Gun company owner, Dan Cooper, forced to resign from Cooper Firearms because he supports Obama.
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Gun company owner, Dan Cooper, forced to resign from Cooper Firearms because he supports Obama.
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liberal
I’ve always wondered whether the gun-nut movement isn’t secretly funded by the gun manufacturers.
The Grand Panjandrum
I don’t think this is the Republican cocoon as much as it is the gun nut subset of the Wingnut cocoon. But it won’t be long before the only elements left in the Republican party will be the Christianists and the Wingnuts.
I still don’t understand the gun nut element. I have own a substantial number of firearms for my entire adult life and have never once worried that anyone was going to come to my front door and ask me to turn them in. What is this paranoia?
boonagain
When you think of it, the Democrats start out each election losing a certain amount of votes from the gun nuts, right-to-lifers and gay-haters .
There is no reasoning with our opponents on these issues as they are black/white one issue voters while we try to look at the big picture.
That is a pretty big deficit we face every time.
kommrade jakevich
This is how fucktarded they’ve become. A guy who founded a gun company isn’t safe from the knuckledraggers. I just hope he got the world’s biggest platinum parachute.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
Republicans only let Republicans own gun companies.
CIRCVS MAXIMVS MMVIII
OT: Re – Sarah Palin’s prank phone call…
The Secret Service gave the radio comedians her phone number.
Conservatively Liberal
Fucking stupid. Republicans would cut off their noses to spit their faces. If he had endorsed McCain and Palin, nothing would have happened. But one utterance of support for a Democrat (especially Obama) and it is over for him.
Political discrimination in the workplace? I think so. As said above, I hope he has a golden parachute. Even better, one that would gently set down a space capsule still attached to a Saturn V rocket.
dewberry
That fabled big tent is now a pup tent and shrinking rapidly.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
Good riddance. It’s well know that Obama plans to take all the guns away from white people and give them to his people. He wants to make the US look like Planet of the Apes. No way I’m giving up my gun. I’m clinging to it until they take it from my cold dead hand. That and my religion. McCain/Palin 08 and onward.
Garrigus Carraig
@Conservatively Liberal:
lolfixt
Dennis - SGMM
Several threads ago we were speculating about what the Republicans would do going forward. Looks as though that’s been answered. Win or lose, the loonies are now in charge.
r€nato
No candy for his kids on Halloween either!
Conservatively Liberal, I know for a fact I’ve been discriminated against on multiple occasions for being a Democrat. On at least three different occasions, as a freelancer, work suddenly dried up where before I’d been getting steady work, and I later deduced that it was due to politics. On another occasion as an employee, I know for a fact that once it was found out I was a Democrat, I was a marked man and a reason was ginned up to can me. That one happened in Orange County. If you haven’t been there, you can’t imagine how rabid the right-wingers are there.
On none of these occasions did I engage in inappropriate political discussions – it’s not professional. These were all simply cases where someone saw a bumpersticker on my car or heard about an off-hand, innocent remark which betrayed my political leanings.
I used to give a TON of work to a guy I knew for a fact was a raging right-winger. I didn’t care; I believed in a very liberal value, that all that mattered was how well someone did their job. I even continued hiring another guy after he spouted off, completely without any provocation or connection to the conversation we had been having, a rather racist rant about Mexicans.
Well, after the above-mentioned experiences, I finally decided, ‘Fuck that.’ I only hire people now who are either moderates or Democrats. If I know that they are Republicans of the stripe we bash regularly here, I never call them in the first place. If I later find out they are one of those, I never call them for work again.
I’m sorry to say that I’ve become like them, but frankly there’s a time to turn the other cheek and there’s a time to fight fire with fire. I finally got tired of turning the other cheek only to get slapped again. If they are truly bent on dividing this country into two, let’s fucking do it and get it over with.
r€nato
I don’t understand it either. It exists even among people I know who are otherwise liberals, but they love their guns. They voted for Obama but they are still worried he’s going to do all kinds of dastardly things.
For chrissakes people. Get a grip. If any gun legislation is passed at all, it’s going to be on the margins. Things like cop-killer bullets. Nobody is going to come to your house and take your weapons from you. That’s just lunacy.
The only reason I can think of, is that ginning up irrational fear of those gun-grabbing Democrats is a handy way for the GOP to keep the gun nuts on their side.
