Fiore’s flare-ups
Legislator’s messages limit influence
Fundraising won’t be a problem for Michele Fiore in her longshot bid for the Republican nomination in next year’s 3rd Congressional District primary. The Las Vegas assemblywoman gets so much press coverage from her Second Amendment advocacy that she won’t need a single campaign donation to build her name recognition.
Of course, the more Ms. Fiore talks, the more it tends to hurt her political career, but that appears to be no concern of hers. By simply being herself, she ensures an ever-widening audience for her conservative views.
Her family’s Christmas card might be the most-seen holiday greeting in state history. The card, sent last week, features Ms. Fiore and nine of her family members clad in Santa-red shirts, blue jeans and enough weaponry to survive the zombie apocalypse.
The fact that her card landed in mailboxes about the same time Islamic terrorists were carrying out the worst attack on the homeland since 9/11, killing 14 innocents in San Bernardino, helped make the photo a national news story. The card was shared via social media untold thousands of times — especially by gun control advocates and those offended by a photo that links guns to the holiday that seeks peace on earth.
Ms. Fiore ensured that she stayed in the news by using her Saturday radio show to say: “I am not OK with Syrian refugees. I’m not OK with terrorists. I’m OK with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I’m good with that.” Her subsequent clarification that she only wanted to shoot terrorists, not refugees, kept the story around for an additional news cycle.
Nevadans will recall similar big talk and bad form from Ms. Fiore cost her the titles of Assembly majority leader and chairwoman of the Taxation Committee earlier this year. She has marginalized herself in spectacular fashion, ensuring that she has little to no influence on state policy. Perhaps the national media will catch onto the fact by June’s primary election.
Ms. Fiore isn’t about to shoot anybody — unless some poor fool makes the mistake of trying to hurt her, her family or anyone around her. And that’s the inelegant message of her Christmas card, the lesson lost in the hyperventilation of the media coverage. Guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans aren’t instruments of violence, but keepers of the peace. When we work to disarm the innocent and deprive people of their right to defend themselves, we make it that much easier for evildoers to cause us harm.
Ms. Fiore is a classic example of the messenger inviting attacks on the message. Which is a sign that she needs to deliver fewer messages.