Now is not the time to talk about gun control (2 Viewers)

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    SystemShock said:
    There is a very important difference: the tobacco industry was caught lying to the public about the effects of cigarette smoking and their marketing practices. Gun manufacturers don't tell you guns don't kill.
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    But their marketing has gotten them in trouble before and I think it is one avenue to explore.

    They market these guns with war imagery in some cases. I think there might be a current lawsuit already against one gun manufacturer about the way they market them.
     
    MT15 said:
    But their marketing has gotten them in trouble before and I think it is one avenue to explore.

    They market these guns with war imagery in some cases. I think there might be a current lawsuit already against one gun manufacturer about the way they market them.
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    There is at least one from the MX goverment, because a number of models that are very popular with narcos in MX, as they are gold plated, and have engravings like "jefe de jefes" and other slogans that resonate with cartels, although to be fair, they resonate with most of the MX population.
     
    Didn't toe the line (is it tow or toe?)
    ========================

    BUFFALO — Standing at a lectern in late May, Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) took a piece of paper from the inner pocket of his dark blue jacket.
    He hadn’t discussed what he was about to do with anyone — not his staff and not his wife.

    Jacobs began speaking quickly, with conviction. In the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., he would support a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, he said. He would also push to raise the minimum age to purchase certain weapons to 21.

    Afterward, Jacobs called a senior Republican leader in New York. Jacobs thanked him for his support over the years, then said, only half in jest: “I think I just committed political suicide.”

    Jacobs, a first-term member of Congress who represents a district near Buffalo, would become a cautionary tale about the politics of guns in the Republican Party. Officials who had endorsed Jacobs swiftly withdrew their support. Gun rights groups accused him of betrayal. Donald Trump Jr. said Jacobs had “caved to the gun-grabbers.”

    A week after his news conference, Jacobs announced he would not seek reelection.

    In a recent interview at his district office in Williamsville, N.Y., Jacobs said he did not regret his change of heart, although he felt bad for blindsiding his colleagues.

    “Somebody said, ‘Chris, it’s a profile in courage,’ ” he recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, it’s also a profile in unemployment.’ ”..............

     
    A rapidly growing manufacturer of AR-15-style rifles tried to run an ad during the Super Bowl in 2014, knowing that the NFL typically does not allow gun commercials during its marquee event.


    But Daniel Defense — the maker of the semiautomatic rifle used in the Uvalde school shooting — privately had in place a plan to generate publicity whether the ad aired or not, according to previously unreported court documents that shed light on the gunmaker’s marketing strategies.

    If it aired, Daniel Defense’s top marketing executive planned to have people across the country complain about the company’s own ad to left-leaning media organizations, stirring controversy and generating coverage.

    If the ad was rejected, records show, the executive had arranged for a prominent National Rifle Association commentator to release a prerecorded online video accusing the National Football League of censorship and hypocrisy.

    “I had two plans, you know,” Daniel Defense’s former marketing director, Jordan Hunter, a former Marine, said during a May 2015 deposition in a trademark infringement case. “That’s from the Marine Corps days, two plans. If it goes bad, you have another.”


    An examination of Daniel Defense’s marketing, based on court filings, interviews, internal documents and other records, shows how the gunmaker over the past decade devised publicity stunts, paid for favorable coverage in newsstand magazines and employed other aggressive tactics to entice Americans to buy its AR-style semiautomatic rifles.

    Daniel Defense’s fortunes rose in parallel with the popularity of the guns known as AR-15s. The weapons, sometimes referred to as “America’s rifle,” are beloved by many gun enthusiasts but are seen by gun-control advocates as an instrument of carnage.


    The marketing strategies of Daniel Defense and other gun manufacturers have come under increased scrutiny in recent months amid deadly mass shootings by gunmen using AR-style rifles in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tex., and Highland Park, Ill.


    The CEOs of Daniel Defense, Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co. have been called to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, part of the panel’s investigation into the sales and marketing of AR-style semiautomatic rifles.

    And earlier this month, Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that promotes gun control, asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Daniel Defense’s marketing, arguing that federal and state laws prohibit advertising that promotes the unsafe or illegal use of dangerous products…….

