Great Satan, Inc.

A 2nd Amendment rally was held in Phoenix, Arizona today, the ‘Day of Resistance’ rally, put on by the Phoenix TEA Party. This rally was well attended, with a crowd of 1,500 according to event organizers. Compare that figure to the showing at Congressman Matt Salmon’s office during the Obama For America/Organizing For Action’s National Day of Action in support of gun control. Coincidentally, Congressman Matt Salmon was a featured speaker at today’s pro-gun rally.

Phoenix ‘Day of Resistance’ rally at the Arizona capitol. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu speaking (visible on the right).

Much of the crowd was armed with revolvers, semi-auto handguns, AR-15s, and/or various other rifles. Despite the large number of armed individuals present, only two law enforcement officers were spotted at the rally. One Arizona Department of Public Safety officer who used his car to enforce closing the street in front of the capitol, providing safe passage for all of the pedestrian traffic. The other law enforcement officer was Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, another featured speaker at the rally. As commenter Zermoid noted over at Shall Not Be Questioned, “The fact they felt they needed more cops for an anti rights rally than for a pro gun rally (where alot of the people were probably packing) says ALOT!”

Three local news stations were there to cover today’s event too. I haven’t watched any of the coverage of today’s event, but I have no reason to believe it will be any different than the coverage of last weekend’s pro-rights rally.

UPDATE (five minutes after posting):  I forgot to mention this rally was competing with the International Sportsmen’s Expo, the big Crossroads of the West gun show, and the Winter Range – SASS National Championship of Cowboy Action Shooting at Ben Avery Shooting Range Facility.

UPDATE 2 (9:34AM 2/24/13):  Local CBS affiliate KPHO 5 covered the rally without any fear-mongering nonsense.

CBS 5 – KPHO

[Read more →]

President Obama’s OFA campaign machine, recently renamed Organizing For Action, called for a National Day of Action in support of laws that would limit your right to self-defense, ban guns and magazines, and devote your tax dollars to the creation of anti-gun propaganda.  I was curious what an anti-gun rally looked like, so I headed over to a planned location today for a better look.

From the Arizonan’s For Gun Safety mailer:

a number of rallies at local Congressional offices to promote the President’s Plan to Reduce Gun Violence, including Universal Background Checks, a Ban on Assault Weapons and High Capacity Ammunition Magazines, a National Gun Trafficking Law, and Research on Gun Violence by the Centers for Disease Control.

Here’s a photo outside of Congressman Matt Salmon’s Gilbert, AZ office, 15 minutes into the big protest.

I kept looking around for this protest, because surely it would be a large gathering, based on the amount of time the media provides to anti-rights groups and their anti-gun agenda.  Surely, the balance in viewpoints the media claims to strive for would indicate that this should be a big rally, dwarfing the turnout for the pro-Second Amendment rally held at the state capitol last weekend.

I counted six police officers outside watching the building, which is five more than I saw at last weekend’s pro-gun rally, so I had to be at the right place.  The officers were keeping a close eye on me, probably because of my snazzy GUTNTAG seasonings T-shirt.  As I was leaving, I finally spotted a group of people gathered on a balcony at the same building where Congressman Salmon’s Arizona office is located.  I can’t be certain these six to ten people were protesters, or just office workers outside on a smoke break, as they didn’t have any signs.  If they were exercising their right to petition an elected official, I wasn’t about to interfere with their rights.

So there you have it, that’s what an anti-rights/anti-gun rally looks like in Arizona.   Keep this in mind when the news media gives equal, or greater, amounts of airtime to anti-gun groups in the name of “balance”.

[Read more →]