Phony gun groups: Fool me twice?

The first in a series of three articles chronicling increasingly sophisticated efforts by anti-gun activists to neutralize the impact of gun-owning voters.

The strangest thing happened, last November, when my organization ran a campaign of automated phone scripts to gun-owning voters outlining Barrack Obama’s long history of antipathy to gun rights: People called me a liar. Specifically, they took the time to go to our website, get my e-mail address, and send me nasty-grams.

Some were principled, such as: “There are issues more important the gun rights in this election.” (I disagree, but at least respect their position.) But most were along the lines of: “You fear-mongering @#$%*#@s don’t scare me. I’m gonna’ %@%#ing vote for Obama and keep my %@%#ing guns.”

Perhaps you heard the nationwide radio spots for Obama done by the deceptively named “American Hunters and Shooters Association,” or saw the YouTube video by “Sportsmen for Obama,” both of which have been called front groups for the Democratic Party.

If you regard that as old news, however, understand it is not: Having tilled fertile ground in deceiving “hunters and sportsmen,” Democrats, unionists and gun control advocates are now expanding their “divide-and-conquer” tactic to promulgate gun control by neutralizing the gun vote.

‘Union Sportsman’s Alliance:’ Ted Turner cares about you

Among the latest feints, the “Union Sportsman’s Alliance” (or as they call themselves, “USA”; ain’t that cute?) is now actively courting “sportsmen” on the Versus Network. Launched on January 13, 2007 at the internationally renowned SHOT Show as a $1.2 million project of the “Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Project” (TRCP), USA says: “The USA is a TRCP program designed to address the hunting and fishing interests of its 20 affiliated union partners and their members that hunt, fish and recreate in the outdoors.”

Ignoring for a moment that unions generally endorse leftist candidates who are anything but good on gun rights, USA claims to represent “the new voice supporting conservation and second amendment [sic] advocacy in America” while simultaneously insisting, “USA will be completely non-political and will not engage in non-TRCP issues, such as second-amendment [sic] rights.”

Hmm. A “non-political” “second amendment” organization. Why does one get a bad feeling about that? Could it be that their site consistently refers to some lower-case (and presumably lower priority) “second amendment” instead of the “Second Amendment” contained in the Bill of Rights?

Indeed, while USA may profess to be “non-political,” its parent organization, TRCP, is anything but. Peruse its web site and, under guises like “Hunters and Anglers for Responsible Development” you will find advocacy for a variety of leftist causes, including global warming, “wetlands” conservation, mining, development and oil drilling, all spun toward “nature conservancy.”

Ah, but who is the ghost in the machine? “The Green Tracking Library” discovered that despite TRCP’s self-description as representing “a coalition of the nation's leading hunting, fishing, and conservation groups working together to guarantee all Americans quality places to hunt and fish,” in reality it “almost exclusively campaigns against oil and gas development.”

Better yet, the site documents how money for TRCP came, through various entities, from the decidedly left-leaning Pew Charitable Trust and Turner Foundation (yes, that means UN-donating, Jane Fonda marrying, religion-hating Ted Turner).

Translated, labor unions found in past elections – particularly 1994 and 2000 – that their influence on union members in getting them to vote for liberals was waning. Increasingly, union members were listening to gun groups like the NRA. The solution was for left-leaning foundations to fund “conservancy” groups like TRCP and its “Union Sportsman’s Alliance,” which in turn wean unionists away from gun rights organizations.