SALT LAKE CITY — A collection of gun control supporters took a list of 20,000 signatures that were gathered online, most from outside of Utah, to Governor Gary Herbert’s office Friday.
Their goal is to get the governor to support the right of public universities and colleges to keep guns out of meetings and assemblies.
The inspiration for the petition came from Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist critic of video games who canceled a speech at Utah State University after receiving death threats and asking the school to prevent guns from being present in the meeting space, which school officials said they could not do because of the state’s laws regarding firearms.
via Gun control groups ask Gov. Herbert to support campus restrictions | fox13now.com.
The written article does not tell you how many of the signatures came from Utahns unless you see the whole video and get to 2:22. There you will get to find out that about 400 signatures came from the Beehive State. That would come to (if my trusty calculator is right) just two percent of the John Hancocks collected.
In the article and the video we are introduced to Dee Rowland and Chelsi Archibald who were behind this signature gathering. Both are active on liberal causes and Gun Control but after a dose of Google-Fu I found out that they do that under the banner of their religious faith: Ms. Rowland as a catholic and Ms. Archibald as Mormon.
I find a bit disturbing that people who are openly using the banner of their respective churches apparently have no problem making a production of a petition with barely a 2% support among their neighbors and fellow Utahns. Neither faith supports a sleigh-of-hand for the “greater good” or trying to acquire fame by presenting such a misleading petition. They had to know that they only gathered 400 signatures that matter so, why go along with it? Pride? Were they hoping to deceive people with the big number with the expectation that the 400 number be overlooked or ignored?
This kind of tactics always backfires. Their loss, our win.
I read once that “The greater good” is among the more evil motivations out there, because it can be used to justify doing any number of “lesser evils” so long as they are done for the “greater good.” See also: Why the Tau are still not the “good guys” of the Warhammer 40,000 setting.
(Hint: It’s the Necrons.)
I have been known to reprimand individuals who use deceptive tactics to try to spread Christian messages. If you have to lie about your message in order to spread it, is it worth spreading? The word of God is powerful enough to stand on its own, trying to trick people into accepting it only poisons your own message.
Trying to use the word of God to spread other insidious messages also poisons it. This is part of the reason Christianity still hasn’t recovered from some of the things done during the Crusades.
I’m reminded of “Hot Fuzz” at the moment…
That a good thing or a bad thing?
Have you seen it? Great movie. I’m trying not to spoil it, but, yeah, that’s the baddie’s motivation.
First up, Anita Sarkeesian, from all evidence presented by law enforcement, SCHEDULED her talk in Utah for the sole purpose of cancelling it. There are a bunch of her talks online, and she doesn’t draw a big crowd so there was no reason why she couldn’t have held the talk off campus…maybe in that Bishop’s church.
Second, I know we’ve both seen a ton of online anti-gun petitions signed by both “B. Odinson” and “J. Kilgore” who happen to both be the same person, tho they have different addresses!
So yeah, 20,000 collected nation wide isn’t that big a deal, but I also wonder how many of those signatures are real.