Luddite
Renato:
Political discourse has long been dead in this country. If someone dares not to believe or to question anything in the Republican party then they are branded as a terrorist or traitor. Sadly, you have no choice but to screen the wignut republicans from your job openings.
jcricket
We’re getting close. If they nominate Palin, et. al. in 2012 we’ll be there.
What’s even better about people like Palin is they spend a lot of gov’t money – losing the libertarian and truly "fiscally conservative" folks as well as the social moderates along the way.
If the Dems are smart they will capitalize on these trends with some smart tent building. People like Tester & Webb are great models. Grab people like Cooper who are being kicked out of the party on purity tests – they’ll become our biggest advocates and the way to get from 45% to 55% as a starting point for candidates in most states.
jcricket
@r€nato: Isn’t that what most GOP tactics are about? Irrational fear to keep the wingnuts in line and ignoring the fact that the Democrats have solutions that will actually benefit people?
Fear immigrants will take your job, black people your admission to college, poor people (ignoring the fact this means you) your "hard earned tax dollars", godless liberals stealing Christmas, etc. Coupled with nothing except tax cuts (mainly for the rich) and endless war as policy proposals.
I think the power of the scare tactics is wearing thin (if not out) – and as I said above, if Democrats are smart, we will seize on the void and market our party’s solutions to the vast majority of Americans who stand to benefit. We don’t have to get 100% on our side, but we can easily increase our support by 10-20 percentage points – giving us something like 3/5 to 3/4 of the population depending on the state.
Marshall
As I read his statement, he resigned because the company and even the employees were catching a lot of flack – in other words, it was external, not internal, pressure that made him leave.
gbear
This guy sounds smart enough that he won’t be unemployed for long. He’ll soon be in a new career where he doesn’t have to give a rat’s pituti about wingnut approval. He sounds like he’s on the high road for the long run.
Comrade Glocksman
Armor piercing pistol bullets have been banned since the 1980’s.
My understanding of the Kennedy ‘cop-killer’ bullet ban is that it would have banned any rifle ammo that could penetrate police soft body armor.
The problem is that almost all centerfire rifle rounds will penetrate soft armor, as it’s designed to stop low velocity pistol rounds, not high velocity rifle rounds.
The impact of such a ban would essentially make Grandpa’s Winchester 94 .30-30 lever action into a wall ornament instead of a deer rifle.
Couple legislation like that with the nonsense that was the late, unlamented so-called Assault Weapons Ban, comments from Dianne Feinstein that if she could ban all guns, then ‘Mr & Mrs America, turn them all in’, is it any wonder there are a lot of gun owners who mistrust Democrats on the gun issue?
Frankly I voted for Obama (Indiana allows early voting) in spite of my misgivings WRT gun rights.
Obama’s problem is that there probably are many who would support him otherwise, but won’t because of the issue.
Remember this: Al Gore lost in 2000 not because of Florida, but because he lost Tennessee and West Virginia.
Either state would have made Florida irrelevant and put him in the White House.
I’ve seen surveys that indicated his literal embrace of Sarah Brady and her gun ban agenda cost him the election in both states.
As for Mr. Cooper, what happened to him is bullshit and I honestly doubt whether the loudest complainers could even afford the custom rifles his company makes.
kindness
Time to line up the circular firing squad…
Ready! Aim! …..
mattH
Where I work, I hear all kinds of crap about how "X is going to take your gun rights" on a very frequent basis. I remember in 2002, after the Republican’s had taken over the Senate, and mind you had control of the House still, I was told by a fellow worker, in alarmed tones, that Hillary Clinton was passing a law that would take away his gun rights. I asked him why he thought that, and he said teh NRA had sent him a letter telling him that they needed money to stop her. I asked him how he thought she was going to do that, what with the Republicans controlling all three branches of government, and he still didn’t get it. Then I explained to him that the NRA had spent themselves into debt during the 2002 election, to the tune of something like a few million dollars and that they were trying to scare him to get themselves back in the black. That is what the modern day NRA is about. They are the sole source for most of these people for information on gun legislation, yet the NRA constantly lies and exaggerates.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
Yes. I remember that ‘if Kerry is elected, he’ll ban the bible’ bullshit.
Let the midwest destroy itself.
Jason
@ Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
Hey! Don’t let the midwest destroy itself! Some of us live there too!
Jess
I’m pretty sure not all gun owners are paranoid, but wouldn’t most paranoia-driven individuals want to own a gun? There are a lot of people out there who are both paranoid and looking for a fight, some big good-vs-evil epic to give their small lives meaning–of course they’re going to be a prime target audience for the manipulations of the NRA. Where else would they go for validation, besides Jesus Camp?
