Author Topic: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo  (Read 7135 times)

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Offline gryphon

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Rep. Hoadley (D-Kalamazoo) has been one of the leading proponents of gun control this legislative session. His name has appeared on multiple bills dealing with subjects such as banning open carry and firearm prohibition lists. Michigan Open Carry and Michigan Gun Owners have set up a meeting with Rep. Hoadley to discuss the issue publically. Please join us in support of your gun rights at the Kalamazoo Public Library, 315 S. Rose Street, Kalamazoo, MI 49007

Is anyone here planning on going to support MOC?  I plan on being there.  If any other MOC members plan on attending I would love to meet you.

Offline TucTom

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Too bad I work nights at this point.

Offline Pond Scum

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I'll be missing it ..... Mickey is calling us.   :D

Offline gryphon

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Too bad, Tom.  Maybe we'll get a chance to meet in the future.

Glenn, there's probably no snow in Orlando!

Offline CitizensHaveRights

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And no 2A in the House of Mouse.
"A well balanced breakfast being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food shall not be infringed "  - Who has a right to keep and eat food, The People or A Well Balanced Breakfast?

Offline TucTom

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Dan, what time will you be coming down to Kalamazoo? Maybe we can meet up for a few minutes at least. I work at 6 pm about 15 min from downtown.

Offline gryphon

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Not sure exactly what time I will arrive as I will be driving straight from work in Lansing to Kalamazoo.  Since it is going to take about 1.5 hrs to get there I wasn't planning on coming very early (maybe 5:15) but if I can get away from work earlier and there's a coffee place nearby, maybe we can meet up for coffee.

I would have to confirm/call you about 2:00 pm or 3:00 pm though, if you're okay with a last minute confirmation.

Offline TucTom

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That would work. There is a place less than a block away from the library. I know nothing about it its name is Something Brewing 120 w South St. I'll check in tomorrow.

Offline gryphon

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PM me your cell phone number.

Offline TucTom

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I'd be interested in reading about this if anybody wants to write up a review.

Offline gryphon

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #10 on: April 05, 2016, 08:29:29 PM »
Well, I don't think you do facebook, so I'll copy a few things here.  Here's a post I wrote in reply to someone else's comment.  It gives you the gist of what occurred.  I'll post one or two more after mine.  By the way, the pro-gun / gun carriers outnumbered the anti-gun people probably three or four to one.  A couple of TV stations were there.

+++++

I think your characterization of the discussion / debate last night is inaccurate. Rep. Hoadley showed up with a PowerPoint presentation full of misrepresentations, cherry picked data (as stated), half-truths, and in some cases what I would characterize as outright lies. I thought Tom Lambert did a good job of using his PowerPoint against him, going through the various slides. In some instances Hoadley presented outdated data and opinion from Wikipedia and The Huffington Post, for goodness sakes.

When Tom did use statistics straight from Obama's Department of Justice, the anti-gun people didn't believe it, even though he had the report in his hand.

Your thoughts about questioning the specifics of the statistics are valid, but I don't think they would have worked last night and here's why. Tom could have asked the questions you posed above and Hoadley wouldn't have had the answers. However, he would have said exactly what he did say, that his stats were meta-data (data of data) that were peer-reviewed for accuracy. Without Tom knowing exactly what Hoadley was going to present ahead of time, Tom would not have known how to show exactly how the charts were flawed and rebutted them showing the exact problems with them.

What was agreed to between MOC and Hoadley before time is not exactly what transpired last night. Also, it was expected (at least by me) that Hoadley would have spent more time outlining his solutions to the problem of gun violence. Instead, he showed one slide at the end that had really no specifics except that he wants universal background checks. Tom refuted that issue handily by pointing out that most gun violence occurs with handguns and that Michigan has had universal background checks for handguns for eight decades! (Edit: I think it's actually nine decades)

Hoadley used statements that were intended to cause people to infer inaccurate conclusions, such as Congress is standing in the way of gun violence research because they have prohibited the CDC from using taxpayer dollars to fund that. Gun violence research is is not prohibited and many groups are doing it. The latest is a new effort just started by, if memory serves, UCLA or USC. I'd need to double-check, but I think it's one of them and if I remember correctly is also funded by Bloomberg.

