Wondering about the No Gun No Funeral petition
No Gun No Funeral might be getting a fair share of traffic from me. I've been linked by Instapundit, and the link is bound to drive Americans to the No Gun No Funeral site. Many of them will not be fond of gun control, and even less fond of what looks like an attempt to be underhanded in promoting a gun control agenda. Others will like the idea of a ban in Canada, since it might help their own efforts to promote strict gun control in the United States. Either way, they might make their opinions known to Michael Bryant via the online petition.
And whether these visits are critical or supportive of Michael Bryant's idea of a total handgun ban in Canada, their visits are bound to make things more complicated for Michael Bryant.
No Gun No Funeral started out as a site with no political links while advocating for a complete handgun ban in Ontario.
Based on some research linking the site to Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant, who is advocating for a ban, Bryant was compelled to admit that No Gun No Funeral was indeed his site.
There is an issue here. Does this constitute astroturfing? Astroturfing refers to creating a fake web presence that implies that a grassroots movement is supporting your particular policy or agenda. A key element to astroturfing, of course, is not to mention that you are behind the site.
Instapundit has linked to this story, and he is posing the question with regards to astroturfing.
Of course, an Instapundit link is worths well over a thousand hits, perhaps several thousand over time as secondary links are established (I've already noted links from four American sites who have credited Instapundit for making this issue known to them). With all that traffic comes secondary visits from my site to No Gun No Funeral. One reader directed from Instapundit reported via a comment on what he did when he visited Michael Bryant's site. He identified himself as Robert Mugabe:
I signed the petition, because even an Africa Dictator needs to be heard, especially where guns are involved. Please send me more guns and I will forward to you my cousin the Nigerian Oil Minister's secret bank funds.
OK, that's sort of funny. If even a small percentage of visitors are leaving silly petition signatures, Michael Bryant and his people (who are not working out of the constituency office, as Bryant insists) will be very busy scrubbing the petition clean before presenting it.
I'm certain we'll never know just how many messages critical of Michael Bryant's plan were removed from the petition. We'll only see the "good" signatures. But now that is problematic too.
Michael Bryant and his people (working off hours, I remind you) will have to be very diligent now to remove American signatures from people who are supportive of a Canadian handgun ban, as this is a domestic issue, and as people who cannot vote in a Canadian election, their signatures carry no weight and ought not to be counted.
Sorry if the link from Instapundit has made life more complicated for the No Gun No Funeral folks.
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Comments
You should not be sorry for making the lives of antigunners complicated. The Liberals have made all law abiding citizens of this mucked up country who own firearms into criminals with the stroke of a pen. If a bit of the heat we have been subject to for over 10 years for no good purpose gets turned back on these brain dead vote scrounging weasels, I say it is looooong overdue.Keep up the good work, Steve.
Posted by: Dave from Campbell River at August 20, 2007 02:37 PM
Looks like they've taken down the "view petition signatures" option.
From what I remember from last week, half of history's third-world tin pot dictators, serial killers and Latin American entertainers had signed the petition. The other half of them + many ex-U.S. Presidents must've signed by now.
Looks like the petition will be as legitimate as the grassroots organization that created the "No Gun. No Funeral." movement.
Posted by: alan at August 20, 2007 03:46 PM
About the first few were names of people that can be linked back to the Liberal party.
The rest, before it went down had some funny jabs.
It seems that "astroturfing" is going to have a few sites scrutinized a lot more.
Good job Steve, more light in another dark corner.
Posted by: Peter S at August 20, 2007 10:42 PM
Isn't there--or shouldn't there be--a law against this kind of thing?
Great sleuthing, Steve.
These Liberals, whether they're provincial or federal, have no shame; they're brazen in their entitlement to power. 'Just too bad that as the value systems in our schools, media, and even churches become increasingly relativistic (i.e., it's wrong only if I get caught), there are too few Ontarians/Canadians able to discern how wrong Michael Bryant's ploys are.
As I said, there ought to be a law. That might get wide attention if it was proven--and there seems to be a lot of proof of wrongdoing--that Bryant and the Liberals were in cahoots in launching the No Gun No Funeral Web site and, further, that they went to great lengths to conceal said fact.
Posted by: 'been around the block at August 21, 2007 06:51 AM
I think you misunderstand the purpose of the group. "No Guns, No Funerals" obviously wants to encourage handgun ownership by getting cemeteries to refuse to hold funerals for people who did not own a gun!
I strongly support this, and in fact I support it so much that I signed it twice!
Posted by: VentrueCapital at August 21, 2007 07:49 AM
I don't know why the site would erase foreign names--I thought Liberals win elections with non-citizen votes?
Posted by: George at August 21, 2007 07:57 AM
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Maybe Michael Bryant had better start shopping around for a new website.
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Posted by: neo at August 24, 2007 10:05 AM
 
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