The National Rifle Association’s (NRA’s) new poster children from Michigan may help spell the demise of the gun lobby
Prior to Cindy Gamrat’s expulsion in disgrace from the Michigan House, Democracy Tree wrote about the former lawmaker’s package of bills designed to completely do away with registration and licensing of concealed weapons. Accompanying that article was a July 26 photo gleaned from Gamrat’s Facebook page showing her standing next to some folks at a Second Amendment event.
Gamrat said of the meeting: “I had a wonderful time spending time with some of the top Second Amendment supporters and defenders in Michigan today.” She didn’t offer the names of the individuals, although their gaudy display of weaponry certainly made the two memorable.
Lo and behold, they popped-up again in a Detroit News article last week. It seems Gamrat’s friends attended the deceptively named “Global Rally for Humanity” held in the predominately Muslim community of Dearborn. Attendees at the anti-Islam protest were strongly urged to open carry weapons at the event, as was the case at similar demonstrations across the nation that day. Besides carrying sidearms, some participants held signs with “Stop the Islamization of America,” but the overwhelming majority of participants turned-out to be counter-protestors.
The hateful rally was a miserable flop of the kind the gun lobby should expect to get used to in the future.
A Gun Nut Overreach
The dismal turnout of fellow gun-toters didn’t appear to deter Gamrat’s friends. Their names are Chris and Marty Welch, a couple from Cadillac, a small town located several hours north and west of the previous weekend’s Islam-bashing event. The Welches explained to the News that “We’re here for the second amendment, not for no religion or anything.” That disclaimer smells a bit specious — kind of like saying: I only attended the KKK rally to demonstrate it’s okay to wear white after Labor Day. The Global Rally for Humanity was clearly meant to intimidate the Muslim community on religious grounds, and to conflate them with terrorism and ISIS.
As it turns out, the Welches do in fact frequent Second Amendment events. There are Getty Images available for purchase of both posing with guns and flags. They show up again armed and star-spangled in a WZZM Channel 13 report on a gun rally in 2014. And, there’s also a YouTube interview with them from April of this year at an NRA sponsored event in Nashville, Tenn. Chris did most of the talking, at one point referring to his wife as “100 percent hillbilly” — which she didn’t seem to mind in the least. Queried about his personal arsenal, Welch explained “It’s what this country is built on — God, guns and blood.”
Gun Hoarding Marks the Beginning of the End for the NRA
In the wake of the Oregon shooting, writer Alec MacGillis penned a thought-provoking piece in The New York Times urging readers not to give up hope on reigning in America’s gun mania. The article titled “The Gun Lobby’s Power is Overstated” brings to light a number of aspects seldom heard in the din of argument following these all too frequent tragedies.
First, gun ownership — as an overall percent of the U.S. population — has decreased dramatically over recent decades, but among those dwindling few who do acquire weapons, they are stockpiling them. (One could make the case that it’s a form of hoarding disorder.) What this means in practical terms is that the gun lobby and manufacturers have a smaller and smaller number of supporters being concentrated into increasingly isolated pockets across the country — a fact that is likely to inform lawmakers who have traditionally gone along with the NRA, just to get along.
MacGillis reminds us that in the wake of Sandy Hook, the two Democrats in the Senate who voted against the 2013 gun control initiative were subsequently snubbed by the NRA, the lobby instead backed Republicans running against them. Both lost their seats the following year.
Driving his point home, MacGillis offers:
“Meanwhile, two Democratic governors who signed tough gun laws, in Colorado and Connecticut, both won re-election in an otherwise brutal year for their party. A year earlier, Terry McAuliffe was elected governor of Virginia, the NRA’s home state, while running on an outspokenly anti-NRA platform.”
