On Thursday morning, the Columbus Dispatch's Darrel Rowland reported ("Gun battle slated for high noon in downtown Columbus") that "Mayors Against Illegal Guns is coming to Columbus on Friday for an event urging Sen. Rob Portman to support expanding background checks on gun purchases," and that "guns rights groups are planning to make their voices heard, too." There was no follow-up on what happened at the Michael Bloomberg-supported group's rally; we'll see why shortly.
Organizing for Action, the group which exists solely to promote President Barack Obama's agenda, also scheduled a rally to promote illegal-immigrant amnesty in Columbus on Friday. Intrepid center-right blogger Jesse Hathaway reported attendance (HT Twitchy) of perhaps a half-dozen. A search of the first couple of pages (here and here) of results on "immigration" at the Dispatch's web site returned no relevant coverage (results were not sorted by date, but seemed to generally move backwards in time).
Here's what deliciously happened at the MAIG rally, as reported by Jim Heath at 10TV.com:
Rally For Gun Background Checks Quickly Becomes Pro-Gun Event
It was a rally organized by gun-control supporters, but by the end, it looked more like an NRA rally.
"As a gun owner, I'm a responsible person and I think it's responsible to ask to have all gun owners have a background check," said Blanche Luczyk. "It's just common sense. Any responsible person who is willing to take the ownership of a gun should be willing to have that background check."
Luczyk was one of a half dozen members of the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns who hosted the rally in the Arena District on Friday.
... About 50 guns-rights supporters were on hand, some with rifles over their shoulders and others with handguns in hip holsters.
Charlie Roberts said he was there to make sure that gun rights advocates had their voices heard.
"I want to show my support for the NRA, gun rights and the 2nd Amendment," said Roberts. "We need to go after the criminals who commit crimes with guns and not the honest law abiding citizens. We don’t need any new laws, just enforce the ones on the books."
... There's no reason for Mayors Against Illegal Guns to be in Ohio," said Linda Walker of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation. "Ohioans stand up for our constitutional rights and that's the way it's going to be."
After Luczyk addressed the crowd to some jeers and boos, Walker, with the crowd on her side, replaced her as a speaker.
“People are fired up, people are concerned,” said Walker. “It’s overwhelming this many people show up on a Friday afternoon because our constitutional rights are that important.”
As I noted at a previous post about poor attendance at OFA and MAIG events:
One cannot help but conclude that there is little to no meaningful passion for President Obama's or Mayor Bloomberg's pet causes at the grass roots. The national press is avoiding letting that reality become generally visible.
By from all appearances ignoring Friday's events, the Columbus Dispatch participated in that visibility-avoidance effort.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
