WI: strategy and brainstorming meeting

[carebear]

Oh good. Thanks guys.

I really hope you can do more than tread water for the next couple years. If I suddenly get much smarter and come up with a great idea I'll let you know.

 

[Strings]

I hope, Mr Bear, that you won't mind us NOT holding our collective breath?

 

[carebear]

That's only funny cause it's true.

 

[StopTheGrays]

Bump.


Can this be copied over in Rallying Point in case this thread gets buried?

 

[Demiurge]

I personally think you need to start in Milwaukee. Obviously not because it's the most important, but in terms of crime -- it's ground zero. I think you need to find people in the inner city that support this, as well as people in the rural areas of Wisconsin. CCW has a much greater impact on the residents of Milwaukee than every other municipality in the entire state of Wisconsin combined.

Just my $0.02

 

[Monkeyleg]

Demiurge, I understand your point.

We obviously have a large concentration of WCCA volunteers in and around the Milwaukee area. But we also have a large number of volunteers in the northeastern part of the state. And many have complained that, by my focusing on the Milwaukee area, they're being ignored or inconvenienced.

We also have a lot of volunteers in the northwestern part of the state. I'm hoping that the Oshkosh location will be a bit more convenient for them.

"I think you need to find people in the inner city that support this..."

Please do not take the following as any kind of personal criticism of you. It's just what happened, and it's the way it is.

Back in 2003, Jim Fendry and Don Kingsbury of the WI Pro-Gun Movement, along with your humble poster (me) were invited to speak before a meeting of the Sherman Park Community Association.

Bear in mind, this is my old neighborhood. My wife and I had a lovely home in Sherman Park for nine years, and left in 1992 due to the high crime.

Jim, Don and I were to talk about the concealed weapons law, and provide counterpoint to the assistant DA John Chisolm (who's now the DA for Milwaukee county ), as well as some dunderhead from the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort.

Jim got up to speak, and was almost instantly drowned out by the shouting of very large women who screamed, "you rich white boys just come up here and sell guns to our kids," or "what are you NRA folks doing to our kids?"

Jim, Don and I literally ran from that meeting, with police officers giving us cover as we got into our car.

The number of people from Milwaukee's north side who contact me to be part of this effort could probably be counted on one hand. In fact, I can only think of one African-American man who has called a few times to talk about how he can help. And he's just amazed that he's the only one.

The anti-gun Democrats in Milwaukee have done a very good job of making the guns the demons.

Your 11 year-old son forced a female classmate to give him oral sex while the class was in session? (True Milwaukee story). Well, it must be the guns!

Your 14 year-old son and his pals dragged a waitress walking home from work into an alley, gang-raped her for 45 minutes, made a bonfire of her clothing, and danced around the fire? (True Milwaukee story). It has to be the guns!

Your 15 year-old son and his friends got "dissed" by some older guy, and kicked, stomped and beat him to death with everything from feet to pieces of wood siding? (Another Milwaukee true story). Well, we just have to do something about guns!

Your 13 year-old son and about twenty other guys decided it would be fun to gang-rape an 11 year-old girl, take pictures, urinate on her, and God knows what else? (Another Milwaukee true story). Well, it's gotta be the guns!

And if it's the guns, then it's the NRA. And if it's the NRA, then it must be us.

Good luck selling concealed carry on the North Side. The anti-gunners have done a fantastic job of convincing residents of high-crime neighborhoods that giving up their guns is the best way to combat gun-wielding punks.

 

[Demiurge]

I take no offense to that at all because it's the reality of the situation.

I don't expect that the pro-gun movement in Wisconsin will be able to convince those who have already convinced themselves that guns are the problem that CCW is putting the power back in their hands.

Most of those folks know someone who was shot and killed due to drugs, gang violence, robbery, and a myriad of other things. They get caught up in the emotion of it all, and the belief that if guns weren't around their loved ones would still be.

