Gun-grabbing proponents were on a power-high after the social media lynch mobs attacked companies providing discounts to NRA members, just for those companies to see a massive nosedive in favorability, while on another front YouTube's purge of Independent content caused such a backlash that now they are backtracking and claiming it was all a "mistake."
While the blow back has been huge against both, that is nothing compared to backlash and criticism President Trump is receiving for his comments during the bipartisan meeting held on Wednesday regarding school safety, where he suggested "take the guns first, go through due process second," to which he is already starting to walk-back that comment after seeing the collective uproar online from Second Amendment supporters.
'SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED'
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." - Second Amendment
We'll start with President Trump's comments because it doesn't matter that this was just a discussion" or as he called it on Thursday morning a "meeting," his comments have rightly caused an uproar among Second Amendment supporters.
His controversial statement began with "I don’t want mentally ill people to be having guns," then he continued:
You have to do something very decisive. Number one, you can take the guns away immediately from people that you can adjudge easily are mentally ill, like this guy. You know, the police saw that he was a problem, they didn’t take any guns away. Now, that could have been policing. I think they should have taken them away anyway, whether they had the right or not. But I’ll tell you this, you have to have very strong provisions for the mentally ill.
His reference about "like this guy" was to Nikolas Cruz, the man that walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, and killed 17 people. Cruz had been reported to the FBI twice, once for stating he was going to be a "professional school shooter," and another time being told he was going to "explode. Cruz also had been reported to the Broward County Sheriff's over two dozen times for threats, violence and reports of him planning to shoot up a school.
Then after VP Mike Pence spoke of due process, President Trump went off the rails in one of the most boneheaded statements he has ever made, when he said "Or, Mike, take the firearms first, and then go to court. Because that’s another system, because a lot of times, by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures, I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida. … To go to court would have taken a long time. So you could do exactly what you’re saying, but take the guns first, go through due process second."
Granted he was speaking about a man that killed 17 people, a man according to Florida law, should have been arrested, diverted to a mental health facility, and had his guns confiscated, had the police done their jobs, and it would have been done accoringly with "due process," but law enforcement failed on all levels from the FBI to the Broward County Sheriff's office.
The blow back against President was immediate, harsh and if his tweet this morning is anything to go by, heard quite loudly by the Trump administration as he begins his long walk-back, which will take far more than just his tweet, which said "Many ideas, some good & some not so good, emerged from our bipartisan meeting on school safety yesterday at the White House. Background Checks a big part of conversation. Gun free zones are proven targets of killers. After many years, a Bill should emerge. Respect 2nd Amendment!"
What he didn't say is that one of those "not so good" ideas was his own phrasing and assertions about due process.
GUN-GRABBER NRA BOYCOTT BACKFIRES
As we at ANP predicted on February 24, 2018, cowardly companies that caved to the online social media mobs in their #BoycottNRA campaign by cutting ties with the NRA over threats of being boycotted, their decision has backfired on them in a big way. Morning Consult polled U.S. adults and found massive increases in negative opinions regarding the companies that severed their ties with the NRA because of liberal gun-grabbers pressure and online threats.
As can be seen in the graph above, the companies named inched up in favorability among Democrats by far less than they tanked by Republicans, leaving them with a major net loss in public opinion.
If a consumer has a negative opinion about a company they are unlikely to even consider using their services in the future, which goes to show why caving to a "threat" of a boycott by gun-grabbing proponents, causes a reaction resulting in an organic grassroots boycott by patriots that is almost impossible to bounce back from.
The latest example of this is Dick's Sporting Goods, who decided to grab some attention by announcing they would stop selling so-called "assault rifles," to which the backlash is just beginning. Dick's Sporting goods did the same thing in 2012, but later started selling the same weapons again.
Since the Florida high school shooting, YouTube intensified it's censorship campaign against conservatives and Independent Media by not only scrubbing the site of any videos about the shooting that did not conform to the gun-grabbing agenda, but taking it a step further by terminating whole channels, wiping out thousands of videos archives and Independent reporting.
With so much criticism and negative attention given to their antics, it appears the company is beginning to understand what it could cost them, not only in content creators, but critical traffic and revenue as they lose part of their audience, so now, using the liberal Bloomberg News to make their excuses, they are claiming it was all a "mistake."
