In 2005, Prof. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit wrote a book, An Army of Davids, about how technology had changed the equations in society so that ordinary citizens could go around the media monopoly.
Just as videos of grassroots attendance at health care forums in the summer of 2009 helped propel opposition to Obamacare into an electoral issue, so too will videos of citizens speaking out against excessive and often irrational gun control proposals help propel 2nd Amendment rights.
The video of a veteran who stood up and spoke out at a recent Chicago-area gun control forum now has over 100,000 views at YouTube and has been linked and embedded at The Blaze, The Right Scoop, Fox Nation, and elsewhere.
That veteran, Kevin Tully, has come to symbolize a willigness to speak up and speak out, with the new media serving as megaphone:
“This is what I’m most amazed about. It’s not that people are commenting and saying, ‘this guy is a Second Amendment supporter,’ or ‘this guy is a patriot.’ It’s how many people said, ‘finally, someone is standing up and saying something.’ I’m just doing what I was raised to do. At some point in time, someone made it a crime to be opinionated. To be a patriot. To tell right from wrong. When in our nation did the word ‘patriot’ become a foul world?”
This phenomenon is being felt not only in a run on gun and ammunition inventories, but also in the political sphere, as The NY Times notes, Democrats in Senate Confront Doubts at Home on Gun Laws (h/t Instapundit):
If there is a path to new gun laws, it has to come through West Virginia and a dozen other states with Democratic senators like Mr. Manchin who are confronting galvanized constituencies that view any effort to tighten gun laws as an infringement.
It is, in a sense, An Army of Davy Crocketts, citizens who previously were not involved politically but who have been forced, by dint of government overreach, into acting. It’s also a reaction to the condescending, elitist attitude that tells people the credentialed class knows best.
It’s not men alone, so there’s also An Army of Annie Oakleys. This video has attracted huge attention:
Something is happening out there. We in the alternative media can’t create it, but we can give it voice.
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