Actually, they’re just another example of the “I can’t get my way because too many people disagree with me, so I’ll attack their lobbying group” principle.
Whether it’s the NRA, AIPAC, AARP or similarly effective lobbying organization, the tactics are similar. Opponents are too lazy and/or disorganized to counter them effectively, so they resort to demonization. Too bad that doesn’t work.
Whether it’s the NRA or similarly effective lobbying organizations, the tactics are similar. Supporters are too lazy to counter criticisms of those organizations effectively, so they resort to demonization. Too bad that doesn’t work.
See? I can do it too. Or we can actually look at the finances of a particular organization, and make a judgment- because gee, some of them might not be entirely pure, ya know?
I’ll go through it line by line.
First of all the article makes a lot of claims and doesn’t back any of them up. For instance, I know from reading NRA magazines that they were heavily in favor of Heller, so I know at least one claim made in the article is blatantly false.
I’ve got no problem of the NRA doing lobbying. But, as I said, I doubt they have much left over from my membership fees to give money to lobbyists after mailing me and producing my magazine. I can and do donate money specifically to NRA-ILA which is the lobbying arm.
An NRA lobbyist used to work for the NRA? He’s friends with LaPierre? This isn’t surprising. I have no problem with this, unless there is more to it. Is he not competent?
Of course the NRA uses an ad agency. They need to do that to market to their customers. Is LaPierre “friends” with them, whatever that means? Is this an accusation of something? What, exactly?
Yes, the NRA associates with other organizations to offer deals to its members. I’m sure it makes money off of these deals, while offering a discount to its members. This is called “Affinity Marketing” and is a standard practice.
Have you never gotten an offer for a discount on car insurance because of the college you went to or because you are in the AARP or something?
There’s nothing nefarious about this stuff.
The “bonanza” comment is just silly.
If LaPierre’s wife was the VP of the marketing firm setting up Affinity partnerships that is probably nepotism. It happens, and that’s unfortunate.
But is this even true? The article has other falsehoods in it.
If it is true, does it matter? What was she paid? The effort was clearly successful so she appears to be good at her job.
There might be something to this but I’d need a lot more information to know what to think about LaPierre’s wife.
Here’s a look at the salaries for several other NRA bigwigs- quick addition shows that about $5 million per year goes to the salaries of about a dozen people.
I read the attached link but wasn’t going to get into an in depth analysis of it since it was clearly just Cartooniverse Googling to find anything negative about the NRA and post it to the thread with barely a line or two of his own comment.
There isn’t enough information in the article alone to make a judgement about the NRA vs Debra Maggart. The article is clearly written with a bias against the NRA. Maybe their concerns about her gun rights record were valid, maybe not.
Of course she’s going to be angry with them since they cost her an election. She claims to be pro-gun but most politicians do even the mildly anti-gun ones.
The Defeat Maggart website has their complaints about her plus arguments for her opponent.
They might have over-reacted by dropping her from an A rating to a D rating over one issue.
But if two people are running for a seat and one is more pro-gun than the other, why shouldn’t the NRA support the one that aligns better with them?
And I’m sure a number of people in this thread know quite a bit more about guns than you do…
I don’t personally own a gun, but I grew up around them, was trained to shoot starting around 6 or 7 years old, and have a number of friends and family who do own guns. Not a single one of them to my knowledge has ever used them to kill a person, a few do hunt.
On a personal level, if I were to own a gun, other than if I intended to take up hunting, and I don’t, I would own it with the intention never to kill anyone. I would target shoot with it and have it for self-defense and hope that I would never have to use it for the latter purpose. It is absolutely not fair to say that the reason people buy guns is to shoot things dead, and there’s overwhelming statistics to show people who buy them for sports, hunting, defense, collecting and have no intention of “shooting things dead”.
It’s not a perfect analogy, and not even one I’m particularly fond of, but the main point is that a car is a tool, just like a gun is a tool. Both have the capacity to kill, particularly if used irresponsibly. The overwhelming majority of car and gun owners use them and are around them their whole lives and never kill anyone with one. Where the analogy breaks down is that they’re not the same type of tool.
The thing is, there’s a lot of irrational fear about guns, especially for non-gun owners, because all they hear about guns is stories like the Sandy Hook shooting. It’s easy not to overreact to some recent drunk driving death because virtually everyone has firsthand experience with cars and an intuitive understanding of just how important they are, despite the huge numbers of deaths and injuries that result from the use of cars. However, if you don’t personally own and use guns or know others who own and use guns, that’s naturally going to seem a lot scarier because you never see the positive side, you only hear the worst stories.
I’m not seeing your point here at all. IMO, the parents in both scenarios are some special kind of stupid. A kid should not be taking a gun to school, nor should a kid be taking a 5-gallon jug of gasoline to school. That some kid and his parents are stupid enough to actually do one of those doesn’t make me fearful of guns, just as if it were gasoline it wouldn’t make me fearful of that either. What it does do is concern me that there are people out there stupid enough to do that.
