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.
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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 In some instances Hoadley presented outdated data and opinion from Wikipedia and The Huffington Post, for goodness sakes.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.
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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.
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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/
