My source from the NRA Board Meeting had reported in, and attendance this year was 80,452. This is the second highest attended Annual Meeting. Houston still holds the overall record of 86,228.

Source: NRA Annual Meeting 2016 Attendance | Shall Not Be Questioned

And Shannon Watts could not get but “dozens” that didn’t even fill a small university theater.

But the garage sale of quilts was rather nice.

According to their Facebook page:

While the NRA was in Louisville for its annual meeting, Moms were there, too — with gun violence survivors, faith leaders and supporters — to send NRA leadership a message: We will not rest until meaningful action is taken to protect Americans from gun violence.

There to send a message… well, not there-there but a bit away…inside an University with a weapons-free policy some miles away.  And how many, you wonder? The numbers were so low that even the local bird-dropping catcher, The Courier Journal (rabidly anti gun) could not put enough make up on that pig:

But I wanted to see if there was a recorded measure of fail, so I checked around for more news and found in at WLKY32:

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, and others held a vigil for gun violence victims and survivors at Spalding University Saturday morning.

Quilts were on display during the vigil to symbolize the human toll of gun violence.

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which now has 3 million members, paid a visit to Louisville on the same weekend as the National Rifle Association annual meeting.

Three million members? And they could not fill five frigging rows in a controlled environment?

The only people/groups that Moms Demand/Everytown have any “relevance” with are  fellow Gun Control Advocates and The Media.  And I wonder how longer can they get that bellows blowing before the whole thing collapses.

Barring major event, I am off to be lazy.

RICHMOND — Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s order last month restoring the voting rights of 206,000 felons had an unintended consequence: It’s now easier for those ex-offenders to regain the right to own guns.

Before the order, felons who wanted to legally possess firearms first had to go through the process of having their civil rights reinstated, including the right to vote, to sit on a jury and to run for office.

That process — which involved submitting forms that were scrutinized by the secretary of the commonwealth’s staff, using the governor’s authority — is no longer in place.

Instead, felons who have completed their sentences can go straight to the step of petitioning the circuit court for firearm rights. Prosecutors review those petitions and can intervene if they believe a felon should continue to be barred from owning a weapon.

In Virginia, felon voting rights mean simpler path to gun ownership – WaPo

I have stated long ago that I have no issue with non-violent felons recovering their Second Amendment rights. There are far too many stupid laws that make felonies out of “crimes” that might be best addressed with a fine and some not even should be crimes. But let’s face it, the whole restoration of rights has been an electioneering ploy and a shinning example of why both parties have been stupid about this. The answer is in this paragraph lost in the middle of the article:

McAuliffe’s voting-rights order stressed the “unforgiving stigmatization” of ex-offenders who are not permitted to vote, sit on juries or run for office, saying the policy systematically disenfranchises them — often along racial and socioeconomic lines. The administration says 46 percent of ex-offenders are African American, compared with a statewide population that is 19 percent black.

So the Democrats play at the idea that ex-felon black voters will continue to vote Democrat as this section of the population does (Even though they may have gone to prison on account of was passed by Democrats)  and the Republican go against restoring the rights because they don’t want more voters to go to the Democratic candidates. Simple “assholery” on both side of the political game and has nothing to do with allowing citizens to enjoy the full spectrum of the Bill of Rights after paying their dues to society.

So, a mistake was made and the idea of a bunch of black folks suddenly being able to keep and bear arms has a bunch of white politicians doing anal crunches. And of course, our delightful opponents at CSGV are not happy with the idea either:

Gun-control advocate Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, says the effect of McAuliffe’s order on gun ownership should have been considered more carefully before the governor took action.

“We are concerned that this opens the door for potentially dangerous persons to get their firearms rights restored,” Horwitz said. “It is very important for the courts to understand the risk factors that are involved here.”

Negroes with Guns is still a scary proposition for some political white folk out there. I guess they are not as open-minded and inclusive as they have been telling us all these years. And if the Republican establishment had half a brain (doubtful as of some behavior lately) they would back up full restoration of rights for Non-Violent felons with the same gusto as if they were appropriating funds for their favorite porcine project.

Hat tip to John R.

Once again, I quote from one of my favorite movies:

-Mac said to quote you directly. You can say whatever you want.
-Just… say we were involved.
-That’s true, isn’t it?
–No. But it’s accurate.
Absence of Malice. (1981)

Why? Because of this:

What Ladd said is accurate: the NRA Leadership Forum will be a Gun Free Zone… temporarily. Why? Donald Trump will appear and as he is running for the presidential nomination, he is under Secret Service care.

You have to love Ladd and his Laddites: If we break a GFZ law, we are bloodthirsty criminals. If we follow the law, we are cowards. And there is no way he does not know why the event is going to be weapons-free, but he probably thinks so little of his followers that accurately predicted they will eat the ball of manure without fact-checking as we could see by the replies.

And the sad part? Ladd is not being original. Shannon Watts pulled the same stunt last year in Nashville.

A hit piece on Bob Owens from BearingArms.com came out in RawStory. Full of anger, very short on facts:

Donald Trump will join with his Republican colleagues Friday in addressing the National Rifle Association’s annual Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum. Bearing Arms, run by racist Bob Owens, is co-sponsor of the forum.

