Bloomberg bus tour coy with locations and dates for a reason

Examiner – by David Codrea

Marking “the sixth month anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary,” Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns launches a 25-state 100-day “No More Names: The National Drive to Reduce Gun Violence” bus tour today from Newtown, Conn., with the stated purpose of ginning up support for new federal “gun control” laws.

“All day, family members, faith leaders, elected officials and the Newtown community are coming together to read the names of those murdered by guns and call on Congress to act,” MAIG states on the project’s website.  

“At every stop along the way, gun violence survivors, family members, and community members will come together to read the names of people who have been murdered with guns and to rally for comprehensive and enforceable background checks legislation,” MAIG’s companion DemandAction.org website proclaims.

Missing from all the announcements is a schedule to allow the public to know where the bus is going and when it will be there. There are two conceivable reasons a tour the group obviously and desperately wants to generate publicity for would withhold that information.

The first would be for security reasons, or at least that would be the excuse given if one wanted to portray gun owners who oppose Bloomberg’s self-financed crusade against the right of his countrymen to keep and bear arms as dangerous. If that is the case, it becomes fair to ask if the bus will be accompanied throughout its trip with armed security, or if local police resources will be dragooned (and reimbursed, so that taxpayers opposed to Bloomberg’s schemes won’t be required to help foot his bills).

The second and more likely reason, considering the AstroTurf nature of Bloomberg ventures demonstrated time and again, would be to keep the grassroots from embarrassing his road show by mustering overwhelming support for gun rights and against citizen disarmament, and stealing the spotlight at what were to be carefully-controlled staged events.

What this looks like is calculated willing media exploitation — get the bus tour on the local news, get a lot of exposure from friendly “Authorized Journalists” on friendly turf to create the impression of widespread grassroots support — and then move on, doing it in a way to minimize the chances of the opposition having time to mount an effective counter-protest. In other words, it will be a continuation of the M.O. Bloomberg continually employs as to make support for his personal fetish appear much larger and more intense than it is, and to make opposition appear negligible.

Whether the tour will remain in politically safe districts and urban areas, or if it will venture into “gun country” remains to be seen, but there is a way to find out, and to track and report its progress in advance: No More Names invites site visitors to sign up to “Get the latest updates about the tour — be the first to know when it’s coming to your town.”

Interested gun rights activists could do just that, and then post notifications on blogs, message boards, social media and the like to organize groups to greet the bus and to give reporters covering it an informed alternative viewpoint. That is, assuming Bloomberg’s media stunts aren’t scheduled when most gun owners are expected to be at work, and that Team Bloomberg isn’t paying to transport in crowd extras, which is another question truly “legitimate media” would be asking.

UPDATE: Dave Workman notes Demand Action has posted the list of states, but not when or where the bus will stop:

The lineup covers Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

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http://www.examiner.com/article/bloomberg-bus-tour-coy-with-locations-and-dates-for-a-reason