I was walking across the bridge from the LP Field parking lot to the NRA Meeting in Nashville, when I came across three active members of this group. They are members of a civic minded service organization that saw a need and decided to fill it. They created a local gun exchange that allows like minded individuals to find each other and trade and sell firearms privately. They do this purely as a civic virtue; they make no money at it. They have only been in existence for three years, and have about 10,000 members.
This is the sort of thing that is happening in the gun culture all over the country. Denied a place at the table by the old media and its agenda, denied even a legitimate existence, the gun culture has self organized in ways to use new media to create what Brian Anse Patrick calls "Horizontal Interpretive Communities". It is all explained in his superb book "Rise of the Anti-Media". The book examines how the gun culture overcame the opposition of the elites, and brought concealed carry to the nation.
These new groups form to meet particular needs. They cannot help but be politically aware; and that makes them serious players in local and state politics. It is a direct return to the civic virtue noticed by De Toqueville in Democracy in America.
The Middle Tennessee Gun Exchange is not an overtly political group; but its very existence as a legitimate organization is threatened by disarmists such as Michael Bloomberg and the organizations that he has funded.
Private sales provide a safety valve that prevents gun registration, and therefore guards against slow, piecemeal gun confiscation, over generations.
I was pleased to meet these civic minded young men, and I congratulate them on doing good work for the community.
I am sure that their efforts are appreciated by many.
Definition of disarmist
©2015 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included. Link to Gun Watch
Police: George Zimmerman involved in Florida shooting
ReplyDeleteBy Mariano Castillo and AnneClaire Stapleton, CNN
Zimmerman apparently suffered a minor gunshot wound, CNN affiliate WESH-TV reported, citing the police chief.
www.cnn.com/2015/05/11/us/florida-george-zimmerman-shooting/index.html
He's fine. Sprayed with glass.
ReplyDeleteWalked into the hospital on his own.
www.wesh.com/news/george-zimmerman-involved-in-shooting-in-lake-mary-police-say/32943828
Our local in the Cleveland area said he was shot in the face.
An AP story, anything gun related you can't believe them.