Michael Bloomberg’s The Trace is on a campaign to turn gun companies against the leading online voices that speak about the importance of gun rights.
The Trace, which is nothing but a gun control megaphone disguising itself as pseudo-journalism, sent out a “name-and-shame” email last week putting companies on notice. They listed 13 specific firearm personalities with large social media followings. That was followed by leading questions that left little room for doubt what they were really after.
“Has your company reevaluated relationships with any of these creators in light of their political content?”
And…
“Has it considered connections between this content and the political rhetoric on display last week?”
Those weren’t questions designed to illicit a thoughtful response. Those are question that tell the recipient that if they don’t dump them and run away fast, they’ll trash their company in the media.
The Trace is running a hit piece soon about a bunch of big 2A social media influencers. Here’s a screenshot from an email they sent to a company, soliciting comment.
It’s a great example of how this flavor of reputational blackmail works.
🧵 Anatomy of a hit piece 👇 pic.twitter.com/lJONXraaWU
— Open Source Defense (@opensrcdefense) January 16, 2021
They accused these social media personalities of spreading conspiracy theories online surrounding the 2020 election and Democratic party. The “reporter” also accused them of overdramatizing the risk of gun confiscation and “fomented fears of election fraud…” The “reporter” topped it off by attempting to tie the violence visited on Capitol Hill to these conspiracy theory allegations.
This isn’t journalism. This isn’t even advocacy, which at best, is what The Trace is all about. This is corporate intimidation. It’s vilifying innocent parties by smearing them with the same accusations used against those who actually committed criminal acts.
Know Your Adversary
Let’s start with what The Trace actually is. They bill themselves as “an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom” that’s managed to infiltrate the newsrooms of USA Today, The New Yorker, Slate and The Atlantic. Their independence is hardly true.
Common knowledge but needs to be seen again. @MrColionNoir @Mrgunsngear @Nutnfancy @iraqveteran8888 @MAC_Arms all Trace is doing is pretending to be “media”, but they’re just Everytown’s hit piece bureau. Hell, Mike Spies (NRA New Yorker piece) is on their payroll pic.twitter.com/hatOH2oG9v
— MomAtArms (@mom_at_arms) January 17, 2021
Guns America Digest dug into their tax records that show 70 percent of their funding comes from Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group that’s bankrolled by antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
In fact, John Feinblatt – the same Feinblatt that heads Everytown for Gun Safety and once served as a senior advisor to Bloomberg when the billionaire was New York City’s mayor – is the principal officer listed on tax filings for The Trace.
Claims of editorial “firewalls” are laughable when emails are sent to gun companies telling them with the subtlety of a mob boss that it’s in their best interest to “reevaluate” their influencer relationships.
Intellectually Inconsistent
This standard they’re holding up to gun companies and social media influencers is intellectually inconsistent. By this line of reasoning, the rioting and looting over the summer should be attributed to every newsroom that whitewashed the violence witnessed during the summer of 2020.
There was plenty of it. MSNBC’s Ali Velshi literally told his audience on live television that the situation in Minneapolis was not “generally speaking unruly” even as the city burned behind him. Even more stark, Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) escaped blame when James T. Hodgkinson, a self-described “Bernie Bro” attacked Republican Members of Congress and left Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) fighting for his life in an armed attack.
Even Congressman Scalise didn’t blame Sen. Sanders for this heinous crime. It’s intellectually inconsistent to blame the crimes of an individual on another who had no part. Yet, that’s exactly what this “reporter” from The Trace is trying to do.
Fight Back
Colion Noir, a Second Amendment advocate and lawyer, wasn’t having it. In a video, he blasted the intimidation move.
View this post on Instagram
“The overall goal is to stifle the Second Amendment by limiting the First Amendment,” Noir explained. “They are going to do everything in their power to silence voices like me, silence voices like you just saw in that email. That’s their goal.”
Gun websites are being de-platformed. Facebook is banning ads for gun safes, even after over 8.4 million people bought a gun for the first time in the name of safety during inauguration week. The implication is clear. Gun owners are dangerous and need to be eliminated.
The NSSF will continue to stand up. Gun owners across America need to join in.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Just another fascist like gates, soros, zuckerberg, biden and miner49er.
You don’t have any idea what the word ‘fascist’ means, do you?
clip crap…It takes one to know one so without further ado tell the class what a fascist is.
How about you tell us what YOU think it means? (Yeah, I thought not.)