Hoadley mentioned that he wants to get tough on law breakers and straw buyers, but ignored the fact that the DoJ and ATF refuse to prosecute straw buyers. Probably over 99% are never prosecuted. Heck, the straw buyer of the guns used in the Columbine shooting wasn't even prosecuted! I can only think of two straw buyers in recent memory that were prosecuted. One was the retired LEO that used his discount to get his father (not a prohibited person) a Glock. The other was some woman who bought her boyfriend a gun. Most straw buyers are never prosecuted. What does Hoadley want to do, make it more illegal?

Hoadley never once proposed a single law that would have prevented any of the last 15 or so highly publicized mass shootings going back to before Columbine and VA Tech.

So, to sum up, I guess Tom could have shown up with his own powerpoint showing different charts with different conclusions, but I'm not sure how that would have been better.

MOAR

Yeah, I had a question for Hoadley and didn't have a chance to ask him because they ended questioning as Hoadley said he had another commitment. A few people just wanted to talk on and on and on with their opinions about how they don't feel the need to own a gun, etc....they wasted everyone's time. If this is done again, there should be some changes. There should be a time limit per person for a question. No filibustering for 15 minutes! And maybe look at something like presentations must be given to the opposition x days ahead of time so the opposition can prepare a rebuttal, or some variation thereof. Or maybe we're okay now after we've seen what he has.

+++++

From our VP Johnny Roehrig:

To give a little backstory:

After the recent Kalamazoo shooting, Representative Jon Hoadley (D-Kalamazoo) came out publically calling for more gun control. He even introduced legislation in an effort to "close the open carry loophole" as well as other Bills which would NOT have changed the outcome of what happened in the Kalamazoo mass public shooting or any public shootings for that matter.

Michigan Open Carry, Inc., along with Michigan Gun Owners challenged Rep. Hoadley to a friendly conversation/debate style setting where each team member would be able to present their side and hopefully (at the very least) learn something from one another. After each presenter speaks, question and answer period with the audience would be allowed.

This event would be held at the Kalamazoo Public Library from 5:30pm-7pm on April 4, 2016. Representing MOC was President Tom Lambert and representing MGO was David Dellinger.

Rep. Hoadley was first to present and while the presentation itself was fancy, with a video and a slideshow, a vast majority of the data provided was flawed or at the very minimum, disingenuous and misleading.

Lambert then spent the majority of his allotted time dissecting this video and slideshow and educating the audience about why and how this data was flawed. We believe that this reached the majority of the audience and most people took more away from this section of the meeting than they would have ever anticipated.

For the most part, the audience on both sides were very respectful and listened to what each side had to say and seemed genuinely interested throughout the entire meeting. The meeting exceeded our planned time schedule (which is a good thing), and we hope to make these types of events normal staple in the way we educate the public on firearms.

A special thank you to Representative Jon Hoadley for responding to our challenge and showing up to this style of conversation.
We also would like to thank Joel Fulton for his comments and personal perspective as a Federal Firearms Dealer and the challenges associated with his line of work.

+++++

Some pics: (they work in Chrome, if they don't display in your browser, click on link)









I'm the one in the white shirt, VP Johnny Roehrig is next to me in the blue shirt, and our IT Director Jason Gillman is next to him in the grey sweatshirt.  You can see GR Dinnius' head to the left of my head.  :)



Tom being interviewed by one of the TV stations Fox 17 afterward.

Here are a couple of video news stories that aired on the event.  Both news stories tried to gin up a little controversy by making it sound like it was a little raucous, but it wasn't like that at all.  Fox 17 has the more balanced report I think.

http://fox17online.com/2016/04/04/public-forum-on-gun-control-sparks-debate-in-kalamazoo/

http://woodtv.com/2016/04/04/heated-debate-on-gun-violence-in-kalamazoo/
« Last Edit: April 05, 2016, 09:00:21 PM by gryphon »

Offline CitizensHaveRights

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #11 on: April 05, 2016, 09:42:06 PM »
Thanks for the report, Dan.
"A well balanced breakfast being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food shall not be infringed "  - Who has a right to keep and eat food, The People or A Well Balanced Breakfast?

