internet for some information relating to a local gun “buy-back” project, and as we read the document, it was clear we had struck gold. It was literally a “gun control playbook.”

I tried to get an interview with the folks responsible, but they did not return my calls. So, I broke the story in the old Gun Week (although others seemed to take credit at the time), and together, Gottlieb and I wrote the book. The entire document, along with an abbreviated version found elsewhere on the Internet, was a strategy to dominate the discussion about guns. I think this was where the term “camo-speak” originated.

Since then, others in the gun control camp have followed suit. Everytown for Gun Safety has published its own guideline, “Gun Violence Prevention Messaging Guidance 2020.” It’s essentially the same strategy with new packaging in a shorter form.

From then until now, it is obvious the gun control movement has evolved, with no small amount of help from the establishment media.

Still, the gun rights movement is a few steps ahead of them, thanks to three Supreme Court victories and a bunch of lower court wins.

For Example

Here’s how this usually works, using the state of Tennessee as an example. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee recently signed legislation allowing teachers to carry firearms on school grounds.

Instead of explaining that only volunteer teachers who go through special training would be allowed to carry, and only with permission, WPLN News talked to a high school student who stated, “We do not want guns in school. Guns are the problem.” Gee, I wonder where she heard that?

This student said armed teachers would make schools less safe, although there does not appear to have been a single reported problem at any school where teachers or staff are armed.

But in the report, this is what was written: “After the deadly shooting at Covenant School in Nashville last year, thousands of people rallied at the Tennessee Capitol. They called for lawmakers to pass gun safety measures like a red flag law or an expansion of background checks.” The Nashville/Covenant School shooter wasn’t red-flagged and had passed background checks, so these arguments are without foundation. They just make good, emotional sound bites on television.

Rock Around the GLOCK

Everybody remember the big “plastic gun” scare from a generation ago, which quickly spread, courtesy of a moronic media with zero knowledge about guns?

The witch hunt is back on in New York and Chicago, and once again, the evil spirit in this eyeball-rolling tale is the Glock pistol.

The Huffington Post recently reported the City of Chicago had filed a lawsuit against GLOCK, alleging the gunmaker was “endangering residents by continuing to sell firearms that can easily be turned into illegal machine guns.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s news release said GLOCK should be held liable for manufacturing pistols that can be modified with a little device called the “GLOCK switch.” The mayor’s release asserted GLOCK was “manufacturing and selling in the Chicago civilian market semiautomatic pistols that can easily be converted to illegal machine guns with an auto sear …”

But here’s where the complaint should go south in court: Johnson’s release acknowledged, “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has reported a 400% increase in recoveries of illegally modified machine guns from 2020 to 2021 and a 570% increase in auto sears from 2017 to 2021 as compared to the previous five-year period. Once installed, GLOCK switches allow pistols to fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute — a rate as fast as or faster than many fully automatic firearms and machine guns used by the United States military.”

Question: Why should GLOCK be penalized when some criminal illegally modifies one of their pistols? Nobody is rushing to answer.

Meanwhile, Yahoo News reported an effort by Democratic state Senator Zellnor Myrie to get the Empire State to prohibit GLOCK sales to New York citizens, calling the guns “convertible pistols.” Maybe this term will replace “ghost guns” as the boogeyman of the day for the media. Later in the story, it is confirmed that Everytown for Gun Safety “helped craft the measure.”

Bottom Line

All of this lumped together amounts to a pattern of deception, and people unfamiliar with firearms but all-too-eager to feel they’re doing “something” to fight crime are falling for it, and that includes the media.

This has nothing to do with genuine gun safety and everything to do with gun control/prohibition. Those responsible for the camo-speak rarely, if ever, are willing to discuss the actual number of homicides and violent crimes. They don’t care to acknowledge failure.

The real losers, of course, are the poor people who believe the nonsense.