Hi, I signed up to weigh in on this. We've actually been having a lively discussion about this over at pafoa:
http://forum.pafoa.org/national-11/...ans-would-like-put-machine-gun-shoot-bbq.html
Basically, it's not clear that the outcome will be beneficial to gun owners. Ajax22 has stated that he wants national
negative media attention, which is what the machine guns are for:
Ajax22 in 1st thread post said:
It is very likely that this will attract a huge amount of backlash from both the university and politicians (Bloomberg et all) but that just means national media attention and more to offer sponsors.
Then he thinks he can spin that negative attention into something positive. He's also hoping his school prohibits the group from organizing a machine gun shoot so they can make it into a 1st Amendment issue. And to use his own words, he wants to "bait" the media into following along:
Ajax22 on pafoa said:
we have the opportunity to bait them into following a (rather bland) story about students advocating for 2nd amendment rights by dangling fully automatic cheese in front of them...
link
The problem is that if he can't pull it off
perfectly, he'll turn lawmakers - and the public - against gun owners in a very gun-hostile political climate, just as election season is starting up. He hasn't said, but it seems he wants to spin it by focusing on the 1st Amendment issue - hoping his school tries to stop him first - and hoping that folks who support the 1st Amendment will also support the 2nd.
Another thing. Here's a news story about the recent alleged terror plot where the suspects wanted to use "automatic weapons" to shoot up a mall.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/10/sudbury_man_imp.html
Luckily they had a hard time getting access to automatic weapons. But here we are, talking about a publicity stunt to show a bunch of college students going out and getting machine guns to parade around on national TV. To me this all seems like a really bad idea, especially in this political climate.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for activism and I try to get people interested in shooting too. But this isn't activism - it's a publicity stunt to try and shock the public into supporting the 2nd amendment by throwing machine guns in their faces.
Earlier this year, US Attorney General Eric Holder said that he wanted to make permanent the expired Assault Weapons Ban. This administration and this Congress are very hostile towards gun owners and conservatives. Do we really want to start kicking that hornet's nest right now?
The cost of
not creating this machine gun
publicity stunt (again,
his words) is that we keep winning in the courts with the law on our side.
The cost of screwing up is renewed cries for another Assault Weapons Ban - using this stunt to bolster support.