Someone named Lickenbrock at The Smoking Gun (the anti-gun screedblog run by Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown gun control advocacy operation) has written an article taking The Gundies to task for their allegedly “toxic” and “problematic” nominees and award winners.
Of course, to Everytown, everything about The Gundies is unspeakably pernicious. The sponsors? Evil. The speakers? Fascists. And the award winners? They’re simultaneously “toxic gun influencers” and Hitler+Mao+Stalin+Darth Vader all rolled into one malignant package of hate.
After all, in Everytown’s world view, guns are bad and The Gundies celebrate people who are in the business of promoting guns and gun culture. What could possibly be more nefarious than that?
Lickenbrock claims, for example, that Gundie winner Brandon Herrera isn’t only a white nationalist (despite Herrera clearly being a Hispanic name), but he also has friends (including Kyle Rittenhouse) who Everytown really doesn’t like.
That, naturally, makes Hererra guilty of racism and murder by association. Licknbrock doesn’t bother to explain why Rittenhouse is on their naughty list, of course. That’s probably because they know their readers are already convinced he’s a murderer (despite the outcome of a trial by a jury of his peers) and they’d be sued for libel if they tried to make that claim in print.
Wait, there’s more. Liberty Doll dares to take unapproved positions in the culture war, “rails against ‘woke’ ideologies,” and (gasp!) opposes gun control. Taran Butler hasn’t been me-too’d nearly hard enough. Administrative Results allegedly appeals to white supremacists.
Eric Blandford, a.k.a. IraqVeteran8888, is tarred as a conspiracy theorist and — get this — a “gun rights absolutist.” That’s an epithet he no doubt wears with pride. Worse still, two children were nominated for Gundie awards! Will no one think of the children?
The Gundies Can Give Awards to Whoever The Hell They Want
First off, let’s get the most important thing in the table here. Much to the consternation of the anti-gun left, we have this thing called the First Amendment. Before we had a First Amendment, freedom of speech was a pre-existing natural right. Not only that, but other freedoms, like the freedom of religion and the freedom of association are also protected pre-existing human rights.
None of these rights, of course, mean people can’t be criticized (even Everytown has rights, too), but criticism has to be fact-based and not based on lies, exaggerations and falsehoods designed to harm those being criticized. That’s called slander or libel, depending on whether it’s spoken words or words that are written and printed.
When you have to resort to lying about people with whom you disagree rather than refuting their ideas, you’ve lost the plot. Everytown didn’t want to bother to lay out arguments against these influencers’ cultural or political positions, so they moved straight onto shuttingΒ down debate with a mix of lies, exaggerations, and negative assumptions that probably live just outside of what’s legally actionable.
In other words, this wasn’t reasoned debate or criticism. It’s a cheap shot meant to ruin people’s reputations and shut them down.
Everytown May Be The Real Bigots Here
What Everytown didn’t say about The Gundies probably says even more. There was a huge opportunity to smear them, but Everytown passed it by. Let’s take a look at possible reasons why they were eager to take every cheap shot at them…except one.
Okay, story time. There's an awards ceremony for online firearm content creators that started in recent years called "The Gundies". As with many forms of promotion in this industry, most of my colleagues and I have viewed it primarily as a commercially-focused endeavor (1/19) pic.twitter.com/tcVnZKw5Ah
— ππΌπΎπππΎπππ ππππππππππΏ (@tacticoolgf) December 6, 2023
If I wanted to smear The Gundies (and I do not), there’s a much easier opportunity available: the debate over whether Tacticool Girlfriend should have been included. She was initially nominated in the Most Influential Female Of The Year category but after voting started, she was removed. The event’s organizers say that she was “miscategorized,” but won’t explain any further.
Whether you like the Gundies or not, what happened seems pretty obvious. Tacticool Girlfriend is transgender and the people running The Gundies probably don’t consider her a real woman. Once they found out, they pulled her from the category.
I’m not going to debate whether that was the right thing to do or not, but I will say that everyone (including The Gundies and Tacticool Girlfriend) is entitled to their opinion on the matter.
The only reason I bring this up at all is it was high profile enough that Everytown’s writer Lickenbrock was likely aware of it. Yet he chose to not use it to try to further smear The Gundies in his hit piece. As desperate as he was to smear Liberty Doll as transphobic, you’d think that he’d have been all over this one, right?
Nope.
To do that would have required Everytown to come down on the side of a pro-gun YouTuber. A “toxic gun influencer.” Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Everytown wants everyone to believe that they’re staunch defenders of the LGBT community. In their book, the gun influencer community is filled bigoted, toxic, and problematic scumbags. So they can’t be seen as coming to the defense of a transgender woman…who also happens to be pro-gun.
It’s pretty clear that Everytown doesn’t really care at all about the LGBT community or any other minorities. Not unless they can be used to take shots at gun owners, manufacturers, the gun culture, and oh-so-toxic gun influencers. Everytown only pretends to stand up for LGBT people, but only if they can be used as the basis for taking cheap shots that benefit them politically.
So who’s really toxic here again?
2 Responses
Brandon Herrera isnβt a white nationalist, he’s a statest. Literally parties with and apologizes for Clinton’s one eyed gunsel.
“Hitler+Mao+Stalin+Darth Vader all rolled into one malignant package of hate”
Okay, that one got a chuckle.
They throw the nationalist identifier on there as a subtle way to disparage white people. They’ve been doing the same thing with Republicans (MAGA Republicans) and Christians (Christian nationalists). It’s a sneaky way for them to pretend like they’re only talking about the really, really bad white, or Republican, or Christian people. It’s totally a coincidence that those are the groups of people that tend to oppose their policies. Notice how they don’t have these identifiers to disparage groups that tend to support them. How do their “accepting, loving, and inclusive” followers never notice that?
“Everytownβs writer Lickenbrock was likely aware of it.”
I wouldn’t count on that. Keep in mind that these people aren’t just lazy. They don’t care about the facts. It isn’t like they’re reviewing all of the available information before writing their latest basket of deplorables smear.
FIFY:
“[The Left] only pretends to stand up for [groups that don’t tend to support their opponents], but only if they can be used as the basis for benefiting themselves.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. This is a game they play for power. The truth is, they just don’t care about anything else. Some of their manipulated followers do, but the people running the show don’t.