Meet NRO’s Kevin Williamson: NRA Shill & al-Qaeda Friend
*Conservatives from The Weekly Standard and The Daily Caller admit to host of The Big Picture, Thom Hartmann, that closing the gun show loophole would be a good idea. Somehow, between breathless fanboy posts alerting his readers to the every movement of Rick Perry (he sure is dreamy!), The National Review’s Kevin Williamson found time to prostrate himself (not once , but twice ) before National Rifle Association (NRA) talking points, support the interests of al-Qaeda, and fit multiple lies all into one little screed. Pretty impressive work, especially when you factor in his limited availability. I mean, those Rick Perry posters aren’t going to just stare at themselves. In these pieces, al-Qaeda Tool Williamson did what gun fetishists and NRA apologists always do when inconvenient truths about the blood already on their hands, or yet to come, are presented to them: He threw out random vituperation (even attacking one of his colleagues at NRO who happens to have more common sense than he could ever possess–he must be an absolute joy to work with!), and some misdirection that would make Houdini proud. My problem, of course, is that I don’t much like wannabe-bullies. Especially those who view the NRA like David Vitter does a lady-of-the-night with extra Huggies in hand, even more so when they lie and attack my friends at Media Matters on an issue I work on and care about, with Bachmannian reasoning to boot. So I thought I might respond, you know, for fun. The crux of our story is that Adam Gadahn, the American-born al-Qaeda spokesman, made a statement that was 90% correct about the easy availability of firearms for terrorists in the US (because of people like Williamson and the NRA), so this al-Qaeda Tool, of course, chose to focus on the 10% that wasn’t accurate. Here is our own David Neiwert’s explanation of what set off this jack-in-the-box originally: That popping sound you hear is the heads of NRA loyalists exploding from massive cognitive dissonance, all because of the release this week of a video showing a spokesman for al-Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, urging would-be jihadis to go out and stock up on as many guns as they can get their hands on — through the gun-show loophole So what do you do when you’re a shill for the NRA and have to explain why you don’t support the simple common sense of 69% of NRA members and 85% of Americans , (in a poll conducted by known liberal Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns) all of whom want to close the Gun Show Loophole? The one that Al Qaeda thug Gadahn spoke about. The one that has allowed everyone from Hezbollah to Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell to the Columbine killers to arm themselves–and provided a nice source of income for Timothy McVeigh. The one that sadly, as the thug Gadahn points out, would allow any Ayman al-Zwahiri to walk into a gun show in the 33 states that have not closed it, and buy a gun from “private sellers” without any kind of background check. What you do is lie of course, and portray private sales of firearms as “Uncle Bubba,” deciding “to swap his deer rifle to Otis for $100 and a case of Bud.” Here, I’d like to take a moment to thank Mr. NRA-talking-points dispenser for the oh-so-clever and folksy narrative, but in the real world where guns are used in mass murders, “Uncle Bubba” sometimes sells 348 guns in less than a year using that very loophole in our law for which our favorite al-Qaeda Tool has donned his usually-reserved-for-Rick-Perry knee pads. Perhaps more hysterically, useful idiot that Williamson is, he compares the private sale of guns to the private sale of automobiles. You know, those things that require licenses to drive and registration, all that crazy regulation that would obviously place us squarely on the road to serfdom if even mentioned in the same breath as his beloved firearms. Nicely played, Kev. So let’s quickly point out to our “drooling and comtemptible” readers here (his words regarding liberal blog readers at Media Matters–don’t be jealous, he likely thinks of you the same way), the myriad lies Williamson committed to blog when defending the NRA and the rights of al-Qaeda adherents across this vast land to arm themselves with as little hassle as possible. He engaged this little game of obfuscation when attacking Chris Brown of Media Matters , whose cardinal sin was to point out what all the falsehoods in Williamson’s original digital reach-around to the NRA. Not surprisingly al-Qaeda’s man with the plan gets the facts wrong again and again and again: 1. Media Matters said conversation kits are available at gun shows, not that they are perfectly legal. The GAO and any number of individual accounts, like Mark Potok’s , tell the simple truth that conversion kits are available at gun shows. No points on that one, Williamson. 2. Media Matters didn’t cite al-Qaeda as a source on gun laws. They pointed out that al-Qaeda was instructing terrorists to carry out mass murder by exploiting a well known loophole in US gun laws. Strike two, tough guy. 3. Media Matters said that conversion manuals, not kits as you claimed, are easily obtained online. Third time’s most definitely not a charm, Kev-o. So it would seem Williamson is either a dunderhead who lacks basic reading comprehension or a professional prevaricator who simply makes stuff up when his arguments fail on their merits. Likely, our hero is some combination of the two. I am sure Williamson will soon once again inform us of his warped views on this subject among his published pablum–he may even say mean things about me! After all, Rick Perry might take a day off for vacation, or perhaps due to self-inflicted visual impairment at the hands of a sticky LA Looks nozzle, and then what will Williamson be left with but NRA talking points tattooed on his biceps and a whole lot of excess stupid. I can be followed on Twitter @cliffschecter – Come on by, and I’d love to hear from you
Meet NRO’s Kevin Williamson: NRA Shill & al-Qaeda Friend
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on June 15, 2011. Filed under