Posted on 08/16/2011 5:52:51 AM PDT by marktwain
David Codrea, is the author of The War on Guns, National Gun Rights Examiner, Host of NBC 1260 Drive time radio show The War on guns and writes the “Right Watch” column on Guns Magazine. He is also a long time gun advocate, kindly agreed to answer some question about the state of gun rights, Bringing to light the truth about the Gunwalker scandal, in which he was instrumental, and various other issues that should interest all gun owners.
Here goes:
GVB: Being a site of avid gun collectors, I am sure we would all like to know what your gun background is - what was the first weapon you shot? Are you a collector? What is your weapon of choice?
DC: I’m not a collector. I’m not even much of a sport shooter and have never been hunting in my life. I own a few guns and have received some training, but that’s not what I’m about–my whole involvement with RKBA pertains to restoring, preserving and advancing the right all of us have to choose for ourselves, free of state infringement. I don’t classify firearms as weapons unless they are deployed as such. The first gun I shot was an old Daisy BB rifle I got at around age 8. The first firearm I shot was a bolt-action .22 single-shot at summer camp when I was 12. Weapon of choice? The closest one I can get my hands on–be it a lamp, a chair…I have no “weapon of choice” because I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all. It would depend on the scenario and what response I thought was needed, appropriate and most likely to result in my immediate survival/a successful outcome, including my continued freedom afterward.
GVB: How did you become such an active gun rights activist? What was your path?
DC: I was a late bloomer-I’d been a gun owner since I was in my twenties, but I was mid-thirties before I got active. I happened on a copy of American Rifleman at my older brother’s house and a lot of it made sense. A few months later I noticed an ad for an NRA Members Council meeting in my area and decided to check it out. I was heavily involved with grassroots for several years thereafter, joining just about every group out there and meeting friends who helped develop the path I eventually followed–starting out with our old GunTruths.com website to our Citizens of America ad campaign and to my War on Guns blog and other developments that have followed, like Gun Rights Examiner and my War on Guns Resistance Radio show on NBC 1260/Scottsdale. Also influential was the opportunity to write for national magazines, beginning with Guns and Ammo, and then following my editor to Handguns and now GUNS for FMG Publications, where I’m a field editor and do their monthly “Rights Watch” column.
GVB: Your radio program is fairly new. Tell us about it. You talk about gun rights during drive time in the Scottsdale area. It is a big deal because it’s not a pod-cast, but a program on a real radio station, and you air at drive time, which is one of the prime time slots on radio.
DC: Yes, I hope it does become a big deal–that all depends on whether or not we can grow an audience and expand to other markets. Drive time helps, as does being in a #15 Arbitron-rated market, but ultimately, the goal is to get syndicated and grow. That’s where I look to the pioneering efforts already put forth by guys like Tom Gresham of Gun Talk and Mark Walters of Armed American Radio. My hope is we can sell that kind of expansion potential to decision-makers who realize that there’s a weekday audience receptive to hearing the message–not a watered-down-for-the masses one, but a radical one–and I don’t view that as a pejorative, but as a point of pride.
GVB: You played a big part exposing the Gunwalker story. Tell us about your involvement in exposing it, which mainstream reporter got it into the mainstream media and where is it at now?
DC: For years, Mike Vanderboegh and I have been following and reporting on allegations raised at the CleanUpATF.org website–one run by ATF insiders who say they are trying to clean up bureau waste, abuse, corruption and fraud. In 2009 I was trying to get the House Oversight Committee on Government Reform to look into their allegations–I mean, why wouldn’t they? At the time, the Committee was controlled by Democrats and why they wouldn’t is now apparent–because they’re interested in using ATF as a tool for pushing citizen disarmament–had the Committee done their job, ATF managers and their DOJ handlers would have never dared try the criminal enterprise we helped expose.
Being followers of CUATF, Mike was the first one to notice allegations of walked guns being found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and I quickly followed. Even though we both had reputations as being anything but sympathetic to ATF, the whistleblowers came to understand we were the only ones advocating for their voices to be heard. Rather than repeat the story here, I encourage interested readers to consult the Journalist Guides I’ve posted to provide a chronicle of everything Mike and I have written from the beginning until now–so far I’ve compiled five volumes, and you can access them from click-through graphics in the sidebar on my War on Guns blog.