In October 2015, Owens suggested that “radical” Democrats will be hanged because they intend to “start a civil war” against Republicans and those who own guns, according toMedia Matters.

If that isn’t bad enough, Owens is most known for targeting the families of slain African-American youths Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and Tamir Rice.

Just a few months after Martin was shot by George Zimmerman, Owens called him “a violent, drug-abusing thug who appeared to get off on hurting people” and “a semi-literate violent criminal.” He also slammed the upcoming musical about Martin’s life, saying that it would be “whitewashing a black heart” and which he called an attempt to “whitewash a thug’s death.”

Meet the big NRA sponsor who loves smearing slain black kids and their families. – RawStory.

Unless you are brain-dead or did not make your due diligence during the trial, Trayvon Martin was indeed a youthful criminal, screwing around with guns and doing drugs. There was even a report from the School’s Resource Officer where burglary tools and jewelry had been found in his backpack. And if you need any more confirmation on his character, while many cities had major demonstrations , well covered by the media, one small city is particularly absent: Miami Gardens, the hometown of TM and where he lived with his mom. You have to wonder why.

 

Just a year later, Owens went after Martin’s mother, saying that she had raised a “monster” and her support to abolish Stand Your Ground laws, like the example cited by a juror explaining Zimmerman’s acquittal, was really more about her own self-promotion.

Hmmm… wasn’t TM shipped to live with his father because Sabrina Fulton could not deal with his bad behavior? I seem to recall that being mentioned plenty times. Oh well, memories can be selective when writing hit pieces.

Owens declared a year later, “good people … will arm themselves against violent young predators like Trayvon Martin” because “any society that hopes to survive simply has no choice.”

And this is shocking because….?

 

After Jordan Davis was shot and killed, his mother, Lucy McBath, became an activist fighting Stand Your Ground laws. Owens claimed, “she has become radicalized, and now travels the nation attempting to strip law-abiding citizens of their most basic natural right as a human being, the right [to] bear arms for self-defense.”

Hey, I lambasted McBath not too long ago, how come I did not get accused like Bob? That is just racist!

The language in the Stand Your Ground law was included as an instruction to the jury in the Trayvon Martin case against George Zimmerman. Before that law was enacted, jury instructions were drastically different.

The author just discovered that water is wet! Yes, the SYG was included in the jury instructions because it is a standard set of rules to be used in all homicide cases. Just check around how many cases have been thrown out because of bad or incomplete jury instructions. And as for the jury instructions changing after SYG was introduced…well, Duh!

But I saved the best for last: The Comments! Here are some samples:

So we have penis jokes, physical attribute jokes, Redneck jokes, assorted anger-fueled rhetoric, I think one rabid  invitation to a duel and the same guy explaining why Bob has anger management issues… OK.

Add some white make up, red noses and we have a train car full of clowns.

It was not that long ago when we were reading political pundits announcing that Gun Control should follow the example of Gay Rights. In fact, some activists stood behind the president demanding a solution to “gun violence.”

“While our congressional leadership has refused to do anything at all, the President took action to help address our nation’s ongoing cycle of gun violence and we will be monitoring its impact,” said Rea Carey, National LGBTQ Task Force Executive Director. “If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem.”

Source: What Gun Control, LGBT Rights Have in Common | Advocate.com

That was January of this year. Day before yesterday, another Gay Rights group managed to place a legal bomb in the field of battle:

A group that advocates for gay Americans to carry firearms says its Tuesday victory in federal court against a restrictive concealed carry law in the nation’s capital is a twofold win for their cause.
Pink Pistols leader Gwen Patton says U.S. District Judge Richard Leon handed the group not only a win with real-world effects but fantastic free publicity for its mission.Leon issued a preliminary injunction against the city’s requirement that residents supply a specific “good reason” ª generalized fear of crime doesn’t cut it – to acquire a license to carry a gun, finding that requirement is likely unconstitutional.
The judge did not stay his injunction, meaning a lower standard for reviewing license applications is in place unless either Leon or the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit presses pause as the lawsuit continues.But so long as the injunction stands, Patton believes it could have a deterrent effect.“It’s been almost an automatic assumption that gay people won’t fight back, that they’re passive, they’re weak,” she says. “We’re putting it out there that you don’t know which of the gay people out there are armed. … Don’t attack gay people because that could be a really bad decision.”

Source: Gay Gun Group Believes Its D.C. Court Win Puts Homophobes on Notice | US News

Basically, they came out of the closet, guns blazing and hitting doubles. Now, Pink Pistols is not a large organization or command the immediate attention of the traditional media with one snap of the fingers, but they do represent a chink in  LGQTB armor who is mostly lock-stepped with the Ultra Liberal politics. They owe no allegiance to anybody but themselves and they are going to be a hard target to destroy by the lib machinery, least they run the risk of being cataloged as (take your pick)-phobic.

Pink Pistols like to say Armed queers don’t get bashed. Good luck to our Opposition trying to counter that.