A Pro-Gun Minority Calls Out Tom’s and Gifford’s On Their Gun Safety Town Hall Agenda

Posted on by Mario Acevedo

Tom's Giffords Town Hall Denver Rally For Our Rights Colorado
On Saturday January 26, I attended the Gun Safety Town Hall held in the Washington Street Community Center of Denver. I’ll admit I approached with trepidation, into the belly as it were.

The anti-gun lobby is flush with cash and it shows. They can hire expert IT types to exploit social media and develop catchy websites, and they can afford big vehicles with custom paint jobs. My RSVP invitation was seamlessly handled through Eventbrite.

To enter the venue, I had to pass through unarmed security using wand metal detectors. Inside I couldn’t tell who were event sponsors or volunteers because they all wore identical flashy badges. Video cameras flanked the stage, complete with a big banner. About a hundred and fifty or so from the public filed in to occupy the rows of folding chairs arranged in the main meeting room. The crowd included the usual suspects: a few middle-aged women in MDA or Cease Fire Colorado t-shirts. One man wore a Parkland High School t-shirt, although I never found out if he hailed from there or wore it out of solidarity.

The event was moderated by a rep from the Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, who shared the dais with an anti-gun writer from New York City, someone from Tom’s Shoes (who was footing the bill, pun intended), Congressman Joe Neguse from Colorado, and Tom Mauser. The town hall began with the speakers discussing mass shooting to include the usual hate speech against the NRA.

The actual point of the town hall was to drum up support for HR 8, the new bill for expanded background checks, advertised as needed to close the infamous gun-show loophole, because as you all know, as we were told, any Colorado resident can simply drive to New Mexico or Wyoming and buy a gun, no questions asked. Ignoring of course that such an act is already a violation of federal law.

The town hall was scheduled to last an hour and at the halfway point, the public was invited to approach a microphone and share. One young woman said she was a Parkland survivor. A couple of older speakers expressed their gratitude for the campaign’s effort to end gun violence. A young man said he was from New Hampshire and rambled on about that state’s proliferation of guns, but I couldn’t tell if he was anti- or pro-gun.

Finally it was my turn. My question was that since both the DOJ and the FBI have established a direct correlation between drug trafficking and gun violence, how come the Giffords campaign, or MDA, or Everytown for Gun Safety, or any of the prevent-gun-violence groups do not once mention drug trafficking as responsible for gun violence?

I could tell my question blind-sided them. The only one who answered was the woman from the Giffords campaign, who said that they are focused on gun violence, not drug trafficking. My rebuttal was that even the CDC concludes that the highest risk factor for homicides, especially those with guns, is drug trafficking. I stressed that the anti-gun people were ignoring one of the biggest causes of gun violence. Though I went way over my three-minute time limit, the brief back-and-forth exposed a gaping hole in their agenda.

After the meeting, I did attempt to debate HR 8 with the woman from the Giffords campaign, but she wouldn’t let the facts interfere with her talking points. She’s paid big bucks to toe the company line, not acknowledge the truth or promote effective policy that provides for public safety.

Interestingly, on my way out, one of the event’s African-American volunteers, a big man named Stevon, congratulated me for my comments. Before the town hall, he had brought up the same points, which were summarily dismissed.

So what did I learn?

ONE: these public venues are a great opportunity to make our case. Unlike in social media or through the news outlets, the anti-gunners can’t easily delete our comments. They have to respond.

TWO: focus on an issue that exposes the weaknesses of their agenda. What I noted at this town hall but didn’t mention was that they got everyone stirred up over mass shootings, then segued into expanded background checks even though they admitted that these checks wouldn’t stop mass shootings. It was a bait-and-switch that needed to be spot lighted.

THREE: we can’t rant about rights because that gets little traction with this crowd. You have to call them out on their failures to address the big problems stoking gun violence such as drug trafficking, gangs, and incompetent bureaucrats. Use government sources such as the DOJ, FBI, and CDC to back you up.

FOUR: we must actively engage the various communities to make our case. For example, meet with communities of color to explain that since less than one percent of violent criminals get their guns from a gun show, and more than forty percent get their guns through the black market, then why are we wasting time on expanded background checks to close the gun show loophole? Emphasize that when the local government and the police pursue effective programs that address violent crime, as opposed to gun control, then homicides decrease and as a result we get safer communities.

FIVE: meet with our legislators and make our case. Make them explain why they endorse flawed proposals while ignoring effective policy.

Preserving our Second Amendment rights will take work, but we have truth and reality on our side.

60 YO Man Killed In Self Defense By 23 YO Woman Is Memorialized As “Gun Violence” Victim

Posted on by Lesley Hollywood

60 YO Man Killed In Self Defense By 23 YO Woman Is Memorialized As “Gun Violence” Victim - Rally for our Rights - Bruce Jones Aubrey Bowlin

UPDATE:  On Sunday evening, December 16th, the GunMemorial website quietly removed this perpetrator from their pages after receiving so much backlash from this article.  Unfortunately, we have discovered thousands of other violent criminals who were killed in self defense on their site. We’ll be exposing some of the worst here soon.