GVB: Also, I know that Gunwalker is a term you coined since there is confusion between the gun runner project, which was known about in Washington, and Fast and Furious which was not. Could you once and for all clear up the differences for those who are not familiar with them?
DC: Project Gunrunner was a well-known and publicized program–Gunwalker was a covert deviation operating outside the scope of Congressional oversight and media scrutiny. I wrote the following column because of that confusion you mentioned, to try and set the record straight because some people are thinking they’ve found significant smoking gun revelations from yesterday’s news, and the antis are using that to ridicule them and tar the entire investigative effort as the product of ignorance and hysteria: Rediscovered information on Project Gunrunner leading to misconceptions.
GVB: How late in the Gunwalker story did the “authorized journalists” get involved? Do you think they did a good job of sticking to the facts once the story broke in main-stream media?
DC: If you take a look at the first Journalist Guide I posted, you can see Mike Vanderboegh first posted on Dec. 28, 2010. There were some intermittent nibbles from the media, but the big CBS News expose did not happen until Feb. 23, 2011. Some journalists like Sharyl Attkisson of CBS and William La Jeunesse of Fox News have done excellent, fact-driven work. Most have either ignored the story, injected bias, or used it as a platform to encourage more power for ATF and more controls on your and my right to keep and bear arms.
GVB: How do you think agency’s like ATF manage to get away with things like Gunwalker? It is scary because it makes one feel as if there are no government agencies - just vigilantes and people out for themselves. Do you think this is just the tip of the iceberg?
DC: Absolutely this is the tip of the iceberg. We know other agencies and cabinet departments are involved–FBI, DHS, ICE, DOJ, State–and just recently learned that the National Security Council received information directly form the then-Phoenix Special Agent in Charge. Understand that a statutory member of the NSC is the President of the United States. They get away with it because they are arrogant and because they can–for the most part, the media is sympathetic to the administration and hostile to gun rights, and as Mike and I have chronicled for months now, the mainstream giants like The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, et al. have been either silent altogether on major developments in the story or else actively injecting their citizen disarmament sympathies into supposedly straight “news.”
GVB: I noticed you are putting a lot of energy into making gun rights into a legit issue with main stream journalists. Why don’t they take these issues seriously, or more accurately put an honest effort into reporting on gun right issues? Do you think they have an agenda?
DC: Of course they have an agenda–I have an entire category I use to give examples of their bigotry and lack of subject matter knowledge that I call “Authorized Journalists.” Most of them are “progressive” in their sympathies as evidenced by surveys on how they vote, most are “anti-gun” as evidenced by editorial policy and their ignorance, bias and outright lack of journalistic integrity when they “report” on the gun issue, and that’s not going to change in the foreseeable future–which is why guys like Mike and I are out there banging pots and pans as loudly as we can–our reach is considerably shorter than theirs, so we do what we can to try and let people know there are stories they aren’t being told by “official” media gatekeepers–the folks who are supposed to be government watchdogs but who instead are more often than not, its biggest cheerleaders.
GVB: Are there any mainstream reporters who you think are doing a good job as far as reporting on gun rights issues?
DC: As mentioned above, Sharyl Attkisson, William La Jeunesse…my one criticism, and some may dismiss this as sour grapes, is that we have given these folks a lot of information and behind-the-scenes support and they have not offered any public acknowledgement of that in their work.
GVB: Obviously if gun rights were more dominant in main-stream media, the legitimacy of the gun right claims would become more apparent, and gun owning citizens would be seen as who they are - up standing, law abiding citizens. What do you think your average gun user/owner/collector can do to help the cause? (Other than vote).
DC: Get involved in any way they can that fits their talents and interests. I get very irritated with gun owners who won’t lift a finger, like someone else is going to carry the load, and then they act all surprised when anti-gun **** happens. I call it “Profiles in Apathy” and I view it as actually a bigger threat than overt anti-gunners. When people tell me I’m preaching to the choir, I respond the choir are the people up there performing, who take time out of their lives to study, practice and perfect, who give the best of themselves and who will do it again next week and the next. Most gun owners flatter themselves by considering themselves the choir–it’s a membership they have not earned.
