The Washington Post has a story today about a handful of far-left gun control activists looking to up the ante by making their protests more personal. They’re doing that by protesting at the home of NRA lobbyist Chris Cox and also by targeting his wife’s interior design business.
Last week, two gun control activists protested outside Cox’s Alexandria, Va., home and handed out fliers outside his wife’s nearby business.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cox have been targeted over the past few months by repeated acts of criminal and unlawful conduct, including having their home vandalized on two occasions and Mrs. Cox’s business on another occasion,” Elizabeth Locke, attorney for the Cox family, said in a statement. “These coordinated tactics have crossed the line of civility and human decency.”
An attorney for Patricia Hill, the alleged vandal, did not immediately provide a comment regarding the fake blood incidents. The other protesters say they have been careful not to cross legal lines and knew nothing of the vandalism. They are all part of a growing movement that thinks gun control advocacy should be more aggressive — and more personal…
“I don’t think the Cox family is getting enough social pressure,” said [Amanda] Gailey, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “Nobody from their kids’ school or their yoga class sees [a protest] happening” at the NRA headquarters…
“If I made him uncomfortable at his house, too bad, he deserves it,” [Catherine] Koebel said in an interview. “I felt unsafe in my home because of his product.”…
“It is aggressive,” Gailey acknowledged. “I wouldn’t do that unless we were protesting someone who I believe is a truly indefensible human being.”
Amanda Gailey is the leader of a group called Nebraskans Against Gun Violence. In 2016, she was invited by the Obama White House to personally meet President Obama when he gave a speech in Omaha.
As for the tactic, it’s not anything new for the far left. They’ve been doing it for more than a decade on a range of issues. Back in 2003 the NY Times reported on activists who arranged to have a hearse sent to pick up a body at the home of a biomedical employee who, it turned out, wasn’t dead:
Late one recent evening, an undertaker dispatched a hearse to the home of a biomedical company employee to pick up her body.
No one, however, had died. The woman who answered the door was very much alive, although the coffin was intended for her. Aghast, she suddenly realized that the undertaker had been duped by an animal rights radical into sending the hearse.
If the goal was to scare her out of her wits, the tactic succeeded. Her voice cracked with fear as she insisted to a reporter that she not be identified, lest she and her family be singled out again.
In 2010, Allahpundit wrote about hundreds of SEIU union protesters who went to the home of a Bank of America executive named Greg Baer. Baer wasn’t home but his teenage son Jack was. He locked himself in a bathroom until they left. The added irony in that case: Baer is a lifelong Democrat. Occupy Wall Street protesters did much the same thing in 2011 and there have been repeated protests at Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan’s home in Pasadena, California.
Just last year, so-called Indivisible protesters used this technique against Republican members of Congress to pressure them into holding townhall events. There was a problem though as the protesters wound up at a house one GOP congressman and his family had vacated months earlier. Oops!
This form of protest isn’t quite normalized yet but that’s clearly what the far left hopes will happen. I’m a little surprised David Hogg or one of the other Parkland progressives hasn’t endorsed this yet. I mean, if you think these people are murdering children why wouldn’t you target them at home?
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