Thursday, January 31, 2013

Punishing the citizen disarmament appeasers.

"I have Herr Hitler's guarantee. . ."
Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show: What Postponement of the U.S.'s Largest Gun Show Says About America.
The media is missing the real story behind the “postponement” of the largest outdoor show in America. This is a story of ignorance, bias and a gross misunderstanding of America and Americans.
This unfortunate fight began when Reed Exhibitions, a British events organizing company, announced that firearms and products associated with modern sporting rifles (guns the media has given the dubious label “assault rifles”) wouldn’t be allowed at the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show. The show was scheduled to begin on February 2 in Harrisburg, Penn.
Reed Exhibitions prohibition also extended to images of modern sporting rifles. They wanted to whitewash a firearm category with Orwellian zeal from the show because they deem these semi-automatic rifles to be too militaristic for civilian use. They mandated this ban at America’s largest outdoor show, a show that regularly attracts 200,000 outdoor enthusiasts and pumps an estimated $44 million into the region’s economy. . .
The backlash was fast and grassroots. Reports that companies were pulling out of the show quickly began to snowball. Cabela’s, a major sponsor (Cabela’s has a store in Harrisburg), was one of the first to announce it wouldn’t participate. Soon groups like the National Rifle Association, the National Wild Turkey Federation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and companies like Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Crimson Trace, Trijicon and many more started to publicly announce they were canceling plans to attend in protest—this despite real costs to their bottom lines.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two thumbs up to all the companies that pulled out of the sports show.
Two fingers up to the show organizers for their PCness. What was fine and dandy last year, is not this year?
BTW, why is a British company organizing a sports AND SHOOTING show in America. Rather ironic, isn't it?

B Woodman
III-PER

SWIFT said...

Businesses around Harrisburg gear up for this event and the economic loss to our rust belt state is larger than stated. This is not the first time the Limey's got it wrong in America. Remember when Smith @ Wesson was English owned? Perhaps Reed Enterprises can hire a well known Englishman to smooth ruffled feathers; someone like Piers Morgan. He has already demonstrated that he is an excellent gun salesman, even if some of the purchases had the ill intent of putting a bullet in him. On the serious side, I feel bad for Harrisburg businesses, but the cancellation of the show sent a strong a message across the Republic. Good on those who forced it's cancellation.

Anonymous said...

Not to be doing someone else's advertising, but I read the story of what happened on the website of the guy who started the facebook page, on his blog or somewhere else other than the facebook page BoycottTheEasternSportsAndOutdoorShow.

Seems like he tried to get the mayor to have the show without promoter Reed's involvement in it, since the exhibition hall was still going to be available, the crews were still available and all the hotels had been booked, etc. Those plans apparently fell through, so what he did to help alleviate the economic impact, at least for the hundreds of companies that pulled out, was set up a "virtual" show at http://mynortheastclassifieds.com/
limited to just those who supported the boycott for the days of what would have been the show, then opening up to anybody else later. Guess BassPro stores in the area are doing something similar.

Kindof reminds me of the Seattle gun buy back that turned into a gun show across the street. If the controllers won't cooperate, then we'll just have to carry on running the country without them.