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When Single Issue Groups Choose Politics Instead
Riots have overtaken cities and entire zones of cities have become utterly lawless, with local businesses getting hollowed out and children shot. The institutions we’re supposed to be able to turn to for defense, the police, have been nowhere to be seen; ordered to stand down by gutless politicians who care more about appeasing social justice mobs than protecting residents. As a result, Americans are taking defense into their own hands, buying out gun shops across the country. 
Over at the Free Beacon, Stephen Gutowski outlined just how strong gun sales have been over the last few months:
Gun sales once again set a new record for the month of June, but some retailers are reporting that the rush on guns and ammunition has drained their stock nearly dry.
An analysis of background check numbers by industry analyst Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting released on Wednesday indicates that more than 2.3 million guns were sold in the United States during June. That’s an increase of more than 145.3 percent over June 2019. It’s also up from the 1.7 million estimated to have been sold in May, the 1.8 million in April, and just shy of the all-time monthly record of 2.5 million set back in March.
There have now been an estimated 8.3 million firearms sold in the United States since March—a record-setting pace likely to make 2020 the greatest year for gun sales in American history if the trend continues.
Gun and ammunition retailers are having trouble keeping up with the demand as Americans flood stores.
In a rational world, anti-gun groups would see the surge in gun sales this lawlessness has caused and come out hard against the riots and the neutering of the police.
And while we’re discussing the irrational behavior of groups behaving against their own best interests, I wanted to flag this story from a college friend who recently started an advocacy group in New Jersey and tried in vain to place a billboard ad promoting their message. On the Blue Star Union website they explain,
We started a campaign with a fundamental message that we thought was largely uncontroversial. This campaign was conjured up way before the widespread unrest following the killing of George Floyd.
We wanted to spread awareness about a simple reality – the police have no legal duty to protect you.
Many will emotionally jump at this statement, but the fact is – while we can all have a relativist conversation about how the government and police have a moral duty to protect you, according to US Courts, they absolutely have no legal duty to do the same. This has been ruled and confirmed in the US Supreme and District courts. The two most prominent cases are:
Warren v. DC – 1981
Castle Rock v. Gonzalez – 2005Given this legal reality, we embarked on a month-long process to seek a billboard company that would advertise our message to educate the public. Our message was targeted to minorities in urban communities because NJ firearm permitting policy makes it especially easy for urban police departments to hamstring potential applicants. We could not get a single billboard operator to advertise our message. They all balked.
This is the billboard we tried to advertise. If you had to guess what the number one objection to it was – what would it be?
Is it the overt call-to-action to obtain a firearm? No.
Is it the racial undertones of saying “your life matters” spooking corporatists? Nope.
The most cited reason (before the Floyd protests) was something along the lines of “we can’t print that the police have no duty to protect you because we think that’s an opinion, and we don’t want problems with law enforcement.”
One of the founders, Dan Francisco, told me, “We spoke to the NAACP on the phone. The New Jersey chapter was interested, but once they kicked it up to the national chapter, they told us they didn’t want to be part of this message . We both know BLM doesn’t care and isn’t even really about black rights. We are trying to attack the [gun rights] conversation from the left. And so far, predictably, none of the leftist groups will stand by our message.”
Somewhat recently I kicked up a firestorm of controversy when I explained here why I’m not an NRA member, and it my argument boiled down to I don’t think that this single issue group promoting gun rights is actually single issue in focus; they cater way too much to conservative politics and in the process, alienate would-be allies in the process.
Those who care about safety in the Black community and those working against gun rights should be having their own realizations about how dedicated to their mission their own single-issue organizations are.
Published in General 
The reason the NRA went conservative is that all the Blue Dog democrats have been put to sleep. The only legislators who are willing to help are conservatives.
I do think the NRA or GOA should be going full tilt at promoting urban gun ownership. Urban gun owners are the best defense against urban gun control, and will do more than anything to keep crime under control.
I just need to take time out of a serious issue to say “What a fortuitously euphonious name!” Now back to your regular dose of doom.
Back during the Tea Party Days there was a lot of conservative disgruntlement that the NRA didn’t jump fully on board with Right wing politics.
I think once gun control became a leftist identity imperative, the NRA became a conservative group by implication, and the rest is self-fulfilling at that point.
Bingo. If I recall correctly the NRA endorsed Harry Reid of Nevada during his last senatorial run as he had been a useful vote for the NRA at other times. He surely wasn’t the only Democrat they endorsed of more modern times, but the most recent versions have been full-blown anti-civil rights types.
I don’t think that was it. There was controversy over Wayne LaPierre and thoughts that the NRA, like the AMA , was getting too concerned with the officers’ financial affairs. I know there has been controversy about the advertising firm. Now, with the Cultural Revolution going on, those concerns are receding. It had nothing to do with politics.
The phrase “Jack Booted Thugs” as a description of the BATF was by John Dingell. There were pro-gun Democrats once upon a time.
The treatment of black-Americans in the United States is about the best argument for gun rights ever. I know that some folks are annoyed by some of Charlie Cook’s stuff but this article is absolutely worth reading. You get a ton of history from it. Even some lefty black-American people are reconsidering gun laws.
Gun-control groups are generally not really single-issue, in the sense that while they may focus their efforts on that single issue they nonetheless hold the same opinions as most leftists on all sorts of issues–such as skepticism about the First Amendment and support for the right of leftists to infringe on the rights of anyone they disagree with.
Why then do these lefties focus so much on gun grabbing then if they believe the whole deal?
Division of labor? Nobody can do everything in politics, just as no person can design an entire airliner. So everybody works on whatever gets them most excited or whatever niche they were lucky enough to get a job in. Besides, the contradictions would be more embarrassing if the same people worked on causes with blatantly contradictory aspects.
What is the silliest, most trivial complaint you have ever heard a leftist Karen utter?
For me it was “Why is there a coffee shop on this block and another on the next block? Why can’t there be just one per neighborhood that everyone goes to?” and “Why are there six brands of canned soup in the supermarket? It’s too confusing.”
There really are people who don’t like having choices, baffling as that seems to me.
Sometimes they do not like the psychological burden of thinking and choosing. Sometimes they do not like other people having the power to choose. And both forms of that disorder often (but far from always) occur in the same defective mind.
The slave mentality.