U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- I’ve been getting tips recently about an anti-gun effort that calls itself “The Denver Accord.” Looking into it I see stories going back to 2019, which surprised me, because I didn’t catch it at the time (for that matter, neither did AmmoLand or many other “gun” sites) and such things generally don’t slip by unnoticed.
Their website presents categories including “Four Principle,” “Key Policies,” and “Recommended Legislation and Policies.” Starting with the first category, we see it includes such pronouncements as “Guns do not make us safer; Gun violence in America is a pervasive public health crisis that demands substantial policy solutions and well-funded programs that effectively reduce gun violence; Equitable and just enforcement of gun laws is paramount. Everyone has the right to live free from violence.”
What a load of tired and long disproven talking points.
The only “principle” I’d not challenge is the last one. Making sure we can protect the right to live free from violence is why we have guns.
“Key Policies” includes licensing and registration, so-called “safe-storage,” ending private sales, and a really bizarre demand: “Reducing the lethality of firearms and ammunition to reduce death and injury.” Aside from the fictional Lone Ranger, you generally don’t hear adults talk like that.
The “Legislation and Policies” is where they really start to flesh things out. Among other infringements they want to see mandated and enforced by armed agents of the state: “May issue” permits to PURCHASE “guns” (meaning any kind of firearm) with no sales to any citizen under 21, with prior restraints including mandated range and classroom tests, fingerprinting, a host of prohibitive disqualifiers, and a seven-day waiting period to take possession.
We can stop right here. We’ve seen how “may issue” for concealed carry permits is really “may not” in places like New Jersey and Maryland, how you have to be one of the connected elites to get one in New York City, how you can increase your odds by contributing to political campaigns in Santa Clara County, and how you can’t get one at all in Hawaii.
Who thinks the same “criteria” won’t apply when it’s the violence monopolists deciding who they will allow to own a gun?
Assuming you make it through their gantlet, they’re not done infringing. They also want to make semiautos NFA weapons, prohibit future transfers of whatever they want to define as “assault weapons,” prohibit carrying them, openly or concealed, and reclassify bullpups as SBRs. They also want to “Limit high caliber handguns.”
They then want to mandate public spending to develop “smart guns.” And they’re still not done.
They intend to ban unserialized components, 3D printing by unlicensed individuals, distribution of blueprints for 3D printers, and “Mandate that all firearms must be visible to security screening devices.”
But wait, there’s more!
If they have their way, they’ll ban “armor-piercing” (not tanks, but in body armor-piercing hunting rifle rounds), hollow points, fragmenting, and “hydro-shock” rounds. They intend to prohibit magazines over 10 rounds, and “Develop a national ballistic fingerprinting database.”
The next part of the plot is to “strengthen and enforce existing gun laws.” To interject here, ironically, that’s just what many of our “gun rights leaders” advocate. That’s pretty much like pre-Revolution colonists demanding the King enforce existing Intolerable Acts.
They also want to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to allow for manufactures and distributors to be sued out of existence over the criminal misuse of their products, “limit state concealed carry reciprocity to permit-to-purchase states only,” set up a digitized ATF registry, establish international controls like the Arms Trade Treaty, eliminate preemption and establish patchwork quilt carry laws and public space “gun-free zones,” and repeal “stand your ground laws.”
Then comes a host of “police reforms.”
It might be reasonable at this point to ask “Who are these guys?” and what is their experience and expertise in all the myriad ways they wish to dictate the terms of gun owner surrender over.
They have an “About Us” page, and basically what we’re talking about is a bunch of self-appointed gun-grabbers who have put together a wish list based on that’s the way they want it. The principal individual behind it, along with its “mothership,” the GVPedia Gun Violence Research Project, is one Devin Hughes. It turns out he has a longstanding affiliation with another organization readers here should be familiar with The Trace, the supposed “investigative journalism” website funded with Michael Bloomberg seed money. You knew his fingerprints would be somewhere in the mix.
Somebody’s footing the bill for all this. A cursory look shows websites for both the Denver Accord and GVPedia are registered through a proxy, so there’s no help there, and the nonprofit tracking website Guidestar presents a Form 990EZ for 2019 showing $127K in “Contributions, gifts, grants,” but not who made them. We do learn the nonprofit corporation is registered in Oklahoma, but a Secretary of State’s corporation entities search shows that to get details, an order needs to be processed, and this is being written on a Saturday with a Sunday deadline.
It will take further investigations to determine where Hughes & Co. are getting their funding from, but in the meantime, there is an indicator of how widespread the Denver Accord has become, and that’s through its social media accounts. At this time, despite their claim that “The Denver Accord was developed by a coalition of 41 gun violence prevention organizations representing over 1 million people across the country,” GVPedia has fewer than 2,000 Facebook followers and less than 500 on Twitter.
Not very impressive considering the press they’ve received, but future growth can happen exponentially if and when the citizen disarmament lobby decides the time is right to up the stakes. My guess is that less impulsive and more calculating minds have until recently viewed this as letting slip too much too soon, and that may account for why so many of us missed this story in 2019.
That those stakes will be upped, with every concession and compromise used as a beachhead from which to launch the next incursion, is a certainty — as is the end game. That’s why Republicans need to be bellowed at in no uncertain terms every time they stupidly act like being “moderate” and removing a hurdle will win them friends in the media instead of alienating the people who put them in office.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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