Tactics (with update)

So I'm cruising the intertubes, looking at my regular blogs, and I come across this post by Sebastian. In it, he quotes a post by Kevin over at Smallest Minority.

Seems that Kevin was going to lunch, and saw that his chosen establishment didn't allow weapons to be carried. So he took what I consider the only logical approach when dealing with a private business .... he stated his case succinctly and mentioned that he wouldn't be spending any money there.

Sebastian (and apparently, Caleb too) seems to think it's ok to try to trick or manipulate business owners into dropping the no-gun policy without letting on that you are a firearms carry advocate.

So I responded here and here; I thought the proposed solution was kind of weak, but what's new. But it was the other comments that Sebastian posted that gave me pause, because I seemed to detect a certain hypocricy to Sebastian's argument, as well as a generally distasteful attitude.

Now please note that Sebastian is one of the top-rated gunbloggers around, and he does a lot of work locally for 2A causes .... he's a good guy.

Caleb admonished commenter Bob_S on tactics with a two-step criteria:

Bob S. – who gives a damn what our tactics are as long as 1) we win, and we 2) don’t sacrifice our personal integrity in so doing?

Doesn't sound too bad, does it? I've often advocated that the right needs to get dirty in politics.

But Sebastian took that down a notch, advising that he doesn't mind sacrificing personal integrity to get the win:

Considering what’s at stake, yes winning trumps integrity. Politics and social change are not a process of integrity. Do you think the progressives won by patting themselves on the head for their integrity?

In this, I believe that Sebastian is dead wrong.

For years, the Brady bunch has lied about firearms, lied about firearms statistics, lied about how many die from criminal firearm use, lie about how many children die accidentally from firearms, lie and obfuscate about 'loopholes' and 'reasonable restrictions' .... lie after lie after lie. Why?

Because the truth is demonstrably on our side. Howard Nemerov (a story in himself) recently showed that accidental firearms deaths are going down dramatically despite millions of firearms added to the population. The 'data' that showed that 90% of the firearms confiscated from Mexican drug organizations come from US gunshows is blantantly incorrect and mis-used. The oft-screeched banshee cry that another law that restores firearm liberty to citizens will result in 'blood in the streets' ........ hasn't come to pass, anywhere.

So why would we as second amendment advocates think that lying would be ultimately beneficial to our cause?

I don't think it is.

But also disturbing is the apparent hypocrisy that Sebastian displays. If the win is important, above and beyond integrity, why then, is open carry a bad thing? Why is advocating machine gun ownership a bad thing? Why are the Threepers bad people?

Sebastian opposes all of these activities, because it might scare the white people (and we mustn't do that!). No, Sebastian subscribes to the NRA theory that we have to have a master plan, that we have to go slow, that we have to fight only the battles that we can win.

So what happened to 'the win trumps everything'?

Something just doesn't jibe.

pm

Update - Sebastian seems to have thought a bit about his comments.