USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- I love AmmoLand News for many different reasons. One of them is that it is chock full of talented writers whose insight and commentary provide “research triage” as I prepare each day’s Armed American Radio broadcasts. Another is that the editors, from time to time, will print columns guaranteed to be controversial to its staunchly pro-gun readership. Just such a column appeared a couple of days ago penned by Mr. Harold Hutchinson, titled, Postal Service Spying Warrants Serious Response. In it, he brought attention to the unwarranted and politically motivated surveillance of gun rights activists with a focus on January 18, 2021, Lobby Day in Virginia, and offered ideas to combat such dangerous nonsense in the future.
“Should pro-Second Amendment leadership control Congress, there needs to be some serious oversight hearings and some serious consequences for this surveillance, most likely through the power of the purse that Congress has. Second Amendment supporters should write their Senators and Representative to demand this happen.”
He is spot on in that regard; however, Mr. Hutchinson, painfully, didn’t stop there. Rather, and for whatever reason, he took a hard-left turn and smoothly merged directly into the left lane of the gun-grabbers.
“That being said, it may also be time for Second Amendment supporters to re-think “open carry” protests. While there are some media outlets that give us a fair shake at a minimum, the vast majority of them don’t, and will paint such protests in a bad light.”
“Some will say, “there goes Harold the Fudd again,” but there are some objective conditions here. The media climate, while it’s not as bad as it was, is still generally hostile. If Jonathan Turley is right, then the media landscape will grow even more hostile in the coming years as calls for discarding balance in favor of propaganda increase.”
“They may not be explicitly going after Second Amendment activists now, but what do they do when screaming about Trump no longer works? It will probably get worse.”
“The fact is Second Amendment supporters must factor media coverage – potentially hostile coverage – into their plans and keep in mind that they have NO control over who shows up to cover a protest you announce.”
Media outlets will “paint such protests in a bad light?” There you have it.
The media won’t like us, so maybe we should rethink peacefully gatherings to support our rights. We certainly wouldn’t want the biased liars and charlatans running corporate media to write bad things about us, would we? Except when the corporate media and gun-grabbing politicians such as former VA. Gov. Northam is forced to report the fact that an organized armed gun rally was completely peaceful and “went off without a hitch,” with Governor Northam himself declaring publicly;
“Today showed that when people disagree, they can do so peacefully.” In fact, “only one arrest occurred, with a 21-year-old woman charged with one felony count of wearing a mask in public.”
Oh, the irony of that one, huh?
However, Mr Hutchinson continued:
“There is also the fact that Merrick Garland’s Justice Department has already gone after parents who protested certain things taught in their local schools. We also know that the Biden administration is very hostile to our Second Amendment rights.”
He failed to point out that those Virginia parents who stood up to the tactics of the leftist goons won school board seats, ousted the Democrats, retook the Governor’s mansion, and shut down the loudmouth, woke, boneheads. We saw the same thing happen in five Florida counties, including Duval, Miami-Dade, Sarasota, Clay, and Martin Counties, when according to National Review, “multiple school boards across the state of Florida flipped conservative on Tuesday thanks to a groundswell of parental rights activism and GOP turnout.” (emphasis added)
They didn’t do it by “rethinking” their protests and shying away. Rather, they got louder and declared victory.
But wait, there’s more from the author:
“This is not to say we don’t advocate for our rights, but it is saying that there needs to be a lot of thought put into HOW we advocate for our rights in the present climate. Otherwise, it will be harder to defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists via the ballot box at the federal, state, and local levels.”
This reminds me of “I support the Second Amendment, but…” and we all know what that means.
Bottom line? We don’t win our rights back by standing down and trying to appease the biased media, gun-grabber groups, & anti-rights politicians.
We win when we stand up, get louder and stronger, and never back down. We win when our peaceful rallies get bigger and ever more powerful. We win when we tell them we will never give in to their un-American demands, and we win by fighting harder than they do and doing it in their faces.
About Mark Walters
Mark Walters is the host of two nationally syndicated radio broadcasts, Armed American Radio and Armed American Radio’s Daily Defense, with Mark Walters. He is the Second Amendment Foundations 2015 Gun Rights Defender of the Year award recipient and co-author of two books, Lessons from Armed America with Kathy Jackson (Whitefeather Press).