I know there are African Americans and Hispanics in the inner city who are pro-gun, but for whatever reason aren't motivated to change anything -- or feel they have no outlet/voice. It's at this end that I completely sympathize with your frustrations when trying to get these people involved. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

It was not my intention to try and act as if my comment about reaching out to the inner city folks was an easy task, or that it was something that hasn't been tried before.

I live in an area of Milwaukee that's quite a mixed bag, but I am out of here on August 1st of this year. My family is from Brookfield and Hartford, so believe me when I say I don't get the inner city mentality when it comes to guns. I worked pizza delivery during school years back and some of he neighborhoods I would go in were downright scary. It was my choice to work that type of job, but I did not have the choice to protect myself. I have to believe that I am not the only one who has felt like that in the inner city.

When I have a young black co-worker tell a 6' 6" white boy like me that even he wouldn't deliver to a particular area in the city -- you've got a problem. 3 blocks from me a kid was gunned down who was a student at UWM delivering sub sandwiches for a local sub shop. All over $30. He had no way to defend himself.

I really believe that getting folks from the heartland and the inner city in an ad campaign together would be one of the best things. The black community needs to get involved with this because it affects them more than anyone else. Obviously the issues in that community run way deeper than just getting CCW legislation.

Look what happened with Adrial White. Not saying he was a good guy, but he may spend life in prison for defending his property. Think there aren't people in the black community that have the common sense to see how wrong that sentence was?

Ah well, it's all very frustrating, especially since this state put that same jackass Doyle back in office. :banghead:

 

[AJ Dual]

Missouri

John Ross (Author of "Unintended Consequences" fame) has an explanation on his blog as to why inner city minorities, who one would superficialy think have the most to gain from CCW, are virulently opposed to it. He had a conversation with a "lone black supporter" over Missouri's efforts to pass CCW.

I suspect that even if inner city residents don't specifically think the way it's outlined below, they subconciously fear it is so, and it helps explain Monkeyleg's harrowing experience...

http://www.john-ross.net/race&rtc.htm

Which brings me to the Right-To-Carry issue. Missouri is unfortunately one of the five remaining states which absolutely prohibit honest adults from carrying a concealed firearm for protection. There is no permit available here under any circumstances. The legislature passed Right-To-Carry last month, but it is not yet law, and there is fear that our Governor may veto the measure, although I believe there are enough votes for a veto override. (7/3/03 update: Gov. Holden just vetoed RTC in a big ceremony this afternoon in St. Louis County. 9/11/03 Update: The Missouri House and Senate just overrode Governor Holden's veto of RTC. Missourians just got some of their rights back, after 129 years.) I wrote an article for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on this issue, but they want you to pay $2.95 to read it online. I'll put my article up on my site when I get the text loaded.

When discussing this matter, people inevitably bring up Missouri’s 1999 ballot referendum on Right-To-Carry, which was narrowly defeated (with a dismal 30% voter turnout, I might add.) The fact is that the measure passed in almost every county in the state. The defeat came from the fact that two very large urban precincts in St. Louis and Kansas City were over 90% opposed. At the time, I thought this was vote fraud (and to be honest, I still think that was a factor). Ninety percent? You can’t get ninety percent agreement on anything.

A black businessman (who was one of the handful of St. Louis city residents who voted for the referendum) and I were discussing the recent passage of RTC. I brought up the referendum results, and said I could not understand why blacks had been so uniformly against the measure. The proposal was a "shall issue" one, where if you satisfied the requirements (training, fingerprints, no criminal record, no mental illness, etc.) you couldn’t be denied the permit just because the sheriff didn’t like the idea of people besides the police having guns. The businessman stared at me.

"I thought you were good at math," he said. I allowed as to how I felt that I was. "Then you must never have taken Statistics and Probability." I told him I had done this also, and that it had been one of the most rewarding math classes I had ever taken (and incidentally was taught by Amherst’s professor Denton, who is black.) "Then you must be cowed enough by political correctness to never think of applying statistics and probability to anything involving race." Finally I admitted that this last accusation might be true.

