Posted on 05/16/2012 3:37:33 PM PDT by marktwain
Representative Margaret Conditt (Butler County District 55) held a fundraiser at the Middletown Sportsmens Club on Saturday, May 12, 2012.
The plan was to invite a handful of supporters, spend a few hours shooting at targets, and raise a little money for her reelection campaign. But what actually happened took everyone by surprise.
Rather than hosting a typical fundraiser which would ordinarily draw a few dozen people, Rep. Conditt ended up hosting a major event that drew over 200 attendees and raised tens of thousands of dollars.
What happened? Rep. Conditt got an "accidental" assist from a group of anti-gun politicians and activists, including Ohio Representatives Ted Celeste and Tracy Maxwell Heard along with Toby Hoover of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence and Brian Rothenberg from Progress Ohio.
During a recent press conference, these gun control advocates launched a partisan and personal attack against Rep. Conditt, calling her upcoming fundraiser "distasteful" and "offensive, linking it to the recent shooting at Chardon High School where a 17-year-old shot several students, killing three. They called out Conditt and urged her to cancel the fundraiser.
Shocked and insulted at being linked to a mass murderer, gun owners and sportsmen around Ohio responded immediately, flooding Conditt's campaign office with donations and requests to attend her event.
Denouncing the attack on Rep. Conditt, Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA) called for Celeste and Maxwell to apologize for their remarks. BFA also announced they would begin collecting donations for the candidate and pledged matching funds up to $1,000. They reached that goal within four hours of the announcement. Subsequent donations poured in from gun owners in Ohio and 16 other states, including donations from as far away as California.
Linda Walker, BFA Leader and NRA Board Member, along with Sean Maloney, BFA Minuteman and attorney in West Chester, presented a check to Conditt at the May 12 fundraiser totaling $3,231, including the matching funds.
While presenting the check, Walker said, "The attack on Margaret Conditt was just partisan grandstanding. Celeste, Heard, and the others who suggested that ordinary folks who own guns or want to spend a few hours at a range shooting at targets are somehow linked to a deranged mass murderer should be ashamed of themselves. It's vile and offensive."
For the record, shooting range fundraisers are not unusual. And despite what anti-gun activists might think, the shooting sports is one of the safest and most popular activities in the U.S. According to a 2010 study by the National Sporting Goods Association, 44.5 million people over the age of seven regularly participate in the shooting sports (including target shooting, hunting, and muzzleloading).
This makes shooting sports more popular than the vast majority of common sports activities, including bicycle riding, bowling, jogging, fishing, basketball, soccer, and tennis. In fact, the shooting sports are twice as popular as golf (21.9 million), over three times as popular as baseball (12.5 million), and nearly 5 times as popular as football (9.3 million).
When asked if she ever considered canceling the fundraiser, Rep. Conditt said, "No. Not for even one second." Addressing the standing room only crowd, she smiled and said, "I want to thank Ted Celeste and Tracy Maxwell Heard for helping to make this fundraiser such a huge success."
Leftists are not “anti-gun” or even “anti-war.” They hate personal firearms ownership but love government ownership. And they love war as long as the US is not doing it.
You couldn't be more wrong. The left WON long ago. Our liberty loving, moral, individually responsible culture has long since been destroyed. We have grown an unsustainable moocher class that will resort to anarchy when any responsible reforms would be enacted. The Constitution is a "living document" to almost half of our population. Our once great republic will never be re-instituted via the ballot box. Sorry to be a downer but I'm too old to continue fooling myself.
You are most probably right. But you gotta admit, this is funny as hell. Anyway if we are going down I intend to get a chuckle out of every single stick in the eye we give to them.
And this one gives me a chuckle.
Yup, it’s fun to win a battle every now and then...but the war is still lost.
The war hasn't even started yet. It is coming. It will be ugly. It will be very bloody. But, we will win.
A similar thing happened in the 1980’s in Higgins, PA. A small (pop. 2,000) town’s decades old annual fundraising pigeon shoot was protested by PETA, and covered by CNN. The national attention made it into a national event with hundreds of shooters from around the country. A small farming community of Pennsylvania Dutchies (not to be confused with Amish) was able to build separate baseball and softball fields for their kids and a fabulous community swimming pool, all from the proceeds of the shoot over the years. I love it when a plan backfires on the kooks. Thank you PETA!
Thanks marktwain.
Just sayin.
When the crunch comes (soon) if anyone thinks the moochers here will act any differently than in Greece, Italy or France, they are deluded.
There is a very strong capacity for violence on the left. We have only seen hints of it because the greedy scum usually get what they want.
It is going to get very ugly, very quickly when the goodies stop flowing.
Oh, brother. That's just going to stir up support for Celeste and Maxwell from their supporters.
Will we never learn?
Ohio ping
I believe the proper term for this phenomenon is called “Blowback”...!
Pinging the Ohio list.
Some of the left's leaders seem to realize that if it ever gets to the point of an actual *threat* to our rights, they are very badly overmatched. Especially since their historical contempt for the police and the military is returned by both current and former members. So if "it" does come, it will indeed be ugly and bloody, but also short and very one sided.
I’d guess that their near-monopoly of education, courts and government bureaucracies give them a bit of security, myself. Even if there are laws passed (or repealed) they can ignore them...
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