Friday, March 9, 2012

B-A-N-N-E-D by DAILY KOS for my views on gun rights fanatics

Daily Kos Web page

In case you aren’t aware, Daily Kos is a supposed liberal blog that encourages readers to join them by writing articles called “diaries.”  Now these folks are also participating in something called a “community,” which is made up of the diarists.  Apparently a diarist is required to take part in the community, a rule that is not made clear by DK, and, based on my experience, is enforced entirely by other diarists.  I started as a diarist on Daily Kos July 18, 2011, publishing daily.

I have averaged around 100 views per day doing progressive articles on a wide range of subjects from religion to guns.  On my first day I had nine comments on an article about controlling your personal data that was read by 50 people.  On the fourth day I did an article about challenging the 2nd Amendment; not repealing it mind you, just some adjustments like restricting gun carrying in public by inexperienced gun owners.  The proverbial bullets hit the fan.

Small gun...small mind
I had 332 readers and received 163 comments.  Up until the moment I started reading the comments, I had thought I could expect a somewhat left to left-center reaction to my views on sane gun control.  Not so.  Daily Kos is a hotbed of angry, narrow minded, often crude gun rights fanatics.  A few were in favor of my piece, most against, with none that were really vindictive.  There was also plenty of inane arguing among diarists.  But this was simply the quiet before the storm.

As I became more familiar with gun violence around the country, I suddenly realized that I was sitting in the middle of the state that was the nucleus of bad gun laws with state politicians that had no regard for public safety.  All they cared about was the appetite of Arizona’s gun worshippers who wanted more guns and wanted to carry them damn well anywhere they wanted to.  People like recalled state Sen. Russell Pearce, state Sen. Ron Gould, and spacey Gov. Jan Brewer.

Daily Kos founder, Markos Moulitsas, should know better after being banned himself from MSNBC in video below:



At Daily Kos I proceeded, cross-posting from this blog, which DK encouraged.  It took me a while to get going on gun advocacy but once I had done a fair amount of research, I was ready to plow ahead with data even I couldn’t believe.  I quickly realized that my residence in Arizona would supply me with a lifetime of material on the issue and I have never been disappointed.  It seems there are one or more shootings each day in this state, some that result in death.

Most recently, I was averaging at least one gun control article a week.  At the same time I was also writing similar pieces and cross-posting from Nasty Jack for the Phoenix Examiner.com.  It was on Examiner that I first experienced a volley of vitriolic comments on anything written against gun control.  But it was expected in the town and state that loves guns more than life itself.  The comments from Daily Kos had become equally nasty. 

And then it happened on February 27, of this year.

On that day I started as usual to post my article on Daily Kos and received a message, "Not authorized to create article."  DK had not contacted me by email, nor had they left me anything on the message board.  I sent an email to DK and asked why I received this message.  Elaine replied and said only, “It's because you've been banned.”  No explanation…zip, so I asked why I had been banned.  Elaine, again, said, “You were autobanned, meaning that the community voted that you were disruptive to discussion.”

The “community,” meaning the other diarists, had kicked me out of DK for being “disruptive?”  Poor babies!  And the community Elaine was talking about could only be the gun rights fanatics that regularly spewed venom in comments about my articles.  I couldn’t have been disruptive because I never answered one of their comments.  Unless they were trying to censor my articles on gun control advocacy, which is the only answer in this case. 

NEXT: Comments from the Daily Kos community turn vile but also inept

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