Case in point–we just had ATF impose the long gun reporting requirement on gun shops in southwest Border States. How many of your readers kept themselves informed and registered objections? Do you think the outcome may have been different if millions of outraged objections had flooded not only ATF but also our representatives? I don’t need to hear “I don’t have time” or “I don’t have money.” Unless we are talking a truly exceptional and rare case, we can each of us do something, and any excuse otherwise is just that.
This may not make me popular, but you know what? If I wanted to be popular, I wouldn’t be writing about the right to keep and bear arms, I’d be writing about “Jersey Shore” or some other shallow, trivial nonsense.
GVB: Do you find a connection between what is going on with the mainstream media, for example, the recent article by Richard A. Serrano from the LA times and the Rupert Murdoch story? Do you think this is more of the same - organizations with agendas controlling the media controlling the people? How do you think this happens? (I am pretty sure that the young, bright kids that finish journalism school have some values that they start out with about accurate reporting and the role the media play, and I am sure they do not leave school thinking - OK, lets go and be someone’s pawn, So what happens on the way? )
DC: Everyone has an agenda. Including professors at “liberal arts” schools. Young people tend to be idealistic, and to find an adult mentor who manipulates that is the rule in colleges, not the exception. Add to that 12 years of public schooling, which trains young people to be inmates of an institution rather than free citizens. Think about it–warrantless searches of kids’ lockers, alcohol testing before they can enter the prom, etc., etc. that could take me way off topic–and you have an indoctrinated population ripe for exploitation by those who flatter them as being adults. That is, if the parents have not done their job and raised their children to be independent in thought and deed. And too many have abdicated that most solemn and difficult of obligations.
GVB: Do you think the Norway shootings will impact, or have already had an impact on U.S gun owners and U.S Gun Laws, if so - How?
DC: They’re trying. That idiot Carolyn McCarthy is trying. Those idiots at the Brady Campaign are trying. Some of us don’t care because we’re through backing up and simply won’t obey any more gun laws. And that’s more than just false bravado keyboard rhetoric–some of us have been publicly engaging in defiance of evil edicts for years.
GVB: Tell us about the conversions kits for the AR15 rifles and the serial number placement. Is this something that should concern your average Joe AR15 owner?
DC: That cat may have been woofed up the tree for now. I had credible sources tell me that .50 conversion uppers would require serial numbers. I understand the head of FTB (Firearms Technology Branch) has denied that at a meeting where he was asked, but he never replied to me–and besides, I already demonstrated an existing case not with the AR, but with AP-9 pistols.
GVB: Recently I posted a video by OFCC which was a video of a stop some officers did, in which after cuffing a permitted concealed carrier and they also threatened his life. You spoke on your radio show about the kids who were out shooting legally and found themselves in a kill box situation. Why do you think this sort of thing happens? Do you think the entire police force is bad to the core or are these a handful of rotten apples? What do you think this should be done about this? Do you think there are any ways gun owners and carriers can avoid getting into situations like this?
DC: When cops are demonstrated abusing citizens we often find they are long-time veterans, meaning that behavior has been established over years and they’ve been allowed to get away with it. The animal in Canton, OH who threatened to execute the CCW holder was confident enough to do it knowing he was being recorded on dashcam video, and his partner stood by and let him. That tells me such conduct was institutionalized, and coming forth to stop it is something the so-called “good cops” are reluctant to do. So no, I don’t think it’s a handful. I think the handful are the exceptions, the Oath Keepers, an organization run by my friend Stewart Rhodes. And those were grown peaceable gun owners in the “kill box” story, albeit the heavy-booted enforcers did not treat them like free adults–which is something we can not tolerate.
GVB: On the same topic - How did you coin the phrase “The Only Ones” for the police force? Its sounds a bit George Orwell 1984ish to me.
DC: I did not coin it. It was coined by DEA agent Lee Paige who told a classroom full of school kids he was the only one in the room professional enough to carry a gun and then proceeded to shoot himself in the leg on camera. I thought that was instant karma and adopted it to illustrate the absolute hypocritical folly of those who claim police are the only ones who can be trusted with guns–as we see in “gun free zones,” may and no issue locales, places that prohibit open carry, etc.
Gunwalker ping.
David Codrea is a hero of American journalism.
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