mr. drgrant, mike, i think you might be missing my point. agreed people fear what they don't know about, yes? getting in the local townsfolk faces nose to nose, yelling, spitting and sputtering in their faces, calling them names, demanding they change their opinion is not the way to go. i certainly don't pay attention to people who do it to me. my opinions are not popular, i know that, but i'm not afraid to publish them here even though i'm in the minority. and i don't ride the wave with the majority to gather likes.
Did you see anyone "spitting in their faces" at that meeting? I didn't. Hell some of the arguments in favor of the tenants weren't even about
guns. Oh noes maybe
someone in the peanut gallery MAY have called one of them a Karen, but thats not a shocker at this point. Those people are everywhere ruining and disrupting things and not just WRT guns but every aspect of life, town govnernments meetings and HOAs all over the
country. Hell at least one of them
basically described herself as a Karen. not sure if you missed that part, or not. The non karen part of america
is getting sick of them, and thats not a partisan thing either, there are liberals, moderates and conservatives that are getting sick of karens and gladys kravitzes.
Also maybe I'm imagining things but it certainly didnt seem like there was a ton of people there. I wasn't "physically" there though, but when an anti
said something and like what sounded like maybe 6-10 people clap and there's not an explosion of applause or whatever that's not exactly a huge grassroots thing going on there. They couldn't even be bothered to get "the usual suspects" with their logo shirts or whatever to pack the meeting. If I was going
to make a wag Bloomberg, et al probably thought this was stupid and not a good look for them.
wish i had an answer. now it's been 55 years i've watched our gun rights erode. people who think we're getting any of them back are dreaming. the best goa, nra, comm 2a and goal do are slow that erosion down, like tossing a sandbag at the rising tide. and i often think there might not be a 2nd amendment in 100 years. people don't realize amendments can go away. think prohibition.
more defeatist garbage, but in the past decade or so I've seen a lot to the contrary. Maybe not so much in mass but the world exists beyond a bunch
of communist states. BTW prohibition ended because it failed. Prohibition attempts vs guns will fail similarly. We've been watching that failure in slow
motion, every year. Millions more buying guns, crap laws falling because voters will it or courts will it, etc. Other than edge crap like "erpo" (that will eventually get ruled illegal in many places) it doesn't look like we're losing, frankly.
as for this local problem, i can't solve it.
Who says its
actually a problem, outside of those karens? I mean you also saw how unhinged/irrational most of them were, basically saying "I dont care if their conduct is 110% legal, I just dont like guns" once you get to that point its kinda hard to win hearts and minds. There's no lady going "I'm concerned but also I admit part of my concern is because I dont understand how this works." (that's more of a non gun/tepid anti position though vs one willing to show up at a town meeting type of anti position. )
one thought i had was to maybe some sunday, have an open house at the mill. invite the town managers or counsel, whatever they have, the chief of police, deputy chief and let the counsel invite a rational member of the community. coffee, snacks, let them ask questions, meet some of the calmer ffl holders who rent there, give then a walk about. it can't hurt anything, the damage has already been done with the two articles. explain the process in detail what a ffl holder goes thru to get the federal license, the background check procedure a person goes through to buy a gun. the storage and transport laws that are in place that we follow. maybe a representative of one of the local organizations could make themselves available that day. show them who we are and what we are about. a thought is all, i don't see anyone tossing out anything better, just shaking their fists in the air.
Not a horrible idea, however, I think a lot of the people you are referring to are not "blind" or uninformed to the process as you seem to think they are. It's not like town government and the police chief etc are not familiar with the process, the PD has been /intimately/ involved with it as well as providing inspections and this and that for the dealers. Some officials at other levels, that are not familiar might find value in that sort of thing you describe, however others likely would view it as a waste of time like what the karens are basically doing. It's hard to even know honestly wether they care or not. My gut check reaction? Those people on the select board were more annoyed with the premise of the karens than anything having to do about guns. and if some town edict or decision comes out of this etc its not going to be "cuz guns r bad" its "cuz we're sick of listening to the braying". etc.
Let's put it this way, its not as if theres some exigent public safety thing going on here. There's probably a faded crosswalk or a streetlight with a dead
bulb in it not far from the mill that likely poses a greater problem.
There are other people at the mill who likely understand the actual town politics way better than this and would be in a better position to attempt
outreach. One thing I have seen though, in a lot of cases over the years, WRT gun rights, sometimes silence is better than a poorly thought out public outreach attempt, I'll just leave it at that.