Atlanta Pro Gun Rally 4/14 EDIT: Permit pulled, legal rally is off...

[spencer60]

There is literally no upside in having this rally. I mean it's Saturday folks... no politicians will even be in the area. All it will do is give the media a great photo op to reinforce every stereotype about gun owners they are pushing.

And that's best case. If it ends up in a riot guess who gets blamed?

And even if this goes off without a hitch, so what?

It's like the Woman's March, protesting something that hasn't happened yet. If I lived in FL or VT, where gun control laws were just pushed through I'd be saying 'go for it', but there's nothing on the horizon here in GA, or at the federal level to be 'protesting'.

I'm not impugning the folks who set this up, I'm sure they have great intentions, but this whole thing makes no sense at all. At best we'd have a peaceful crowd in front of an empty capitol building, being ignored by the media because 'there's no story here'. At best. Everything else is downhill from there.

However, if you don't go, use a few minutes of the time to call your GA and federal reps and senators. You can leave a general message on their machines, and this will probably do more good than standing in front of their office window on a weekend.

 

[WinstonSmith]

There is literally no upside in having this rally. I mean it's Saturday folks... no politicians will even be in the area. All it will do is give the media a great photo op to reinforce every stereotype about gun owners they are pushing.

And that's best case. If it ends up in a riot guess who gets blamed?

And even if this goes off without a hitch, so what?

It's like the Woman's March, protesting something that hasn't happened yet. If I lived in FL or VT, where gun control laws were just pushed through I'd be saying 'go for it', but there's nothing on the horizon here in GA, or at the federal level to be 'protesting'.

I'm not impugning the folks who set this up, I'm sure they have great intentions, but this whole thing makes no sense at all. At best we'd have a peaceful crowd in front of an empty capitol building, being ignored by the media because 'there's no story here'. At best. Everything else is downhill from there.

However, if you don't go, use a few minutes of the time to call your GA and federal reps and senators. You can leave a general message on their machines, and this will probably do more good than standing in front of their office window on a weekend.

Completely agree with your assessment on the rally. Not going either. But calling your reps? Do we really consider that effective anymore? Really? How many years have we all been doing that and still losing ground every year? Think of individual liberty as a trend line spanning the last 100 years. The line drops like a rock. Sure we may have had a few wins but the overall trend is depressing. Thinking government can or, in a lot of cases, even wants to protect and/or promote individual liberty in this country and expecting them to do so is a losing strategy. If we dont try different tactics, mainly finding a way to control the conversation and garner widespread support in the public at large, then we have only ourselves to blame when we lose it all. We can only do that by presenting our case in numbers and in an articulate, responsible manner. I would love to see one of the organizations we all (should) belong to organize something in this fashion. And keep the camo, open carry out of it. Nobody is listening because we aren't speaking effectively. What we are doing isn't working. Time to try something new.

 

[alnen]

Those in charge have pulled the permit for this rally. The organizer states that they were surprised with a nearly $7k bill for gsp to come out and supervise this rally. Please be advised that if you still choose to attend, it will not be "legal" in the eyes of law enforcement. As great as it would have been to share this rally day with the rest of the nation, we will have to revisit this idea and take all of the guesswork out of the equation. We will also need more preparation time and funding. We will be in control of the event, instead of it just being the first person to sign up as an organizer. And when I say we, I mean a group of like-minded individuals, it could be folks from this site or it could be folks from gco, it really doesn't matter. What's important is that we learn from this. Good luck to everyone and stay safe.

I will note that this infringement on the first amendment is disturbing. A permit should absolutely not be required for a peaceful protest. That's where we are right now, so maybe we should have a pro first amendment rally as well. If only there was something on writing that would protect our right to free speech and our right to bear arms...

 

[medium187mph]

Should apply for Newnan, GA 4/20/18...

Apparently Newnan won’t revoke

Those in charge have pulled the permit for this rally. The organizer states that they were surprised with a nearly $7k bill for gsp to come out and supervise this rally. Please be advised that if you still choose to attend, it will not be "legal" in the eyes of law enforcement. As great as it would have been to share this rally day with the rest of the nation, we will have to revisit this idea and take all of the guesswork out of the equation. We will also need more preparation time and funding. We will be in control of the event, instead of it just being the first person to sign up as an organizer. And when I say we, I mean a group of like-minded individuals, it could be folks from this site or it could be folks from gco, it really doesn't matter. What's important is that we learn from this. Good luck to everyone and stay safe.

I will note that this infringement on the first amendment is disturbing. A permit should absolutely not be required for a peaceful protest. That's where we are right now, so maybe we should have a pro first amendment rally as well. If only there was something on writing that would protect our right to free speech and our right to bear arms...