Offline gryphon

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #12 on: April 06, 2016, 09:54:14 AM »
More follow-up from Tom on the meeting.

+++++

Even after I detailed the facts, many of the people that supported gun control still didn't believe me.

During Monday night's discussion in Kalamazoo, we asked the crowd to raise their hand to indicate if they thought firearm related violence was up or down.

There was a clear grouping of people in the audience that seemed to support gun control, who raised their hands indicating they thought violence was up. There was another clear group of gun owners who raised their hands indicating they thought violence was down.

Here are the facts according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics in a report issued in 2013 looking at data from 1993 to 2011 in the US:

- firearm related homicides DECLINED 39%.
- nonfatal firearm related crimes DECLINED by 69%, a reduction of over 1 million cases.

Since 2011 these numbers have continued to decline.

This information is a critical foundation for understanding the current situation in America. A foundation that seems to be completely lacking from so many that oppose our natural, civil, and Constitutionally protected rights.

Here is the report:
http://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf




Offline part deux

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #13 on: April 06, 2016, 10:40:01 AM »
that his stats were meta-data (data of data) that were peer-reviewed for accuracy. Without Tom knowing exactly what Hoadley was going to present ahead of time, Tom would not have known how to show exactly how the charts were flawed and rebutted them showing the exact problems with them.
Meta data and peer reviewed...  These studies are done by seemingly independent organization that are ALL funded by Bloomberg's groups, and they "peer" review each others work.

Anti Gun groups ALL use the same bogus data over and over again.  A lie repeated often is believed to be fact.

My recommendation before MOC takes on another event of this nature, who ever is the prime speaker should be fully prepared to point by point address the lies with fully documented evidence.  Gunfacts.info is a great resource, and this page in particular addresses many of the bloomie talking points http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/assorted-myths/

WE are attempting to overcome emotion with factual data.  It's very difficult to do, especially when the emotion is supported by made up data.

Offline gryphon

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #14 on: April 06, 2016, 11:02:23 AM »
they "peer" review each others work.

Yeah.  Just like climate scientists looking for .gov grants to study anthropogenic global warming.

I have an interesting story on being peer reviewed.  A friend of mine is a scholar of ancient Greece--Greek plays, literature, and art.  He writes books and guest lectures.  Without getting into too much boring detail, he discovered that an image of an ancient piece of art had been altered in the past.  It was important for reasons we don't care about, but it had implications on scholarly work published in relation to it.  He published an article about it and submitted it to the University of Michigan for review and publication, because U of M is basically *the* clearing house for this type of work. 

They refused to publish it because he didn't cite nationally recognized sources to back up his research like Mr. X and Mr. Y and Mr. Z.  He told them no, he didn't because he was challenging their theories.  People have based their entire careers and written millions of words on these subjects and don't take lightly to someone disproving something they've based their entire careers around.

He told me much of the academic world in this setting is a cesspool because little new discoveries are being made on the ancient Greek world, so people just continue to write the same stuff and keep quoting each other.

Offline TucTom

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #15 on: April 06, 2016, 04:12:45 PM »
Dan thank you for putting this together here. You are correct I "am on Facebook" but I don't do facebook. I may get on once or twice a month.

Offline MI_XD

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #16 on: April 08, 2016, 12:43:40 PM »
I also want to thank you for the report, as I am NOT on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIN.

Email and Forums work just as well for me.
MI_XD
SW Michigan
I finally can be Proud of America, again!

Offline goofymonkey33

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Re: Apr 4 — 5:30 PM, Public Discussion with Rep. Jon Hoadley in Kalamazoo
« Reply #17 on: April 08, 2016, 02:20:32 PM »
I also want to thank you for the report, as I am NOT on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIN.

Email and Forums work just as well for me.

I second this.