     
    Here’s an example I just saw today of the type of stuff that should open gun manufacturers to scrutiny. Boogaloo is a violent extremist group trying to bring down the US government. They have a habit of wearing Hawaiian shirts because they think the big patterns make it easier to conceal their weapon holsters. This gun is being openly marketed to them.

     
    At a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Wednesday, Ryan Busse, a former gun industry insider who regularly speaks out about the decisions and tactics that flooded the United States with military-style rifles, put up a photo of a banner from a recent gun show.

    It depicted a Revolutionary War soldier firing an AR-15. The caption read, “Gear for your daily gunfight.”

    It is this kind of marketing that turned the AR-15 into an enormous cash cow for the firearms industry.

    As a new report from the committee demonstrates, this weaponry is generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales, with marketing tactics aimed at young men anxious about their masculinity.

    Busse’s testimony and the information the committee gathered showed just how committed the gun industry — and the Republican Party — have become to putting military-style weapons into civilian hands, no matter how many lives it costs.

    But they also showed that undoing what has been done, or even stopping it from getting worse, will be next to impossible.

    Right now, a bill to outlaw new sales of military-style weapons is moving through the House; the Judiciary Committee approved it on a party-line vote last week. President Biden has endorsed a ban.

    But in highlighting the ubiquity of these deadly weapons, the Oversight Committee’s report and the testimony highlighted the very factor gun advocates, including those on the Supreme Court, will use to insulate these guns from regulation.

    As Busse testified, the industry markets AR-15s by telling people they can “use what the Special Forces guys use,” and by getting guns featured in movies and in first-person-shooter video games.

    Busse said: “The industry condones frightening marketing that openly partners with domestic terror [organizations] like the Boogaloo Bois, a group that hopes for race wars and wears Hawaiian shirts."

    And the committee’s report does show how one company sells an AR-15 adorned in a Hawaiian shirt pattern, called the “Big Igloo Aloha” rifle. “Big Igloo” is a social media variation of “Boogaloo.”

    All this adds up to an industry that quite consciously markets its products not as a way to responsibly defend your home, but as an instrument of murder and mayhem……

    Which means a ban on new manufacturing and sales would have a limited effect — and you can forget about confiscating ones people already own. The industry used its marketing and sales acumen to create an AR-15 constituency where one hadn’t existed before.

    And the very madness of a society in which these weapons are so common is now being used as a legal justification for why they must stay common.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 case that created an individual right to own guns in D.C., Justice Antonin Scalia homed in on a single line from a 1939 case about Revolution-era militia members having weapons “in common use at the time.”

    Scalia elevated this to a standard for use in the future to judge whether a particular weapon must be protected, even though military-style weapons were not at issue in that particular case.


    Nor were they at issue in the recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that struck down laws restricting people carrying guns outside the home. But Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion mentioned the phrase “common use” five separate times.


    This is how the facts on the ground now work. The gun industry has made the AR-15 “common.”

    Therefore, no matter how many children are slaughtered with it, that means it must enjoy constitutional protection…….




     
    Good read
    ==========
    From 1995 to 2020, I worked for the firearms manufacturer Kimber. As the industry began to embrace extremism and conspiracy, I did what I could to fight back from the inside. When industry marketing celebrated armed vigilantism to sell guns, I left.

    I’m still a proud gun owner who believes in responsibility. These days I use my platform to advocate for commonsense gun safety measures and call out dangerous and toxic marketing in the industry – which is why I was invited to testify before the US House committee on oversight and reform last week.

    Like the others appearing, including two gun company chief executives, I was asked to submit written testimonyfor the official congressional record. I was warned that I would be under oath and prepared for the possibility that the large, high-profile hearing would go for several hours and include direct attacks on me. All of this happened – but that’s not why testifying was so frightening.

    The reason I found the hearing so scary was because it made clearer than ever that gun companies and their executives have completely abdicated responsibility and common sense. Their industry is nakedly marketing to – and in the process perhaps even creating – the next generation of mass shooters, all in service of their bottom line.

    At the beginning of these sorts of hearings, each witness has time to address the committee. I described how guns like the AR-15 were a pariah before 2008. In the less than 15 years since, however, they’ve become both a powerful authoritarian symbol and also the industry’s bread and butter.

