Makes my toes wiggle
The Brady Campaign – understaffed, underfunded, and generally floundering…
Of course, it’s the Christian Science Monitor so it has the usual misinformation about gun laws (which is no surprise to SayUncle readers – see here):
Two years ago, Florida enacted a law that allows anyone who feels threatened anywhere to use deadly force.
Untrue. You start off with a whopper, I can’t take you seriously. But taking dictation from anti-gun groups is what I expect from the CSM. But this bit is interesting:
The Brady Campaign put up a billboard in Miami that October, took out ads in cold climates where people often take Florida vacations, and handed out fliers at Florida airports – all warning tourists of their possible demise on their trips to Florida beaches and Disney World.
The campaign got the biggest reaction in Britain and Canada, where it fit perfectly into the notion of Americans as barbarians. A headline in the British Birmingham Post read, “Going to Florida? Beware the gun-happy locals.”
Because they can’t get traction here.
September 6th, 2007 at 9:18 am
It’s more than a bit ironic that the Brits would think of us as barbarians, because as I recall they’re having more than a little trouble with, well, let’s just call it uncivilized behavior. I had fun with this piece over at my blog, too.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:11 am
The main point of her article was interesting though… not the standard media PSH. Granted, she was spouting off the standard line fed by the BC (which is funny, considering that they are “understaffed, underfunded, and generally floundering”. I would say the BC is alive and well. You can’t pay for the kind of free press coverage they get. If you could, you might say their budget runs upwards of many hundreds of millions per year.
September 6th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Check out this blast from the past (March 7, 1993)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE3DE153BF934A35750C0A965958260
Of course, this is the NYT, so they never connected Overseas Tourist = absolutely no chance of carrying a handgun for self-defense = easy victim to rob.
But Clayton Cramer and David Kopel have:
http://rkba.org/research/cramer/shall-issue.html
The fact that the mainstream media misreported this, and also failed to make the obvious connection when the exact same thing happened when Virginia got “shall issue” is one of the major reason why I’ve gone from ignorant and vaguely anti-gun to pro-RKBA.