Orwell's rule in Delaware: some animal have more right to play politics than others

Remember George Orwell's Animal Farm?

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Apparently only certain people are allowed to organize and lobby the legislators in the General Assembly.

When the Delaware Campaign for Liberty [as well as a lot of Libertarians] put in an intensive lobbying effort after gun-control measure HB 88, this struck not only our local liberal population but also NRA surrogate The Delaware Sportsmans Association as foul play.

First, let's check in at Delawareliberal, where cassandra m. whined that HB 88 should have sailed through the Senate because a deal had been made, after all with the NRA and DSSA:

To say that this defeat is a surprise is an understatement. It’s overwhelming majority in the House should have been an indication to the Senate of just how well this bill had been worked. In addition, the NRA was NEUTRAL on this bill — as good as it gets on a gun measure. How did it get defeated? Ever hear of a group called First State Liberty? 

It is run by Eric Boye, who is plenty new here. And I understand that after HB88 passed in the House, a campaign of robocalling began to get people to contact Senators on this issue. As is often the case, the robocall was more about scaring people than actually informing them. This group is toxic enough that even the Delaware State Sportsmans Association has warned its membership about this group — saying that is is a counterfeit organization that is run by persons with their own interests at heart, rather than those of gun owners.

There are four takeaways here before we get to the DSSA:



1.  The automatic assumption that all gun rights advocates always do and ALWAYS MUST hew to the line of the NRA and its affiliates, and that anybody who doesn't is a fake and a charlatan, even though that's usually what they accuse the NRA of being.

2.  The Senate should have followed the House, because--after all--the House passed this unanimously so it was their bounden duty to follow suit.  Hey, you know, we could save money and just eliminate half the legislature.  Who needs those checks and balances, anyway?

3.  Eric Boye is "plenty new here"?  Only if you haven't been paying attention, cassandra, which I guess you haven't.  Eric has been a stalwart of the Ron Paul campaign in Delaware for years and in 2012 took on the task of organizing the Delaware Campaign for Liberty.  You may not agree with his politics, but Eric has been traveling up and down this state organizing for a long time.  But since all you knew about him was from DSSA, and then you misread that sentence that said the other guy they don't like was "new," I guess you were just naturally confused.

4.  So the First State Liberty PAC [C4L's PAC] is "toxic enough" that even gun rights groups (now, strangely enough, the DSSA that you have roundly condemned in the past is legit) don't like them?  So you can accuse them (without the slightest idea what the hell you're talking about) of being a "counterfeit organization that is run by persons with their own interests at heart" based on the statement of people you regularly diss as "wingnuts"?

Now to the DSSA.  Here's the excerpt, plus a little more, that cassandra is referring to:

Two of these groups, the National Association for Gun Rights and First State Liberty, are not, I repeat NOT, representative of DSSA or NRA here in Delaware. The leaders of these two groups, Dudley Brown and Eric Boye, have their own personal agendas and do not have the best interests of Delaware’s law-abiding gun owners, hunters, sportsmen & women, and Delaware’s Second Amendment activists at heart. In fact, Mr. Brown, isn’t even a Delaware resident. All they want is your money! 

If you receive any of their emails, ignore them, or respond saying “No thanks, I will keep my funds here in Delaware”. 

At this time it is extremely important that we act with one voice. The DSSA and NRA are actively protecting our rights here in Delaware, just as we have for so many years. Outside groups such as these two upstarts serve no purpose other than to divide us, which only helps the anti-gunners.

Here are the takeaways in this one, before we get to the big closer:

1.  cassandra accidentally omits the few sentences that show you precisely why DSSA is upset:  Eric Boye's group is cutting into their fundraising action.  There is not a single sentence about any of the content of what C4L advocates that is bad--just the fact that they are a new group and that you really owe your money to DSSA.

2.  Again:  "All they want is your money!"  I know Eric Boye.  He and I agree on some things and disagree on a lot of others (ironically, we disagreed on how to tackle HB 88), but the man literally spends his life outside of work with his new bride in his truck driving up and down the State going to meetings.  If only three people show up instead of thirty, Eric is there, giving the same speech with the same intensity.  He is one of the original Ron Paul stalwarts, and if he is somehow personally profiting from this activity, nobody has ever seen it.

Now the BIG CLOSER.  Look at that last DSSA sentence:  At this time it is extremely important that we act with one voice.

And here's the rest (and it is important to know that it was written LAST MONTH, before HB 88 even came up in the House):

Even though two of Markell’s bills have passed, they were amended extensively by the DSSA and NRA to make them less harmful and offensive. Remember, the Governor’s Democrats control both chambers and could have passed both of these bills without our input. 

While the Markell administration will treat passage of these bills as a victory, we know better. What finally passed was not as bad as what was introduced. The war is not over. So far it is a tie, which means a win for us. Remember, when you are outnumbered, not losing IS winning.

Except that Eric Boye didn't think "not losing" was "winning," not where HB 88 was concerned.  When it passed the House unanimously, he went to work on the Senate--not to amend it, but to defeat it.

And despite the odds (and I will admit I was in the "amend" category on this one), he did it.

Which is what is upsetting all of our liberal friends and the DSSA--the liberals because they were unfairly blindsided and lost, and DSSA, who loses all credibility because their whole strategy is based on the idea that Democrats can beat them every single time.

There is a lesson here--regardless of how you feel about gun rights--that activists of all types and causes (raw milk, home birth, drug legalization, gun rights) should NEVER buy into the prevailing narrative that they should only play by the rules that the people in power set for them.

That's why they created the two-party system in the first place:  to shut the rest of us out.




Oh, and a final note for DSSA:  it is spelled "counterfeit," not "conterfeit."