Halteclere
Comrade Glocksman
If you are correct, then thanks for the clarification. Handguns are mostly only good for shooting other people, and maybe rattlesnakes at your feet. Special armor piercing handgun bullets should be banned.
As for rifles, how many murders are commited with them instead of a handgun? Very few that I can recall. Any gun-control legislation that could be applied to legitimate hunting (attempting a one-shot-one-kill with a rifle, not blasting in a general direction with a handgun or spraying an area with a gun converted to automatic) should rightfully be opposed.
Stuart Eugene Thiel
There may be more to this than meets the eye —
This may be a marketing ploy. After all, we know the gun nuts are, well, nutty and violent, and reports are that many of them intend to augment their arsenals if their guy loses.
So, keep an eye on the NRA magazine for ads like: "Stand tall against ObamaFascism with premium weapons from the company that stands tall against ObamaFascism: Cooper Firearms!"
While Dan Cooper sits at home and counts his money.
liberal
@r€nato:
And some douchebags wonder why people insist on posting quasi-anonymously…
Church Lady
His resignation is a business decision, pure and simple. If he resigns, the company can be probably be saved. If he doesn’t, being such a small company, it goes under.
Don’t feel too sorry for Mr. Cooper. As a shareholder, he will profit from the continued existence of Cooper Firearms. If the company went under, it wouldn’t be just Mr. Cooper paying the price of angering the consumers of his product. It would also be the other shareholders (i.e. investors) in his company, as well as the forty employees of Cooper Firearms.
sugarbiscuit
I’m gonna guess that right-wing bloggers will figure out a way to blame this event on Obama being such a hardened idealogue.
binzinerator
Rightwing fucktard excuse for firing Cooper…
…fix’t for accuracy.
binzinerator
And what the devil is it with these paranoid gun freaks? The last 8 years has proved that the reason for their right for gun ownership — to supposedly safeguard against government tyranny — to be full of shit.
In the past 8 years we have seen our government, the Bush government, do things that can only be described as tyrannical or despotic:
lie the nation into a war,
fabricate evidence to support that war,
hide the evidence against going to war,
punish those who mentioned it, even committing treason to do so,
implement an official policy of torture and secret prisons,
insist on indefinite detention,
imprisonment without charges,
demand evidence obtained by torture be admissible,
set up a system of kangaroo courts,
commit years’ worth of felonies,
violate the constitution and federal law to carry out a secret program of spying on ordinary citizens
Like a common dictator, the Bush regime has classified all kinds of information, including previously unclassified information from previous admistrations, has hidden or destroyed or erased millions of documents, has made outrageous claims of ‘executive privilege’, and has even ordered private citizens to ignore subpoenas.
And the gun nuts, the oh-so-patriotic defenders of the right to keep and bear arms for the sake of preserving our liberties, they fucking cheered it on. For the past 8 years these gun freaks sat rooting for the exact kind of government they claim the 2nd Amendment was supposed to address. The same people who bellow about the sacredness of the 2nd Amendment are the same who enthusiastically enabled the biggest tryannical abuses of executive power in the history of our nation.
And these are the same people who now are frantically buying even more guns –not because they have finally realized their government has been dangerously close to outright tryanny — but because they are afraid of an Obama presidency. They are not afraid of a continuation of the tyranny and abuses of the Bush regime. Obama has said his government would seek to reverse these abuses. No they are afraid Obama will take away all of their little toys, the ones they’ve swaggered around with for the last 8 years pretending they are patriots and warriors and defenders of the Constitution while a tin-pot dictator-wannabee like George W. Bush and his criminal junta shredded that same Constitution.
The past 8 years has proved the 2nd Amendment is fucking useless, a worthless waste of ink on the Constitution. In the past 8 years of abuses, not one of these gun nuts uttered even a murmur of dissent. There is no longer any cogent argument for having such an amendment.
These people are like children. Clueless about the big things in life, and terrified of the Dark. Such children should not even be allowed to handle guns, certainly not the kinds they are always having a tempertantrum to own. Only a fucking moron lets a child get a hold of a submachine gun.
It says something that it is the power of citizens voting, not the firepower of citizens’ guns, that is sweeping the abusers of power from goverment office.
Dustin
@22
Fuck you.
Doctor Science
Jess @24 is IMHO right that while not all gun-owners are paranoids, most paranoids are gun-owners.