Please note the lack of active link in the first scenario. It’s considered poor form here ( and I think is against our rules ) to create a false Internet link. I simply replaced the word Gun with the word Car by way of creating an example.
The linked article did indeed occur yesterday.
Yes the parents are some kind of stupid. They keep guns. They encourage children ( and, by any measure in the United States at least, the age of 11 is a child ) to carry a weapon to school with live ammunition close at hand.
Thank god the N.R.A. is around to insure that this 11 year old is able to fully enjoy his rights as an American to jam that gun against the little girl’s head.
Right? :rolleyes:
Amusing. " This Doper I don’t like found a link that supports his point of view. Clearly, it isn’t worth my time. " Welcome to the Straight Dope. We fight Ignorance here. Telling everyone in a thread that you couldn’t be bothered to consider someone else’s links is kind of like flapping your tongue and whining, " nyeah nyeah, I’m right and you’re dumb".
Allow me to provide you with further information including a firsthand article by Debra Maggart.
And a friend of my dad is a collector. He has more guns and you would ever have any use for. I guess he must be a killer too.
Hell, he dosn’t even hunt. He just like the history of them. But I guess his real reason must be to kill people some day. Gee, who know :rolleyes:
Next, I think Cartooniverse will start posting “Winning!” and going on about paper towel tubes.
They are? I can think of a group of people that have your wholehearted support that actively endorses and supports the killing of children, and it’s not the NRA.
When you’re ready to knock off the emotional appeals and discuss this like adults, all of you, I’ll be there. Until then, enjoy your feeding frenzy.
Emotional appeals… I thought that you were better than this Airman. There is nothing more repelling that what many on the right and churches are attempting to do by equating this with abortion.
I’ve had to put up with a week of this horseshit, and frankly I’m sick of it. If you people can unload at will, I’m taking my turn.
I am appalled at the deaths of children, but I don’t use their corpses to beat other people with. But, of course, in the US our concern with the children only exists when there’s an issue that we can use them to push. Someone who actively advocates the deaths of children has absolutely zero right to beat the shit out of me 24/7 for the last week over the deaths of children.
So, I repeat: when you people are done with the handwringing and are ready to discuss this like adults, I’ll be there.
Um…okay, whatever that means.
You refuted the usefulness of my first cite. I provided more in depth analysis of the situation. It’s what we do here.
You can disagree or agree with the points made in the cite. But… whatever that remark was about, it has nothing to do with this thread or the material cited.
-shrug-
That’s very amusing. Either we agree with your nauseatingly strident anti-health, anti-abortion agenda or we’re not adults.
Gee. Here I thought it was the Straight Dope. Where, you know, people talked about things. Apparently you talk, we cowtow.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Not that I talk for others, I do not agree with several on this thread as I’m on the record on being in favor of gun rights, and it is really dumb to pretend that most of the ones that are being bombastic and silly like the OP are not concerned with the children, I do think they and many extreme liberlas are not going to be taken serious in the end as the courts and many will prevent, and already prevented, any efforts to “take away our guns”; but I do see that they do have a point on singling out organizations that are willing to prevent any common sense legislation from coming forward, I only hope that mental health care and more active measures to identify the people that should not have guns should not be opposed by the usual.
Because, guess what groups also oppose and play lip service to health care access and the reporting of people that should not have guns?
From the start this subject hasn’t been about “talking”, it’s been the anvil that gun-control people and everybody else who has some sort of grievance has been breaking people’s balls over. Your OP is more of the same. You didn’t want a discussion, you wanted another 10-page “me too” thread. All I’m doing is adding to the post count to get you there faster.
Incidentally, how is it that I have an “agenda”? The only “agenda” I see here is yours. In fact, it’s been about the only “agenda” for the last week.
Personally I find it ridiculous to ask people to not consider 20 dead kids in the mix. As if there’s no emotion in … “no no no no no no no … I don’t want to give up my guns … it isn’t fair!”
I had to point out also that I also had to put a lot with that other horseshit you brought, I almost told my preacher (Had to go to church to support a family member) to eat it, when he told the church goers that we should make efforts to save all those “little children being aborted” because what happened in the school was the same as what happens in an abortion clinic :smack:
I could not help but remember that just recently in Ireland the Catholic church showed to women how the church is happy to let women die even if doctors agree they have to abort to save the woman’s life, so stop **that **other bullshit.
Your dad’s friend and my dad ought to get together. They could terrorize the media (or at least the Dope). I’ve even got a snappy name for them: The Geritol Mafia!
They’d probably look ridiculous in trenchcoats, but we could give them a matching set of Depends for that snazzy killer look.