Flip Flop. If it has feathers like a duck. Webbed feet like a duck. Bill of a duck. Quacks like a duck…….. the left went so far to the left that they popped back up on the extreme right.
Definition of fascism
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
He’s pretty much 99.9% correct to use the term fascist when describing Bloomberg and the others. Thanks for playing!
I’m sure everyone remembers O’bozo pressuring banks not to lend/cancel loan agreements with firearm dealers/manufacturers, it wasn’t that long ago,,, so actually O’bozo is the definition of a ‘Fascisti’. And yes Benito Mussolini was also a ‘Fascist’ and a socialist.
I don’t think leftists like you know what that word means, hence it’s false association with “far right”.
Name an -ism, and I will show you more connections to the far left than the right. Far right is Anarchy. In that is so free there is no regulation. That’s where it ends. Everything regarding control and oppression is left. The political spectrums you find on leftists media like google and wikipedia are bullshit. FREEDOM is far right.
A word you use on others when you are losing an argument.
Anyone engaged in gun control in any shape or form engages in an agenda rooted in racism and genocide. I long for the day when gun control sickos will be seen across America for what they are.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these types mysteriously disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.
LOL Thank you JWM. You are doing the lords work on these forums by including Miner49er.
Man, that brought a tear of joy to my eye.
That’s an awesome pic of Bloomberg.
He looks like he’s on a slab.
And latter is self-pleasuring at the thought of renditioning, enhanced interrogating, and executing all those deplorables. And then turning his attention to ensuring the loyalty of the military and police.
Seems like trying to shame gun & gear manufacturers for using influencers who like guns and gear is quite the uphill battle.
If you think back, we saw this perpetual presidential campaign begin with Slick Willy. They were outraged at everything, and acted as if they were on campaign trail 24/7. Then again with Obama. The founders warned us, but the nation tends toward benign neglect, while the leftists never stop, even when they win. Once they eliminate external enemies, they start in on themselves; perpetual war. If there is no enemy for the leftists to vanquish, they create one to justify themselves to themselves.
What is laughable is that leftists/authoritarians always tell us who they truly are, then we are aghast when we finally admit they identified themselves clearly, but the average citizen just didn’t want to believe it…because that reality demanded too much work to prevent. Herman Wouk identified the syndrome: “The will not to believe.”
I have my yellow star ready to wear…
To much you ask?
As a Jew “Jude” one generation out from actual holocaust survivors in my family, I tend to not take such comparisons lightly.
Please make no mistake, we are witnessing the destruction of our most basic rights. From Big Tech censorship of free speech, to the inability to defends one’s self or home.
I have stated this before, that things will accelerate at lightning speed now that all three houses are controlled by a single party.
I really wished I was wrong, but the rabid demands of the progressives won’t stop until their leftist dystopia is achieved. By hook or by crook the ends justify the means.
We are being silenced, de-platformed, and defunded.
Do you have your star ready?
Very eloquent, Daniel.
And sobering.
What’s going on with the media and big tech was Joseph Goebbles wet dream.
Under the stated circumstances a “liberated” MP-40 seems more apropos.
No. I have something else, an icon that proves 109 countries wasn’t enough
To question the likelihood of fraud in any election is not “conspiracy theory”-mongering.
The history of fraud in elections goes back as far as the history of elections. The Greeks had very large juries because they thought that it would be harder to bribe a large jury vs. a small one.
The history of fraud and other malfeasance in US elections is rich as well. It does no good to turn a blind eye or ear to word of fraud. It is only constructive to try to mitigate fraud in the future to bring attention to evidence of fraud in the past.
We may debate – constructively – whether the extent of fraud (if any) in the 2020 election was one-vote SHORT of affecting the outcome; or, one vote more than sufficient to affect the outcome. Let us suppose – for the sake of argument – that it was one-vote SHORT of affecting the outcome. Then, we were just 2 votes away from having the determinative effect.
Can our republic afford that risk? If not, then we must not quash this debate.
No need to suppose when the difference in vote counts was so large in so many places that pulling off a fraud of such vast magnitude would have been detected (and would have been far, far beyond any degree of competence that the Democrats have ever shown before).
Maybe. But nobody was allowed to look at what really did happen, so the question lingers. And festers.
It’s like a green-fog fart in an executive boardroom. Everyone smells it; nobody dares to acknowledge it, if not for decorum, then because whoever brings it up will be immediately blamed for it; everyone suspects everyone else of being the culprit; and it taints the entire proceeding.