And there’s also a symbiotic relationship between the NRA and the manufacturers, which has helped drive the gun market from saturation to super-saturation — tricky when you’re selling a durable good.
But I also see the paranoia about liberals in general "taking away our guns!" going to hyper-paranoia when the liberal in question is Hillary, i.e. female.
So frankly, guys, I think a lot of men have trouble with the weapon/gun distinction, if you know what I mean. In this case the cigar is mostly not just a cigar.
Blue Raven
I’m reasonably sure that the people who wish to eliminate all private gun ownership are a minority, just as the paranoid gun owners are a minority. But one extreme feeds off the existence of the other in all things dealing with human opinion. I’d agree that some gun owners are also more into the penile substitute aspect of it than the "hey, blowing holes in paper and making something go boom really loud is FUN" space I and most gun owners inhabit (allowing for the ones who alternate paper targets with legally hunted animals). I’m socially progressive and fiscally liberal-to-progressive, and I own guns. Fortunately, no Cooper Arms, or I’d be selling them off right now.
Sebastian
I am one of the bloggers that called for the Boycott of Cooper Arms. I am a competitive sport shooter, sometimes in CMP and High-Power competition, meaning that I shoot guns that Barack Obama wants to ban (AR-15, specifically). I am also a handgun metallic silhouette shooter (handguns, another gun Barack Obmaa has advocated banning in the past).
I don’t take my marching orders from the NRA or the industry. I do what I do because I love shooting, and I’m passionate about preserving the Second Amendment. Barack Obama is not. In fact, he’s spent his entire career trying to destroy the Second Amendment. You want to talk about his record on this, I’m game. But it’s not good. That’s why I chose not to support a company that supports Barack Obama. Dan Cooper is free as an American to vote against his self-interest as a gun maker. But I am also free to not buy his products. Apparently a lot of other gun owners share my sentiment.
Anonocrat
What really confuses me is the way NRA-types are also so very invested in being "strong on defense." They don’t seem to realize that the military they are cheering on a) is responsible for a lot of their tax dollar, and b) renders wholly ineffective the Second Amendment as a check against government overreach.
I say that as the proud owner of several guns.
Gun-owning Republicans for Obama!
Crotalus
As opposed to the Brady Campaign and VPC being funded by the unAmerican George Soros and the equally evil Joyce Foundation, Liberal?
You speculate, but we have proof.
Liberalism today is socialism with a friendly disguise, and one thing we can be sure of: socialism demands that we turn in our guns.
MOLON LABE!
AntiCitizenOne
Anonocrat:
"renders wholly ineffective the Second Amendment as a check against government overreach"
Hint: Hughes Amendment (fraudulently passed by a Democrat), and the National Firearms Act.
Now take a look at the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. All the guerilla fighters are using…well…automatic weapons. And they’re doing a decent job at holding off Coalition Forces.
The Hughes Amendment specifically denies access to machine guns/automatic weapons that could put the ordinary citizen on par with any soldier of any modern army.
Any "revolution" attempted by citizens armed with semi-automatics won’t go very well…
Kristopher
We clingy gun owners just go by Obama’s record as a Joyce Foundation Trustee, his past statements, and his voting record in Illinois and in the Senate.
Rather simple really … vote for victim-disarmament, and we will oppose you. I think that the Clintons might have had a clue when they advised maybe not taking this position?
Cooper Firearms employee’s jobs are safe … the other two partners did the smart thing, and booted him. He can sell his share if he wants, and become another well-off guilty-feeling-liberal Obama supporter if it pleases him to do so.
James F. Elliott
I sent an open letter to Cooper Firearms to protest their actions. As a gun owner and Democrat, I find their cowardice appalling. Anyone else is welcome to copy my words, sign their name to them, and send it to Cooper Firearms. To oust their co-founder and namesake over fear that the quality of their rifles would not outlast the ire of a bunch of closed-minded Republican zealots… I have nothing but contempt. I would have bought a rifle from them in solidarity with Mr. Cooper; but I will not do so now.
Gerald
@AntiCitizenOne:
I think a revolution (in reality, a restoration) could go quite well with just semi-autos. When the time for the restoration comes, it’s not the military we have to fight. It’s the politicians that give them orders that have to be fought.
That’s one advantage we have over the insurgents in Iraq. We have more access to the chain of command and can stop any government overreach with just a few well placed shots. Machine gun not needed.