On February 8, 2018 a young woman shot and killed her attacker during a public road rage incident.  23 year old Aubrey Bowlin, was riding her motorcycle along I-5 in Milton, Washington when an irate driver began to act recklessly.

According to witnesses, 60 year old Bruce Jones was distraught by the way Bowlin was driving her motorcycle.  He boxed her into a location she could not drive away from. Jones exited his vehicle and physically attacked the young woman who was sitting on her bike. A fight followed, initiated by the much larger man.  At one point, Bowlin head-butted Jones, who then drove Bowlin’s head into the jersey barrier before taking her to the ground.  He hit her and shook her, she described, like a dog shaking a toy in its mouth. He violently tried to rip her helmet off and was choking her with the neck strap.  She believed he was going to choke her to death. Bowlin shot Jones once in the chest when he attempted to climb on top of her.  Jones died at the scene.

No charges were filed and Bowlin was exonerated by the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, as this was a clear case of self defense.  Bowlin was a permitted concealed pistol carrier.  She called 911 after ending the attack with her fatal shot, and waited at the scene.  She did everything right, although according to her, she still suffers from PTSD.

Seems like an open and shut case, right?  Nope.

It’s been discovered that the website gunmemorial.org, which puts up photos of people whose lives have been “lost to gun violence,” is memorializing this perpetrator as a “gun violence victim”.  In fact, 90 virtual candles have been lit for him at the time of this writing.  This is a man who nearly pummeled a 23 year old woman to death on the side of the interstate for the public to see.  And he is being held up as the victim by the anti-gun community.

60 YO Man Killed In Self Defense By 23 YO Woman Is Memorialized As “Gun Violence” Victim - Rally for our Rights - Bruce Jones Aubrey Bowlin

It begs the question of how many other of these so-called “victims” are actually perpetrators.  The anti-gun movement has adopted the term “homicide” when speaking of stats.  But did you know homicide and murder are not the same?  Homicide is all death except suicide – even justified deaths, such as those killed in self defense, as is the example here, as well as law enforcement related deaths.  Murder is a malicious act with the intent to cause death (or serious harm resulting in death).  Aubrey Bowlin could have been a murder victim, but she was not because instead she made Bruce Jones a homicide case.  See how that works?  With the ability to sway public opinion so easily by simply using a different word, it’s no wonder those who wish to to take away an individual’s right to self defense with a firearm would use the term homicide in their argument as it carries a much higher number.  A number that portrays perpetrators as victims.

It doesn’t take much digging into this Gun Memorial website to find their connection to the Gun Violence Archive – the website behind the widely spread number of 307 “mass shootings” in 2018 – a story we completely debunked after doing some serious research. (By the way, that real number is 6, not 307).  Gun Violence Archive also makes a habit out of holding up violent criminals as victims – simply by using the word homicide.

Why is it the same people who claim to support women’s rights, want to take away a woman’s right to defend herself with a firearm?  Help us get this billboard up by donating here: www.gofundme.com/gun-rights-billboards

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Actually, David Hogg…It’s Illegal To Use Tax Money To Fund Gun Control Research

Posted on by Lesley Hollywood

On another episode of “Things Anyone Can Say On Twitter” gun control proponent, David Hogg, recently tweeted: “Congress ought to create a federal tax on gun sales to fund gun violence research.”

For someone who cares so much about laws, and creating new laws (even while current gun control laws are failing at the fault of the government), Hogg himself fails to understand there are currently laws in place that would make it illegal for tax money to be used to fund research into what he calls “gun violence”.

In fact, it is illegal for the arm of government responsible for researching risk and prevention, the Center For Disease Control, to use funding to advocate for or promote gun control.  This is due to 1996’s “Dickey Amendment“.  Most recently, in March, 2018, President Donald Trump addressed the Dickey Amendment in his $1.3 trillion spending agreement, but did not include a change in funding.  Instead it clarified that the CDC can conduct research into gun violence, but cannot use government appropriated funds to do so.

But this brings to question, what would the CDC find if they did unbiased research?  They might find that while gun crime is going down, public perception believes otherwise.

It’s Illegal To Use Tax Money To Fund Gun Research gun crime rally for our rights colorado

David Hogg rose to fame along with fellow classmates as they politicized the February, 2018 Parkland High School shooting and used it as a platform to call for stricter gun control under the guise of March For Our Lives – an organization that works under the umbrella of the Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety.  Since it’s inception, some of Hogg’s classmates have left the movement citing a change of heart when actually talking with gun owners and gaining a better understanding of why they those choose to own firearms.

So, Mr. Hogg, before you continue asking for government to make more and more laws, I’d suggest you learn more about the ones that we currently have on the books.

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You’re Being Lied To About Mass Shootings – And It’s Worse Than You Think

Posted on by Patrick McClintock

It seems like we can’t go a day without the media hyping up yet another story about yet another mass shooting. The media loves to make evil people famous.  And when they start sharing numbers and stats about these shootings, a distracted populace believes them without question.