    I talked about how there’s no longer a place in the firearms industry for anyone who believes in moderation or responsible regulation. If they did exist, they’ve long been frightened into submission or forced out.

    Despite guns being at the center of radicalized domestic terrorism, there has been no industry rebuke of the “come and take it” flags of the January 6 insurrection, of armed men invading the Michigan capital, or of Kyle Rittenhouse killing people at a protest with his Smith & Wesson Military & Police-line rifle.

    This is exactly what I witnessed during last week’s five-hour hearing. Alarmingly, but not shockingly, the two gun industry chiefs called as witnesses – Marty Daniel, CEO of Daniel Defense, and Christopher Killoy, president and CEO of Ruger – refused to take any responsibility for the role of guns and industry marketing in our country’s worsening spate of mass shootings and gun violence……..

    www.theguardian.com

    I testified to Congress about the gun industry. It rattled me to my core | Ryan Busse

    Gun-makers are openly marketing to – and perhaps even creating – the next generation of mass shooters, all in service of their bottom line
    www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
     
    what could possibly go wrong?

    apnews.com

    North Carolina sheriff stocking schools with AR-15 rifles

    MARSHALL, N.C. (AP) — When schools in one North Carolina county reopen later this month, new security measures will include stocking AR-15 rifles for school resource officers to use in the event of an active shooter.
    apnews.com apnews.com

    Harwood said the safes where the AR-15s will be kept will also hold ammunition and breaching tools for barricaded doors.

    “We’ll have those tools to be able to breach that door if needed. I do not want to have to run back out to the car to grab an AR, because that’s time lost. Hopefully we’ll never need it, but I want my guys to be as prepared as prepared can be,” he said.
     
    zztop said:
    what could possibly go wrong?

    apnews.com

    North Carolina sheriff stocking schools with AR-15 rifles

    MARSHALL, N.C. (AP) — When schools in one North Carolina county reopen later this month, new security measures will include stocking AR-15 rifles for school resource officers to use in the event of an active shooter.
    apnews.com apnews.com

    Harwood said the safes where the AR-15s will be kept will also hold ammunition and breaching tools for barricaded doors.

    “We’ll have those tools to be able to breach that door if needed. I do not want to have to run back out to the car to grab an AR, because that’s time lost. Hopefully we’ll never need it, but I want my guys to be as prepared as prepared can be,” he said.
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    What if the idiot school shooter is in the same area as the safe? Or are they just peppering them all around the schools? These people are complete dufuses.
     

    Firearms banned at events with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has argued 'gun-free' zones are less safe​

    Par for the course for these guys..

    Attendees should be prepared for "airport-like screening," according to listings for the events posted by Turning Point Action on EventBrite, where would-be guests are encouraged to request tickets. Security will be turning away the visibly intoxicated, according to the listing, as well as also for the following prohibited items: "ammunition, knives, projectiles, pepper spray, expandable batons, [and] firearms."
    Click to expand...


    1660043527984.png



     
    Gun reform advocates have decried as “absolute insanity” a move by a North Carolina sheriff to arm his school resource officers with assault rifles on campus – in addition to their service issue handguns.

    Madison county sheriff Buddy Harwood says he felt obliged to act in hope of preventing another massacre such as the one at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May that killed 19 students and two teachers……

    “Systemic failures” by law enforcement, one report into the murders found, included a lengthy delay in heavily armed officers confronting the gunman, who was shooting with an AR-15-style, high-power assault rifle.

    “Having just a deputy armed with a handgun isn’t enough to stop these animals,” Harwood said in a video statement he posted to Facebook in June.

    “My school resource officers will not have to wait, retreat, or have to leave the situation to get the weaponry to deal with that threat.”

    A subsequent report by WLOS News claimed Harwood received “mostly positive feedback” from the public for his stance, which will provide for the military-style weapons to be locked in undisclosed locations in each of the county’s three elementary, one middle and two high schools.

    But opponents have accused the sheriff of sacrificing safety to play to the interests of the gun lobby.

    “I think it is absolute insanity. This won’t save a single child, or stop a single unknown and potential future act of violence,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was among 17 killed in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018 in the nation’s deadliest high school shooting.