The way this whole thing has gone, it’s very tempting to think that tainting the entire process was the goal of a certain set of power brokers from the outset.
” far beyond any degree of competence that the Democrats have ever shown before).”
SV, you seem to forget that the CCCP helped finance and direct the steal. That and the fact that the Dems. had three years to plan and war game the senerio. (Just in case the other plans failed.)
WE KNOW WHERE TO SHOP FOR FIRE ARMS AND AMMO .
JUST WISH 22LR BE BACK AT LOWER PRICE . 5 TA 8 PER ROUND , AAA THE OLD DAYS
You mind killing the caps lock. Why are you always screaming anyway?
And don’t drink and text.
“Culture is upstream of politics.” The anti-gun doofuses are catching up to the impact gun channels on the web and forums are having to the strengthening gun rights movement.
Gun-rights supporters should take heart that Bloomberg is doing this.
He’s been such a miserable failure before, that the odds of this succeeding are extremely low.
Hit piece mentions several that most in the gun community know. Sootch, mr guns and gear, Kristen Weiss.
I’ll just leave this here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hsl7jZEZRI
Kirsten.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm… 🙂
Absolutely love watching her, for ALL the reasons. Including totally paternal ones, in which I hope my son and daughter, who are now adults, bring home someone just like her. (It’s a strange mix.) 😀
Apologies.
Fingers typed faster than brain could process.
In Mr. Jolly’s defense , he was probably typing with one hand.
Yep! Taking notes on how she shoots. If you watch closely she seems to mentally flip a switch into shooting mode. Level of concentration and body control is something we all could learn from her.
I aspire to shoot long range well, my goal this year is 1000yards. Many obstacles in the way. Creepy Joe and their agenda, Pandemic lock-downs, finding ammo for my new Tikka 6.5, Civil War 2.0 ect
Hopefully she and all the others will leave Youtube and find a friendly platform.
I’m happy with keeping shots into a 6″ circle at 500 yards with a crunchy military M96 trigger.
So glad I can get it done in under 2 minutes. I don’t even think it’s a bad thing. In my youth I did, but now… 2 minutes is all ya need.
This is something that’s not going to happen they might as well try peeing facing the wind and not get wet
WTF is a social influencer and who cares?
Who cares?
That ought to fall under ‘Know the Enemy’…
Geoff the Goof’s sworn enemies are good taste, logic and low flow toilets.
And yet all the links in the story are to Twitter and Facebook/Instagram. Something smells bad.
Good article.
Man, I can’t wait until Bloomie, the antis and the MSM start talking about how even voicing minor support for the 2A makes you a member of #TrumpsNewArmy and open to all manner of attacks.
That’s gonna be a hoot.
If you keep calling someone a terrorist, don’t be surprised if they act like one…
Glad to see people finally accepting the role.
Patriots have always been “terrorists”.
GFY
I think you possibly misunderstood me buddy.
Regardless of what the Left may say or attempt to convince others of defending oneself against attack doesn’t make one a terrorist.
At this point, on the violence front, the ball’s in their court whether they like it or not. The fact that they refuse to police people like Don Winslow and the irresponsible garbage that these people peddle around the net is no one’s fault but their own.
The Left can self-delude all it wants/can’t help. It doesn’t change a thing IRL if this shit goes sideways, and their actions recently tell us rather strongly that they fear this has gotten outside of their ability to control. That’s why they seem to believe that if they take a shit *MAGA Terrorists* are going to come crawling out of their ass.
Led by incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the economic policy team has signaled that it will be the first administration ever to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change, rather than around traditional indicators like gross domestic product or deficit ratios.
🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪
We’ll envy the standard of living in Venezuela inside of 2 years.
The Maduro diet might be good for some.
I’m not fat. I’m just big boned.
COVID kilos
My experience has been the above mentioned social media influencers, at least the ones I watch, have stayed clear of the Q-Anon conspiracy mess. What they have reported is fairly accurate. It’s all based on Biden’s well documented gun control policy. Sootch has good informative reviews and Kirsten just makes me smile.
sed -e s/illicit/elicit/g
Homophones are hard for both voice recognition and spell checkers.
Another rich wannabe dictator. He needs a stroke ASAP.
Damn, can that old little jew Bloombag just DIE already? Get senile, wear Depends….just go away. I’m tired of seeing his creepy face.
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