[BearwWthoutBorders] Watching the tube and all on the "gun control" issue

Tue Dec 18 16:38:53 EST 2012

Well, the NRA staffers do work very hard, David.  Have to, to keep you zealots at arm's length.  I don't know what the organization's salary scale is but I'd guess it's roughly comparable to that of a major labor union.  Work that I've done for NRA at various points -- helping train local groups in several Western states (North Dakota and Idaho and Wyoming) re effective news media approaches -- has been purely volunteer and for basic expenses only.

When we arrived here in 1997 after years of North Dakota adventures, the senior NRA person in this general area told me that some of the newspapers and other media in the setting were tagging the NRA as "paramilitary."  That contention is nonsense -- the NRA has a long standing position against citizen militias and such. (We'd handled that in North Dakota.) He, getting along in years and a Federal employee from a town near here, simply didn't know how to deal with that calumny.  I did, and we had that straightened out pronto.  So I got started on that in this region -- and was then approached by Wyoming people.

Initially, local people in all sorts of situations seem awed by the media.  I never have been and I developed very effective PR approaches and journalistic skills even before I was 22 and 23.  Took a couple of university classes to round out my savvy.  But my approach, always, is to train -- often without appearing to do so -- local people to handle those things directly themselves.

Best, H

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.

Key pieces from our big Jackson Mississippi Movement 
scrapbook.  Three consecutive and full pages beginning with
this Link:  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
And see my reflection ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded in Fall 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David McReynolds 
  To: Hunter Gray ; Friends of Hunter Bear 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 12:37 PM
  Subject: Re: [BearwWthoutBorders] Watching the tube and all on the "gun control" issue

  A good try, Hunter, but I'm not persuaded. However you are on target (in my view) on the other aspects of the problem, from monitoring mental illness (though we would both agree the sane folks do most of the killing - ie, war), to the violent games that are so popular.

  The NRA staff folks make a good living at what they are doing. 

  Peace,
  David McReynolds

  On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 2:27 PM, Hunter Gray <hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org> wrote:

    Idaho Mountains:  December 18 2012:

    When I haven't been outside, shoveling and dealing with rain-into-snow-into-ice [and grateful that I have heavy Lowa Size 16 Mountain Boots that prevent disastrous slippage on slick stuff], I've been listening to the gun control folk on TV.  CNN, in some quarters, has increased its anti-gun sentiments -- but not yet to the point of becoming, once again, the "Clinton News Network" of the '90s. Not surprisingly, MSNBC, which totally capitulated a couple of years ago to the superficial and often supercilious "liberalism" of the central Atlantic coast, has the full retinue of anti-gunners.  They seem especially fond of those relatively few who have defected from the gun rights ranks.

    Defections under pressure always remind me of this little colloquy on Satan -- in which, presumably, neither of the two, one the inquisitor and the other the focus, actually believed:

    "[He] is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic.  He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness.  [If a setback occurs] he shrugs his shoulders; he has seen many weaken and creep out of his ranks with pompous pretexts. . ." 
    Ivanov to Rubashov in Darkness at Noon [Koestler].

    I wrote last evening on Redbadbear that "Anti-gun people, including the few there are on RBB, don't strike me as knowing much at all, if anything, about firearms, hunting, self-defense. "  I underscore that and add, and many know little about firearms law. (Some may know many things I don't but there are things about which I do know much, often experientially.)  A close family connection was in a meeting yesterday in a mid-western city.  The topic had nothing to do with guns but eventually got around to the subject.  Our person said "Virtually everyone there assumed all someone had to do was go to a gun shop with money and come out right away with a machine gun."

    Of course, that's flatly untrue.  Machine guns -- and fully automatic, genuine military assault rifles -- have been banned for civilian use for decades, the former since the year I was born. What are loosely termed "military assault rifles" in these tragic civilian situations are simply conventional semi-automatics, dressed up in superficial military clothing.  

    And there's a good deal of paper work and related ritual involved in any gun store purchase.

    Another recent quote of the same genre from New York City:  "Anyone can go down to Virginia, buy a truckload of guns right away, and come up and sell them on the New York City streets."

    And I heard someone on either CNN or MSNBC ask, in bewildered fashion, "Why do people need more than one gun?"  Well, different firearms for different purposes: e.g., small game, big game, quail, ducks and geese, target shooting, protection.  Simple as that.  I now have six firearms (having given some away to younger family members):  four lever action big bore hunting rifles (Marlins and Browning High Grade Winchester replicas), a single barrel .10 gauge Magnum shotgun via New England Firearms, a .22 Magnum Ruger revolver. (I don't like semi-automatics but many people do and they're perfectly legal.)

    Lots of talk demonizing the NRA from people who really know little or nothing about it.  Some talk attacking gun owners in general -- but still little on mental health issues and the sociological causes of crime -- and virtually nothing about the effects of our long term and endless wars on developing psychotics.  (Apparently the kid who did the killings in Connecticut was  a very, very long time obsessive devotee of the most violent video war games.  Where were his family members, others?)

    The NRA presently has more than four million members. This current situation will draw even more. There are at least 80 million gun owners in this country and a truly vast number of firearms.  The two relatively recent USSC decisions clarifying the 2nd Amendment as a full member of the Bill of Rights stand tall, though not totally absolute, in a firearms protective sense -- and have ended what was once the decades of ungrounded talk about the 2nd meaning only state militias.

    And many, if not most, political races tend to be pretty close these days.

    See this long and full and pluralistic web page of ours on many things relating to firearms:  http://hunterbear.org/BLOODSTAINED%20TRAIL.htm

    And here is something interesting that came to me just this morning: http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/18/yes-guns-are-dangerous-but-they-also-sav

    We have a host of other issues.  When, for example, do we see bona fide Labor Law Reform -- now decades overdue?

    Hunter Gray (Hunter Bear) Benefactor Life Member, NRA; Life Member of North Dakota Shooting Sports Association

    HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
    Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
    Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
    www.hunterbear.org 
    (much social justice material)

    I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.

    Key pieces from our big Jackson Mississippi Movement 
    scrapbook.  Three consecutive and full pages beginning with
    this Link:  http://hunterbear.org/a_piece_of__the_scrapbook.htm
    And see my reflection ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
    ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE:
    http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

    The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
    http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
    (Expanded in Fall 2012. Photos. Material on our Native
    background.)  And see Personal Background Narrative: 
    http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm  (Updated into 2012) 

    For the new (11/2011) and expanded/updated
    edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
    with a new and substantial introduction by me.
     http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

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