"Then I am going to ask you two true-or-false questions. One: Do blacks in the city of St. Louis have large extended families?" I answered in the affirmative. "Two: Is it true that in St. Louis, over 40% of the black males between the ages of 17 and 25 have criminal records?" I told him that was also true, unfortunately.

"So here is the important question: What are the chances of a black person of voting age in St. Louis having at least one relative with a criminal record? Assume we define ‘relative’ broadly, to include the young men who father the children of our female relatives, whether married to them or not." He sat there waiting for my answer.

"Are we talking fathers, stepfathers, uncles, brothers, stepbrothers, male cousins, sons, stepsons, nephews, mothers’ boyfriends, aunts' boyfriends, sisters’ boyfriends, daughters’ boyfriends, stepdaughters’ boyfriends, female cousins’ boyfriends, nieces’ boyfriends, as well as anyone actually married to a female relative?" I asked. He nodded. "Then I’d say there's nearly 100% probability that at least one relative would have a criminal record." He smiled at me like a teacher who has just gotten the right answer from one of his slower students.

"So," I said, "I'm to believe that the black sentiment in St. Louis was ‘I wish young Tyrone would stop robbing people, but I don’t want one of the people he robs to shoot him dead.’ Is that it?" I asked.

"You’ve got it exactly," he told me.

"But why? I mean, honestly, if some guy was married to my cousin and mugged people for a living, I’d figure he was making his own choices and could damn well take the chance of being blasted. I wouldn’t vote away my rights to help his sorry ass."

"What if it wasn’t just your one cousin’s husband, but 40% of all your male relatives between the ages of 18 and 25? What if that was, oh, I don’t know, a dozen people?" Suddenly I didn’t know what to say.

"You don’t feel that way," I said finally.

"I’m an Uncle Tom. I’ve recently come to realize that I now have very few black friends."

This statement filled me with an ineffable sadness. I know that we will get Right-To-Carry here in Missouri, even if the Governor vetoes it. That’s not the issue. And every black Missourian with a criminal record isn’t going to get shot by an armed citizen—we all know that, too. In over 98%** of the cases where a licenseholder encounters a criminal, he stops the crime without firing a shot. It’s that way in Atlanta and every other big city with a large black population in a Right-To-Carry state, so there’s no reason to think it would be any different in Kansas City or St. Louis.

But the O.J. trial and what the black businessman said has stuck with me. What hope can we have, I wonder, if the values that blacks hold dear are mutually exclusive of those held by whites?

John Ross 6/23/03

 

[Standing Wolf]

"Are we talking fathers, stepfathers, uncles, brothers, stepbrothers, male cousins, sons, stepsons, nephews, mothers’ boyfriends, aunts' boyfriends, sisters’ boyfriends, daughters’ boyfriends, stepdaughters’ boyfriends, female cousins’ boyfriends, nieces’ boyfriends, as well as anyone actually married to a female relative?" I asked. He nodded. "Then I’d say there's nearly 100% probability that at least one relative would have a criminal record." He smiled at me like a teacher who has just gotten the right answer from one of his slower students.

We saw it in Missouri. We're seeing it in Wisconsin today. We're not seeing it in Illinois, but only because the topic of respecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms isn't even within a mile of the bottom of the agenda.

Lyndon Johnson's so-called "great society" chickens have come home to roost. We handed out billions of dollars in so-called "welfare" payments, created a vast criminal under-class, and now wonder why our rights are in thrall to it.

 

[jenniferjane]

I haven't heard much talk about this in the past week or so...is the meeting still on for Saturday, 1/27?

-Jen

 

[Gene_WI]

I will be there. Can we get a pre-meeting thumbs up.

 

[Monkeyleg]

Yes, the meeting is still on. 10 am tomorrow.

Don't know what will come of it, but I'm hopeful that some new ideas will be put up for discussion.

 

[Strings]

BTW Dick, I'll probably be running late: gotta take Spoon to work for 9:45. So expect me between 10:30 and 11:30...

 

[Monkeyleg]

Strings, you've never been on time. Call ahead at about 3 pm to see if the meeting is still going.