Clever, an updated version of a classic. Click on the image to go to the source page.
Update: They forgot the hunters. We need them too.
Guns 4 Cameras is one of those youth advocacy groups that try to convince young kids to leave the webcam whore world and the YouTube video-blogging scene behind them and become a responsible citizen by teaching marksmanship, firearms safety, and instilling a lifelong love of the shooting sports.
Hopefully before these young kids fall prey to the deadly internet disease, Guns 4 Cameras tries to convince them to turn in these evil cameras, webcams and related objects, many of which are available in many neighborhoods for cash on a no-questions-asked basis. After going through a 12 step training process, and upon the occasion of their eighteenth birthday, these youth are awarded with voucher which they can exchange for ammunition, further lessons, or they could use towards the Civilian Marksmanship Program firearm of their choice.
Guns 4 Cameras works to try to prevent such tragedy such as this 15 year old girl who sold videos and pictures of herself on teh tubes of internet. Now that she’s been caught making child porn of herself, and when she gets out of jail, she’ll have to register herself as a sexual predator for the rest of her life.
OK, I’m kidding about all of that stuff above. Guns 4 Cameras is one of those anti-freedom gun groups. Despite the name, and despite the fact that the more logical domain name “Cameras4Guns.org” is still available, their actual purpose is to get young people to steal their parents legally held firearms and exchange them for video cameras. Or something like that. I couldn’t get past the fact that this is a group that lumps people age 18-24 into the “kids” group to cook the books on their statistics. Nor could I get past the fact that they declare that swimming pools are more deadly than firearms[1] for those 24 and under kiddies on their home page.
Ohh look! They have a MySpace presence too!
[1] Alphecca: Pools More Dangerous Than Guns
Blaine Harden, writing for the Washington Post, pulls a quote from freelance outdoors writer Pat Wray, implying that the grassroots outrage over Jim Zumbo’s gun bigotry blog post was the fault of the NRA:
“This shows the zealousness of gun owners to the point of actual foolishness,” said Pat Wray, a freelance outdoors writer in Corvallis, Ore., and author of “A Chukar Hunter’s Companion.” Wray said that what happened to Zumbo is a case study in how the NRA has trained members to attack their perceived enemies without mercy.[1]
I spent much of Saturday reading and commenting to the blog reaction to this news article. Many pointed the finger straight at the NRA and made comments like “they eat their own”. (You can peruse these blogs with a simple Technorati Search)
Actually, The NRA was a latecomer to the party. I noticed that the NRA stepped in with their press release after Zumbo resigned. In their press release, the NRA rightly credited “grassroots response in support of the Second Amendment”, and not themselves.
Furthermore, Pat Wray seems to be a shill for the American Hunters and Shooters Association[2], which itself is a sham “reasonable” firearms enthusiast organization funded by the stealthy anti-gun Joyce Foundation[3].
I’ve already written about Jim Zumbo’s comments and his apologies that fell flat, please look here for more info on that. Instead, I’d like to sketch out a timeline of the incident. Times are approximate, because in most cases I can’t be 100% sure of what timezone certain web servers are operating on.
Feb 16, 2007- Jim Zumbo writes his original post. Tam summed this up best in a single sentence, “On Friday evening, a gunwriter who was apparently tired of his 42-year career put his word processor in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”
Feb16, midnight- Jim’s original post attracts 1 comment.
Feb17, 8:15 PM- Over on AR15.com, “IIRC” notices Zumbo’s blog post and starts a thread. This thread, as of today, spans 59 pages.
Feb 17, 10:52 pm- TD gets his licks in as the first known blogger.
Feb 17, 2007, 11:24 PM- The other huge firearms enthusiast forum, The High Road, starts their Zumbo thread off with a post by “blackhawk2000″ (Update)
Feb17, midnight- Jim’s original post attracts an additional 193 comments for this day
Feb 18 at 1:49 AM- Xavier picks up the Zumbo story, “A New Gun Control Advocate”
Feb 18, 10:02AM- Tam runs with the Zumbo story.
Feb 18, 01:29 PM- first letter from Tommy Millner, CEO and President of Remington, shows up in the comments of Zumbo’s blog
Feb 18, 02:39 PM- Glenn Reynolds runs with the Zumbo story.
Feb 18 at around 04:21 PM- Jim posts his first, (still confused about the issues), apology. This second post attracts 413 comments in about an hour, based on the time stamp of the first comment and the last one preserved when I took a snapshot. Last comment I preserved was at 05:30 PM. There were likely many more.
Feb 18, 04:44 PM- “Joe Milkor” posts a comment about Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership’s brand new Myspace presence. Many believe the initial page is fake.
Feb 18, between 07:10 and 8:37 PM- Outdoor Life Magazine slaps a CYA disclaimer statement on Zumbo’s blog “These opinions do not necessarily represent those of…”
Feb 18, 8:49 PM- Dave Cordrea receives a letter from Tommy Millner stating that Remington is disassociating themselves from all sponsorship of Jim Zumbo.
Feb18, midnight- Jim’s original post attracts an additional 2865 comments for this one day
Feb 19, 2007 8:56 AM- Sharp as a Marble posts the best damn parody.
Feb 19, 8:59 PM- Xavier notices that Zumbo’s blog has been taken down
Feb 19- Sponsor Cabela drops all ties with Jim Zumbo
Feb 21- Gerber Cuts Ties with Jim Zumbo
Feb 22 9:21:44 AM- First post on AR15.com by “Hellbound_Train” citing a press release from Outdoor Life Magazine on the occasion of accepting Jim Zumbo’s resignation.