On November 8, 2018 – the day after the heartbreaking Thousand Oaks shooting – Denver Channel 7, USA Today, Yahoo, and several other mainstream news outlets released articles claiming that there have been 307 mass shootings in the United States during 2018. Rally for our Rights decided to look into this and what we found surprised even us.  The American public is being grossly lied to – and they should care.

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In order to determine how many mass shootings there are, we need to know the definition of a mass shooting. Finding that definition seems easy enough, right?  Think again.  There are actually many definitions of “mass shooting” and most seem to be arbitrarily made up to fit the narrative an organization or publication wishes to push.

Mother Jones defines mass shooting as: “Indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker, excluding the death of the attacker.”

The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as: “Four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter. They also do not remove any subcategory of shooting – meaning they don’t exclude, set apart, caveat, or differentiate victims based upon the circumstances in which they were shot – including crime, gang activity, and domestic/familial incidents.”

The “experts” at Reddit have decided to make up their own definition, therefore Reddit defines a mass shooting as:  “Four plus people injured or killed by firearm, including the gunman.”

Finally we come to the Congressional Research Service’s definition: “The incident takes place in a public area involving four or more deaths—not including the gunman, the shooter selects victims indiscriminately, the violence in these incidents are not a means to an end.”  It should be noted that CRS breaks up shootings involving four or more individuals as public, familial, and felony (robbery, gang activity, etc).  This is because the motives behind each vary greatly.

To make matters even more confusing, the FBI has separate definitions for “mass murder” and “active shooter”.

There are several inconsistencies between each of these definitions. For such a severe issue that allegedly only occurs in the United States, why do we not have a universal definition for this type of event? And why is it the government can agree on the definition, but the gun grabbers won’t use it?

For the sake of this investigation, we used the definition put forth by the Congressional Research Service.  The CRS’s website explains that it “works exclusively for the United States congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and members of both members of the house and senate, regardless of party affiliation.” The website further explains that the CRS  is a “shared staff to congressional committees and members of congress. CRS experts assist at every stage of the legislative process.” To put it simply, congress uses the CRS’s research to develop policy and create laws.

THE LIE

Now that we’re “armed” with the facts we need, lets dissect the statistics being pushed by the media.

The stats used in the news sources cited above stating there have been 307 mass shootings thus far in 2018 are from the Gun Violence Archive.  Okay, let’s look a little deeper into the GVA. The mission statement on their website states it is a “non-profit corporation formed in 2013 to provide free online public access to accurate information about gun related violence in the United States.”

We dug into the website’s “mass shooting” report for 2018. We filtered the list by lowest deaths to highest. Immediately 11 out of the 13 pages were disqualified, as there were between 0 and 3 deaths per incident. That means right away, 287 incidents out of 307 do not qualify as a mass shooting by definition. In fact, 155 of these incidents resulted in zero deaths.  This is unbelievable.

That leaves only two pages to dig through. The most common theme with the remaining list of incidents is that they were primarily either family or domestic violence related. Using the definition used by the CRS, that removes all but six shootings that actually count as a public mass shooting. Yes folks, there have only been SIX mass shootings this year in the United States – not 307.

Here are the six qualifying incidents:

  • February 14, 2018, Broward County Florida (Parkland), 17 dead, 17 injured.
  • April 22, 2018, Antioch, Tennessee, 4 dead, 3 injured.
  • May 18, 2018, Santa Fe Texas, 10 dead, 13 injured.
  • June 28, 2018 Annapolis, Maryland, 5 dead, two injured.
  • October 27, 2018, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 11 dead, 7 injured.
  • November 7, 2018, Thousand Oaks, California, 13 dead, 2 injured.

Six mass shootings compared to 307 is a substantial difference. The media easily plays off the ignorance of the public, taking advantage of the fact that there is not a universal definition of “mass shooting”, and blowing up an issue that, although very tragic, is only part of a larger picture of violent crime, most of which does not involve firearms.

WHY THIS MATTERS

This clearly shows that the media has a blatant disregard for the truth.  They either have an ulterior motive in what they report, or they are too lazy to verify what is being given to them.  It’s likely a bit of both, but the former is rather frightening.  They are manipulating the general populace by creating hysteria through a skewed mass shooter narrative. This in turn will influence public opinion, and ultimately public policy.

Rally for our Rights founder, Lesley Hollywood, released a poll on her Facebook page in coordination with this article.  Lesley was curious what the general public thought had happened when they heard the term “mass shooting.” Out of  508 votes, nearly half of the individuals who participated thought a mass shooting was like what happened in Parkland, FL or Thousands Oaks, CA – not the definition being used by the Gun Violence Archive or many of the others.

gun violence poll rally for our rights mass shootings debunked

This manipulation of perception and public opinion will ultimately be used to conjure up reasons to demonize guns – portraying the objects as evil, with the means of using a lie to go after your ability and your right to keep your family safe and yourself safe.  It also misses the mark terribly at addressing WHY these tragic incidents are happening, and how we can prevent them without infringing on the rights of the law abiding.

*This article has been updated to include the Annapolis, MD incident on June 28, 2018.