Educate Cabela's re: protecting assault weapons that could kill US Troops in the world's hot spots.

[patrice]

Source: Omaha World Herald, By Janice Podsada

Cabela's, the Sidney, Neb.-based hunting and outdoor retailer, won't attend or sponsor this year's Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show, one of the largest hunting and outdoor consumer shows in North America.

Cabela's pulled out of the show, which will be held Feb. 2-10 in Harrisburg, Pa., after the show's organizer, Reed Exhibitions, said it was dropping a display of assault-type weapons and accessories at this year's event. Reed's announcement came a week after President Barack Obama announced new gun-control measures.

On the outdoor show's website, Reed said that while it “strongly” supports the second amendment .., “this year we have made the decision not to include certain products that in the current climate may attract negative attention that would distract from the strong focus on hunting and fishing at this family-oriented event and possibly disrupt the broader positive experience of our guests.”

On its Facebook page, Cabela's said it would be a no-show at the event, where it traditionally has had a significant presence.

Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20130123/MONEY/701239965/1685#cabela-s-pulls-out-of-show-after-organizer-drops-weapons-display

Here is a Cabela's email link http://cabelas.custhelp.com/app/ask & a phone: [phone]

My concerns about Cabela's behavior have to do with this piece of legislation from the 112th Congress, sponsored by Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, and currently in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=journals&uid=113133

My email to Cabela's regarding this situation:

I take Cabela's withdraw from the Eastern Sports and Outdoor show, because of Reed Exhibition's removal of assault weapons from their booth offerings, as Cabela's confirmed support for protection of American domestic assault weapons' markets and their inherently related and much much bigger such markets in troubled countries around the world.

Apparently these markets in countries into which US made, and NRA protected, assault weapons are flowing fully un-regulated to eventually produce the necessity of US troop killing and being killed in order to "defend" "our" "interests abroad", have Cabela's seal of approval. Hence your protection of assault weapons propaganda in a PRIVATE sports show that will result in the expenditure of PUBLIC funds, not to mention the lives of those who have little say in what happens so far after the fact.

Please review Senate bill S. 2205 introduced during the 112th Congress and in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee right now. In this bill the NRA, through it's wholly owned senators, seeks to prevent U.S. involvement in U.N. treaties that try to control the flow of US made and other weapons into troubled places like Libya and Iraq and all over the continent of Africa.

America's history as "the Policemen of the World" and our standing non-UN treaty involvements mean that it is highly likely that US Troops will end up facing the weapons that Cabela's is protecting in some horribly sad and damned places, while you enjoy your assault weapons' profits in the comfort of your homes.

You can be certain that there are many of us who will not forget your ir-responsible attitude toward what happens to ordinary Americans in OUR own streets and to OUR soldiers in harm's way around the globe.

Please reconsider and offer Reed Exhibitions an apology and thank them for their responsible behavior in this matter.

Thank you for reading this,

[lastlib]

1. A very good letter! I've e-mailed Cabela's before, but will do again. Can't hurt!

The reply I got back previously was a pretty bland "thank you for your concern, we will consider your opinion" (then trash it and do whatever-the-he!!-we want--F-you very much) type of non-answer.

I told them that I had been a long-time customer of theirs, but that I would no longer spend money with them as long as they continued this policy. It didn't seem to make much impression on them. It may take an organized boycott to get them to change.

Thanks for what you're doing, patrice!

[patrice]

2. Just thinking about the wake of Disaster Capitalism across the globe, being seeded with assault

weapons that fall into the hands of people who know next to nothing about what is happening to them, with others who aren't so ignorant in their midst.

I know I am supposed to hate drones and I do hate what drones do; these kinds of UNREGULATED PRIVATE gun markets put drones in a different light for me and, to be honest, I have to say to what calls itself "the Left" that if it's possible to tolerate relatively late abortions, then it's also possible to tolerate valid efforts to stabilize (*IF* stability is possible) places where people are suffering and dying because of chaos or outright anarchy ruled by gun-lords. Oh god, I can hear the screams from "the Left" now: "neo-con koolaid" "blue pill" - or - "red pill" (I get them mixed up), "machine wars" "matrix muppet" etc. etc. etc., but authentic intellectual freedom, and courage in the face of authentic reality, are part of being an authentic Liberal.

I yield any validity there is to those matrix concerns; they are authentically my concerns too! But "the Left" often fails to mention a quintessentially determinative factor, a passive and disengaged populace, so . . . . Additionally, I am also thinking about how the War on Iraq came to be out of avoident ignorance. Certainly, there is an enabling factor that made all of Iraq Group's lies work, an enabling factor that nurtured the hate and fear of Islam, that motivated all of the blind ignorance and that enabling factor is the passive dis-engagement, authoritarian bound, irresponsible slave-mentality, infantile, fatalistic, cop-out to the plausibly deniable - people of the USA.

Drones or no drones, not much stands a chance of succeeding in ending War Capitalism without a change in some/most/all of the demographic traits I listed here and others besides. And discussions of NDAA that leave this enabling fact out are more about politics than they are into changing what brought the NDAA into being in the first place and will continue to do so in one form or another, until many many more Americans finally start proactively accepting their adult responsibilities for informed and actively developing citizenship.

. . . . so much else that we concern ourselves with are symptoms, not root causes, and one way to free people to actually look at root-causes, instead of mutually assured issue/symptom destruction, would be to focus on universally stable basics: Public Education; Public Media (including the ethersphere); Public Health Care; Public "retirement"/Social Security; Public Transportation; Public, Private, Public-Private Housing; Public Campaign Finance.