YouTube’s new moderators, brought in to spot fake, misleading and extreme videos, stumbled in one of their first major tests, mistakenly removing some clips and channels in the midst of a nationwide debate on gun control.>
The Google division said in December it would assign more than 10,000 people to moderate content after a year of scandals over fake and inappropriate content on the world’s largest video site.>
In the wake of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, some YouTube moderators mistakenly removed several videos and some channels from right-wing, pro-gun video producers and outlets. >
Some YouTube channels recently complained about their accounts being pulled entirely. On Wednesday, the Outline highlighted accounts, including Titus Frost, that were banned from the video site. Frost tweeted on Wednesday that a survivor of the shooting, David Hogg, is an actor. Jerome Corsi of right-wing conspiracy website Infowars said on Tuesday that YouTube had taken down one of his videos and disabled his live stream.>
Shutting entire channels would have marked a sweeping policy change for YouTube, which typically only removes channels in extreme circumstances and focuses most disciplinary action on specific videos. But YouTube said some content was taken down by mistake. The site didn’t address specific cases and it’s unclear if it meant to take action on the accounts of Frost and Corsi.
There was no mistake as we have learned from The Daily Caller that Google's YouTube is allowing the hate site SPLC (Southern Policy Law Center), who lists religious groups as "hate groups" because of their stance on abortion and traditional marriage, and attacks conservatives on a regular basis for simply disagreeing on ideology, as one of their "trusted flaggers." Holding that position allows the group to mass flag content they consider "extremist," which is their label for Second Amendment supporters, people of faith, and those with conservative leanings.
The SPLC’s close involvement in policing content on YouTube is likely to cause consternation among conservatives who worry that they may not be treated fairly. The left-wing group has consistently labeled pedestrian conservative organizations as “hate groups” and has been directly tied to violence against conservatives in the past. Floyd Lee Corkins, who opened fire at the Family Research Center in 2012, said he chose the FRC for his act of violence because the SPLC listed them as a “hate group.”
It’s unclear when the SPLC joined YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program. The program goes back to 2012 but exploded in size in recent years amid a Google push to increase regulation of the content on its platforms, which followed pressure from advertisers. Fifty of the 113 program members joined in 2017 as YouTube stepped up its content policing, YouTube public policy director Juniper Downs told a Senate committee in January.
Finally some of YouTube's top creators, people with over 100,000 subscribers, that have not been terminated yet, are calling them out on their own platform, while encouraging their subscribers to find their content on another platform, such as DTube, as they continue to archive and upload their previous content to another platform.
One of which is PressForTruth, who not only explains what has been happening with the "purge" but explains that he is actually able to generate more revenue from DTube than he could at YouTube, which should be a major draw for other larger channels.
BOTTOM LINE
President Trump is now learning the same lesson that companies and platforms are learning, which is that any talk or action that "infringes" on Second Amendment rights, will be countered and called out loudly, and those siding with gun-grabbers will not be rewarded for it, but will see major blow back.
The backlash is not just coming from the NRA, their members or gun owners, it is coming from every American citizen that supports the Constitution and specifically the Second Amendment.
The companies that severed ties with the NRA because of liberal lynch mob threats on social media have lost their favorability, and now millions of Americans have a negative opinion of them, as more will when they are informed of their actions.
YouTube has creators pushing alternative platforms on their own platform and is attempting to backtrack by claiming their purge of conservatives was just a mistake, because they realize just how many people they will lose due to their anti-gun agenda and censorship of any narrative that does not conform to their ideology.
As for President Trump, his recent tweet will not be sufficient, and neither will an attitude of "They'll see nothing will be signed that 'infringes' on the Second Amendment," because that is not enough now that he made unpalatable statements on television. He must come out publicly, and firmly back due process and focus on mental health, school safety and getting rid of gun free zones.
The President needs his supporters, more than his supporters need him, if he wants to be reelected in 2020.
THAT is the bottom line.
NOTE TO READERS - If we make it through March when we start seeing the revenue generated by the new ad network, we may just have a chance to turn big techs' bias back against them and come through this stronger, louder and more powerful, together. February 2018 has been the most brutal month yet due to the censorship we have been battling against this past year, so any extra readers may be able to spare for donations is greatly appreciated.