Gun Advocates Fire Back
MacGillis’ assertion stands in stark contrast to an opinion piece published three days later at BearingArms.com titled Debunking the “Declining Number of Gun Owners” Lie. Citing a 2011 Gallop poll finding that 47 percent of households were at that time in possession of some type of firearm, the author, admitting that surveys do not reflect true data, instead relies on an uptick in concealed carry permits and gun sales as the basis for the imagined surge in armed Americans. In fact, another Gallop poll indicates a marked decline of gun-ownership households over the past 55-plus years:
The pro-gun site additionally simply scoffs at the findings of a comprehensive longitudinal study from the Violence Policy Center which found that the number of households with firearms has shrunk to slightly over 32 percent by 2014, down from just under 50 percent in 1973 — a finding which translated into an overall decrease in individual ownership by 10 percent during that period. Whichever survey is more accurate is unknown, but they both show a clear downward trend.
BearingArms.com went on to brag that the gun industry is “virtually the only part of the economy to show steady growth during the Obama Presidency.” Are we now to believe that the 12.8 million private sector jobs created between February 2008 and June 2015 are mostly in the gun industry? It seems the only meaningful correlation between Obama and gun sales would be those select individuals who rush out to amass firepower whenever the president comments on America’s propensity for violence — derisively tagged “ammosexuals,” they are few in number, but heavily armed.
In addition to the MacGillis piece on the shrinking number of gun owners, which earned traction at a number sites, there seems to be a stronger tone coming from the media on gun control in general. Jess Cagle, Editorial Director at People, used his position to urge Americans to take the message directly to all 535 members of Congress. His editorial went to the extraordinary length of including links to email and twitter accounts of all the lawmakers. Cagle said:
“We need to know that our representatives in Washington, D.C., are looking for solutions and not giving up, and they need to know if we agree or disagree with their strategies.”
As for Gamrat and her friends, like it or not, we are all judged by the company we keep, and the failed lawmaker has already demonstrated clearly through personal affiliations her inability to live up to the higher standard of integrity expected of an elected official. The Welches attendance at the anti-Islam event speaks for itself.
Did the author ever think that those owning firearms would confess to anyone asking if they had a firearm in their house would tall the truth? The government knows where the registered weapons are, they don’t need a survey. Law-abiding citizens don’t trust their government, especially when the ever-gun grabbing Democrats are in power. President Obama has been the best weapons salesman for the local gun shops – the day after he was elected, at Silver Bullet Arms on South Division the store was full and at least a half hour wait to look at handguns in the display cases. Many popular models were sold out within hours.
Your intentions and insinuations about the “gun lobby” are despicable. Trying to tie them to Rep. Gamrat is old Democrat trick of painting everyone with a broad brush stroke. It never works. If Gamrat were a Democrat, she would still be in office and celebrated as a “pathfinder” being honest with her emotions and Clinton-like ways.
Find another itch to scratch – you’ll always lose on this issue.
One factor that helps bring about the ‘decline’ is now there are many more homes. The decline in two parent households probably is steeper. With fewer adults in the home there are going to be a natural decline in the % of adults who have a gun in their home.
How that relates to gun owners going down seems suspect. It would be helpful to publish the number of gun owners.
Please just think about it; with the large number of new firearms manufactured and many being handed down from generation to generation the numbers are going down? Millions of homes have “granddad’s” old shotgun or handgun in the closet and have not told the government it exists.
Shooting sports folks who have shopped for a firearm in the past 7 years will tell you pickings have been very slim. New models and designs are coming out every month and flying out of the stores.
In 2011 8.75 million guns were sold and more in every year since 2011. NRA membership is up as is gun club memberships.
The fastest growing demographic in gun purchases is women. A national shooting group called “The Well Armed Woman” is in its third year of existence and has over 6000 members and chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
Prejudging all good law abiding folks who own a firearm as “gun nuts” is indeed prejudice; judging any person by the group is prejudice. Please just think about it — the numbers do not support your argument and the name calling is plain old fashioned politically incorrect prejudice.
I agree with Free Market Man — in the current political climate, the prudent course is not to proclaim to the world that you own guns. It is sad that you must stoop to ad hominem attacks to bolster your points (hoarding disorder, gun nuts). Picking the Welches as representatives of law-abiding gun owners is like picking Louis Farrakhan as a fair representative of the left. There are extremes on all sides of the issue, and trying to muddy the waters with Gamrat is intellectually bankrupt. If you want to read some balanced writing about gun control, read anything by John Lott.