 

[HERMET]

Those in charge have pulled the permit for this rally. The organizer states that they were surprised with a nearly $7k bill for gsp to come out and supervise this rally. Please be advised that if you still choose to attend, it will not be "legal" in the eyes of law enforcement. As great as it would have been to share this rally day with the rest of the nation, we will have to revisit this idea and take all of the guesswork out of the equation. We will also need more preparation time and funding. We will be in control of the event, instead of it just being the first person to sign up as an organizer. And when I say we, I mean a group of like-minded individuals, it could be folks from this site or it could be folks from gco, it really doesn't matter. What's important is that we learn from this. Good luck to everyone and stay safe.

I will note that this infringement on the first amendment is disturbing. A permit should absolutely not be required for a peaceful protest. That's where we are right now, so maybe we should have a pro first amendment rally as well. If only there was something on writing that would protect our right to free speech and our right to bear arms...

My question is did ANTIFA and all the other communist and left wing rallies have to jump through the legal and financial hoops to have their protests?

 

[alnen]

My question is did ANTIFA and all the other communist and left wing rallies have to jump through the legal and financial hoops to have their rallies?

I'm told that the "March for sour chives" folks made a ruckus and didn't have to pay the extortion fee. I haven't been able to confirm that though.

 

[atltrader]

I only heard of this rally roughly a week ago here on the ODT. For those that are on the major social media sites was there much publicity on getting the word out for this? I don't check all the sites, so I can't say with any certainty.

From what I have seen there was very little coverage/publicity on promoting these rallies. In general just poor planning overall. I watch the lame a** media and hardly a word about it specifically over the last week. Doesn't surprise me that this turned into clusterf***. Am I the only one with these sentiments?

 

[HERMET]

I only heard of this rally roughly a week ago here on the ODT. For those that are on the major social media sites was there much publicity on getting the word out for this? I don't check all the sites, so I can't say with any certainty.

From what I have seen there was very little coverage/publicity on promoting these rallies. In general just poor planning overall. I watch the lame a** media and hardly a word about it specifically over the last week. Doesn't surprise me that this turned into clusterf***. Am I the only one with these sentiments?

One thing you can be assured of, If the MSM covers it at all they will only describe it in a negative light.

 

[ClassicBlue]

I find that a good bit of the folks that open carry to make a pro 2nd amendment statement in a march or rally only make gun owners look like the mountain folk in Deliverance. Parading down a street wearing camo pants and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off carrying a AR doesn’t help the cause.

 

[spencer60]

Completely agree with your assessment on the rally. Not going either. But calling your reps? Do we really consider that effective anymore? Really? How many years have we all been doing that and still losing ground every year? Think of individual liberty as a trend line spanning the last 100 years. The line drops like a rock. Sure we may have had a few wins but the overall trend is depressing.

Thinking government can or, in a lot of cases, even wants to protect and/or promote individual liberty in this country and expecting them to do so is a losing strategy. If we don't try different tactics, mainly finding a way to control the conversation and garner widespread support in the public at large, then we have only ourselves to blame when we lose it all.

We can only do that by presenting our case in numbers and in an articulate, responsible manner. I would love to see one of the organizations we all (should) belong to organize something in this fashion. And keep the camo, open carry out of it. Nobody is listening because we aren't speaking effectively. What we are doing isn't working. Time to try something new.

Calling is probably second best to showing up while in-session, but that's not an option for very many. Letters work about the same (not emails, actual snail-mail). Calling worked wonders in 2013 after Sandy Hook.

That being said, you are right that sometimes it's important to show numbers. The problem is the Second Amendment doesn't have any billionaires ready to throw down the hundreds of millions needed to match Blomberg. The NRA would end up broke trying to match them for even a year. In 2016 Bloomberg gave every single one of his organizations $50 million in funding... More than the entire budget for the NRA that year.

As these organizers found out, free speech is expensive of you want to do it at a large scale. Look at the two bills mentioned here, about $7000 each for police OT and porta-potties. Bloomberg's groups setup rally's in 800 cities. That's over $11 million for just these two basic expenses. That doesn't count all the extras like busing people in, pre-printed signs, tee-shirts, paying 'volunteers' to act as marshals, lining up speakers and renting equipment. And you can be sure the costs were a lot higher for everything in cities like D.C. or NYC.

People complained that the NRA doesn't foot the bill for this kind of stuff. That $11 million for permits and honey-buckets would be the NRA-ILA budget for the year. Yet because they didn;t go bankrupt trying to 'keep up with the Bloombergs', they don't feel they should join the group, or make a donation. A vicious circle where we eat our own. Something the gun comminuty seems pretty good at doing.

My question is did ANTIFA and all the other communist and left wing rallies have to jump through the legal and financial hoops to have their rallies?

I'm sure all the other actual rallies and marches probably did pay these kinds of fees. But they have all kinds of funding available to do it. The permits in DC ($50,000 plus from what I saw) were paid for by the American Teachers Federation, so it was no surprise that teachers all over the US were pushing their students to participate.

You can bet ANTIFA didn't pay for anything but to ship their paid thugs to attack legal rallys. And the BLM folks blocking highways were obviously illegal.