Feb 22- First NRA press release NRA Publications Suspends Ties to Jim Zumbo
Feb 23, 10:32 AM- I post a comment over at SayUncle’s and follow that up with a blog entry showing that if that Brady MySpace page was fake in the past, at least it’s not now. I note that all Zumbo related content on that MySpace page has been scrubbed
Feb 23 07:04 PM- Ted Nugent opens a thread on his forum. and transfers a few messages (dated 02-22-2007 02:03 PM ) from Jim Zumbo into them. After a few false starts, Zumbo seems to finally get it.
Feb 24- “Pravda on the Potomac” brings the Zumbo saga to the mainstream media on page A03. Fully a week from Jim’s first post.
UPDATE: Mar 6 at 11:51 am: Paul Helmke and the Brady Bunch cherry pick quotes from others in an attempt to paint the grassroots movement that responded to Zumbo as a bunch of gun owning zombies, totally at the NRA’s bidding. Wow, just like the Washington Post did!
Footnotes:
[1] I suppose I’ve got to lay off those NRA issued subliminal motivation tapes (kidding) 
[2]Hat tip to Say Uncle on this one.
[3] The Joyce Foundation also seems to fund wacky anti-freedom blogger GunGuys, and a shady group, the Alliance of Mayors Against Guns
I was writing yesterday morning when I noticed Snowflakes in Hell and SayUncle scooped me, although I was going at this from another angle. Still, I had my two cents to offer so I dropped a quick comment, and I’d like to expand this a bit here.
The weekend the Zumbo incident came out, much muck was shouted about how much damage Zumbo the clueless had done to us pro-freedom RKBA people. Out of nowhere, it seems that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership decide to have a Myspace presence, and on that new MySpace page, they decided to run with the Zumbo angle in the worst possible way. In addition, they stuck in a jab about banning scopes. (this is all from memory, as I did not cache the page.)
I saw the page, and immediately said “fake†and moved on, but others took it at face value. Here’s the very first message that mentioned the MySpace page, posted over on Jim Zumbo’s defunct blog:
THE BRADYS ARE ALREADY USING THIS
THE BRADYS ARE ALREADY USING THIS
THE BRADYS ARE ALREADY USING THIS
THE BRADYS ARE ALREADY USING THIS
www.myspace.com/bradycampaign
Check their official myspace, the newest blog post is about this
assclown.Posted by: Joe Milkor | February 18, 2007 at 04:44 PM
At roughly the same time over at AR15.com, jnewson posted the first mention to the MySpace page (Posted :: 2/18/2007 4:58:10 PM). It’s thirty pages in to the zumbo thread:
http://ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=548211&page=30
I can’t be 100% sure which came first without some knowledge of the local clocks each server uses.
If you head over there to the Brady MySpace page now, however, you’ll find this embedded in the page (go to page, hit Ctrl-U)
<a href=”http://www.stopthenra.com” target=”new”><img src=”http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/myspace/images/stoptheNRAcom.jpg” border=”0″/></a><br />
Which means, that both the MySpace page is pulling content from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership’s main page, and the Brady Bunch is letting them (note the xshare/myspace/images subdirectory). It’s also noteworthy to mention that now that there’s a graphic from the Brady’s main page, they can use this as a hit counter, and get some stats on their visitors.
If you read the “new and improved” version of the MySpace Brady page carefully, you will also note that every single mention of Zumbo has been taken off the page, and there are a few extra posts added, backdated before this past weekend, when the page was created.
Weighing all that data, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
The initial Brady MySpace was fake, or at least contained content not blessed by the Brady Bunch (tangently related, intern, etc)
If it was fake before, it’s clearly not fake now.
The poster of the original comment on Zumbo’s blog, may actually be from the creator of the myspace page. (I’d love to have that poster’s IP address) Note the reference to the “official myspace” page, looks a little astroturf-ish to me.
Whoever created the MySpace page may actually be a RKBA friendly, and may have done it solely to brew up a shitstorm. In this endeavor whomever was quite effective.
No one over at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership wants to push the Zumbo story. This also seems to include the usual suspects like the GunGuys. (Updated to add: At least not yet, let’s see what happens after this goes mainstream. Below, I’ve noted that the WaPo are on this story with the usual smear)
Besides announcing that the NRA’s rag isn’t gonna buy any more stories from Jim Zumbo, the NRA isn’t willing to bring up the story either.
It takes a week until the Zumbo story breaks into the mainstream national news. Before this Saturday, the only stories were in “outdoors” type columns or in feeds to the outdoors industry.
Update, and only tangently related: Now that the WaPo has made this mainstream, the useful idiots that only get their info from the newspaper and fail to do any original research are blogging. Via Technorati linkback I give you The Living Room in Rogers Park, and Beer Can Politics. Expect the typical drivel.
I’m not 100% sure, but Xaviar seems to think so. His initial apology was like “Oh, you mean hunters really use these things? Oh well, I suppose that’s OK then.”
What everyone has been trying to pound into the head of this idiot was that it doesn’t matter if it’s suitable for hunting. It doesn’t matter it people target shoot with them. It doesn’t matter if the owner is a legitimate collector, or only owns one firearm, and it does not matter whatsoever what the crime rate with these “Evil Black Rifles” are, regardless, they are protected. People have an inalienable right to own them, they are essential “Liberty’s Teeth”.
Besides, if you look carefully, you’ll see that people do hunt, target shoot, and collect with these “Evil Black Rifles”, and notwithstanding their “evil blackness”, they are seldom used in crimes, and make great self-defense tools.
Oh and Zumbo, the vast majority of the people dumping on you don’t give a rat’s ass that you have hunted on seven continents, or that you have taken game in all fifty states, or you hunt 200 days a year. After you called us all terrorists for our choice in firearms, we don’t care if you fly a flag every day of the year. I can’t believe it took you the better part of a week to figure that out.
