Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

I can be reached at 45superman@gmail.com.You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/45superman.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The lying hypocrites at the ICHV whine about IGOLD

The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence is apparently worried enough about tomorrow's grassroots push for gun rights in Illinois (IGOLD) that they've put out their own press release, full of distortions, in an effort to discredit it.

The gist of their "message" is that gun manufacturers are sponsoring this event. Put bluntly and simply--the ICHV is full of crap.

Of the 8 buses bearing determined gun rights activists of Illinois, a grand total of two are sponsored by manufacturers. My friends at Illinois Carry, along with the folks at the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA), and Guns Save Life (formerly the Champaign County Rifle Association) have done the hard work of setting this up (and that work included approaching the manufacturers to request some help with chartering the buses). One dedicated member is putting up thousands of dollars of his own money to support this effort.

Contrast that to Mayor Daley's approach of encouraging city employees to take off work early, to be bused down to Springfield, to help lobby to disarm the law-abiding citizens of Illinois. Yeah--that sounds like grassroots.

One of the interesting things about the ICHV complaining about gun industry money is that the ICHV has received almost $1.8 million of Joyce Foundation largess.

I bet Thom Mannard, at ICHV, gets paid pretty well.

UPDATE: The Gun Guys have thrown in their 2 cents (probably overpriced, at that). They don't really say anything beyond Mannard's distortions, other than referring to gun rights activists as "smelly." They certainly have a sophisticated debating style, don't they? I imagine most people don't think of that particular riposte until they're at least 6 years old or so.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

OH Boy! Wait till Valinda hears that "bring their womenfolk" comment.

Great Article's as usual Kurt.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

Thanks, Anon--just a smelly civil rights advocate, doing what I can.

Yeah--if they want to tangle with Valinda in any kind of debate, I hope I can get a ticket.

me said...

wow, they've got studies by communist groups...that press release MUST be fact

[/sarcasm off]

"cop killing assault weapons"? don't they mean weapons used by killer cops? Let's see the numbers on their claims, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent. I'd be willing to put money that more cops killed themselves, a spouse or were killed by a car during a ($) traffic stop then have been killed by so-called "cop killing assault weapons"

We really need to start getting the word out to the folks who are prone to believe what they read in the paper and see on TV. I'm not sure how, but I know why.

plblark said...

the Gun Guys are run by the Karlan (sp?) PR agency which is a Joyce foundation funded operation from what I've been reading.

essentially, they're all just shadow groups run by the few to disarm the many.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

Paul, you're right on the mark. I actually discussed the Gun Guys' funding extensively here (here's an excerpt):

Of all the Freedom States Alliance websites, the Gun Guys would seem to be the flagship--at least it gets updated regularly--the rest seem to be pretty static. The Freedom States Alliance, in turn, is apparently part of, or managed by Mark Karlin and Associates, a Chicago based public relations firm. The funding, or at least a vast chunk of it, comes from the Joyce Foundation. According to this, in 2006, the Joyce Foundation gave $650,000 to the Mark Karlin group, for the Freedom States Alliance (they also gave $185,000 to the same PR firm in 2003, "to help raise the media presence and capacity of Midwest gun violence prevention groups," although this may have been before the Freedom States Alliance was formed). Actually, a look on the Joyce Foundation's list of grants for public policy dealing with "gun violence" is something of a who's who of anti-gun groups--and the money involved is huge: $500,000 to the Violence Policy Center, a staggering $1,795,000, since July, 2004, to the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence (here, here, here, and here)--and that's just a sampling--in all, there's over six and a quarter million dollars devoted just to pushing more restrictive gun laws (according to this)--and that doesn't count all the money for firearms "research."

Yuri Orlov said...

Can I use your research into The Gun Guys funding on my site, http://therealgunguys.blogspot.com/ to discredit them further?

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

I would be honored, sir.