    “However, it will immediately help to sell more guns and make this sheriff more popular with the gun lobby that he is hoping to be a champion with,” added Guttenberg, a prominent gun safety advocate and senior adviser to Brady, the gun control campaign group……

    www.theguardian.com

    ‘Absolute insanity’: a North Carolina sheriff wants to arm school officers with assault rifles

    Madison county’s Buddy Harwood said the move will reduce threat response time, but gun reform advocates have decried the decision
    www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
     
    Optimus Prime said:
    Gun reform advocates have decried as “absolute insanity” a move by a North Carolina sheriff to arm his school resource officers with assault rifles on campus – in addition to their service issue handguns.

    Madison county sheriff Buddy Harwood says he felt obliged to act in hope of preventing another massacre such as the one at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May that killed 19 students and two teachers……

    “Systemic failures” by law enforcement, one report into the murders found, included a lengthy delay in heavily armed officers confronting the gunman, who was shooting with an AR-15-style, high-power assault rifle.

    “Having just a deputy armed with a handgun isn’t enough to stop these animals,” Harwood said in a video statement he posted to Facebook in June.

    “My school resource officers will not have to wait, retreat, or have to leave the situation to get the weaponry to deal with that threat.”

    A subsequent report by WLOS News claimed Harwood received “mostly positive feedback” from the public for his stance, which will provide for the military-style weapons to be locked in undisclosed locations in each of the county’s three elementary, one middle and two high schools.

    But opponents have accused the sheriff of sacrificing safety to play to the interests of the gun lobby.

    “I think it is absolute insanity. This won’t save a single child, or stop a single unknown and potential future act of violence,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was among 17 killed in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018 in the nation’s deadliest high school shooting.

    “However, it will immediately help to sell more guns and make this sheriff more popular with the gun lobby that he is hoping to be a champion with,” added Guttenberg, a prominent gun safety advocate and senior adviser to Brady, the gun control campaign group……

    www.theguardian.com

    ‘Absolute insanity’: a North Carolina sheriff wants to arm school officers with assault rifles

    Madison county’s Buddy Harwood said the move will reduce threat response time, but gun reform advocates have decried the decision
    www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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    Ordinarily, I'd just dismiss this idea out of hand, but after the Uvalde massacre and horrific response by the police forces, I have to think that a well-trained teacher with a gun to defend his/her students would be better than being unable to defend themselves at all. Some might still die, but a teacher responding might make a difference. I mean, idk. Does it happen often enough to warrant it, or is it rare enough that we don't need to arm teachers?


    Personally, I'm a bit torn on it. If my kids are in school, I feel like I'd want their teacher to have that option, but my youngest just graduated, and no grandkids yet, so...idk.
     
    DaveXA said:
    Ordinarily, I'd just dismiss this idea out of hand, but after the Uvalde massacre and horrific response by the police forces, I have to think that a well-trained teacher with a gun to defend his/her students would be better than being unable to defend themselves at all. Some might still die, but a teacher responding might make a difference. I mean, idk. Does it happen often enough to warrant it, or is it rare enough that we don't need to arm teachers?


    Personally, I'm a bit torn on it. If my kids are in school, I feel like I'd want their teacher to have that option, but my youngest just graduated, and no grandkids yet, so...idk.
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    Yea, i don't think it's a great idea.

    But I believe that if local school boards decide to try out something like this, eventually we will (unfortunately) have data to see how it works out. Outcomes will probably determine how widely it gets adopted over time.
     
    DaveXA said:
    Ordinarily, I'd just dismiss this idea out of hand, but after the Uvalde massacre and horrific response by the police forces, I have to think that a well-trained teacher with a gun to defend his/her students would be better than being unable to defend themselves at all. Some might still die, but a teacher responding might make a difference. I mean, idk. Does it happen often enough to warrant it, or is it rare enough that we don't need to arm teachers?


    Personally, I'm a bit torn on it. If my kids are in school, I feel like I'd want their teacher to have that option, but my youngest just graduated, and no grandkids yet, so...idk.
    Click to expand...

    What's to stop the teacher from being an abject coward like the pigs at Uvalde?

    Unless you want teachers to have a direct mandate to protect children...one which the police appear to lack.
     

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