I didn't join the NRA so I could be pressured to buy wine, and other gripes

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

For the zillionth time, I’ve received an email from the NRA urging me to buy the wine that they’re selling. Yes, the NRA is constantly pushing wine. It’s weird, isn’t it? You’d think that the NRA’s demographic would respond more to beer or whiskey. I mean, for some reason, the majority of gun enthusiasts who share a social standing with me are extremely obsessed with craft beers, and expensive Scotch. This would be the upper-class and educated circle of gun people, which is a small minority of gun owners but getting bigger. Typically college graduates, with libertarian leanings, with degrees in either hard sciences (physics, engineering, etc) or history; lovers of European cars, motorcycles, beer and Scotch. But none of them really give a shit about wine. The rest of the NRA’s demographic I imagine cares even less about wine - they are more interested in Jack Daniels and Keystone beer.

Maybe the really super-high-echelon of gun collectors - the guys who are multi-millionaires, who own really expensive double-rifles and engraved shotguns and go on safaris - maybe those guys care about wine. They probably do. But firstly, they don’t need the fucking NRA to give them advice about wine, and secondly they’re not going to be interested in twelve dollar bottles of wine, the kind of good cheap California wine that makes girls cry and give blowjobs to jerks, which is the kind of wine that the NRA is pushing. Those guys drink the real good wine from France; they don’t give a shit about some 2008 California Merlot.

That’s another thing, all the NRA wine comes from California. Is there any state that is hated by NRA members more than California? Every single gun forum I’ve been on, they bitch about California constantly; they call it “Commiefornia,” and other names, and they’re not entirely wrong because California has some of the most ridiculously restrictive gun laws in the whole fucking United States! Even with Arnold “I made my whole fortune by playing gun-toting goons in movies” Schwarzenegger as the governor, there are still all sorts of absurd regulations concerning what kind of guns can and cannot be owned in California; you can’t have a folding stock, a pistol grip on a rifle, a magazine with more than X rounds, etc. (Obviously these laws have worked, since Oakland and Los Angeles are just the swellest and safest places to live.)

I’m really not one of those people who advocates boycotts; I don’t care enough about California’s gun laws to be deterred from buying California’s products. But there are a LOT of people in the NRA who would - a lot of people who, if I were to address a big mass of them on a message board like this one with the proposal that the NRA be petitioned to stop offering California wines to protest Cali’s gun laws, would completely agree with me and get on board with the effort. Seriously. So how on earth did the NRA people get it into their heads that California wine would be a good product to sell to their members?

Furthermore, the American Rifleman magazine that I receive monthly from the NRA is always filled with articles about handguns and shotguns. In fact probably at least half of the COVER articles are about handguns or shotguns. I do not generally want to read about handguns or shotguns; I want to read about rifles. They should either offer American Handgunner and some magazine about shotguns separately, or change the name of American Rifleman.

And lastly, the NRA needs a good spokesman. This organization is treading water with the loss of Charlton Heston as their frontman, and they really need to find someone to replace him and this is the key - it needs to be someone with pop culture appeal. Personally I think Henry Rollins would be a very good choice - I’ve said this before, on gun forums, and had a lot of people agree with me. If Henry Rollins was the NRA spokesman, there would be thousands of new members. Rollins has expressed his support of the right to self-defense, and while I once saw an interview with him where he criticized “assault weapons,” I think that this was out of ignorance and I think he would change his view if he was approached by someone who could explain the situation clearly to him. Anyone from the punk rock world, or from the alternative music scene, would be a good spokesman.

The gun-owner and gun-advocate demographic has expanded from the traditional base of rural people and hunters, to include twentysomething college-educated engineers and programmers; these people can’t fucking relate to Ted Nugent. There needs to be someone to represent the NRA who is in touch with this younger and educated generation of gun people.

NRA - get your fucking act together.

2

Well it’s better than that elitist, unAmerican French wine. You know, the guys who refused to back us up in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
But I agree. You’d figure they’d be shilling Texas wine, which actually isn’t half-bad if you’re looking for something sweeter.
As for Henry Rollins, the dude may have a pretty conservative stance toward gun ownership, but he’s ultra-liberal when it comes to most other issues, something that probably wouldn’t play well with the NRA’s base.

3

Truthfully, California wines stand up quite well to French wines. But I do have a WTF momment when I hear about wines in NRA-based rags. The firearms demographic is better-educated and more cosmopolitan than most people realize, but wine in general is not really the basic US tipple - Beer is.

Eh - Time for the NRA to expand it’s base demographic anyway. The country as a whole is more liberal than it used to be - the NRA needs to move at least a little on most issues, if it wishes the public to care about what it has to say. Stick-in-the-mud and you get left behind.

4

Right there with you man, I don’t understand a lot of what the NRA does. I’ve been a lifetime member since my teens and I firmly believe in the cause, I want my gun rights protected. However, I’m 24, I’m still getting my life off the ground here, there is no way in hell I’m donating money or buying wine or even sitting through one of their annoying telemarketing calls.

The NRA sends me a lot of mail, most of it fishing for money. They also call me every couple of months. I wish there was some kind of “don’t contact me” or “email only” option. I always feel guilty that I don’t support the NRA more but at the same time I’m pissed off that they use the money donated to them to solicit more donations from grim prospects like myself. Isn’t most of their revenue coming from people in a much higher tax bracket than me? Do they really rake in the dough over the phone or through the mail?

Despite the fact that I have changed my magazine subscription multiple times, I always ALWAYS end up getting 1st Freedom. Crappity crap, I’m I LIFETIME member, do they think I’m going to vote the wrong way on gun issues? It’s the NRA and I can’t get them to send me a magazine about guns, GRRRRR. The one time they sent me a different mag it was that stupid women’s dreck. “I have a vagina and a gun at the same time giggle” Jesus H. Christ I don’t seek an NRA magazine for information on purses and mascara TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING GUNS!!!

Wow, good thread, I feel better. :slight_smile:

Tranquilis, on which issues do you think the NRA should adjust their position? I want a dedicated, unflinching, uncompromising gun lobby advocating for me.

5

Are they pimping good wines?

I’d buy NRA wines since I support their cause, but I’m not drinking ploncky crap just because the NRA pimps it.

6

I had not even heard about the wine. Agree it’s a not-immediately-intuitive concept.

The Saturday morning wake-up calls were annoying.

And the bogeyman incantation of two or three names (“If Hillary Clinton and her ultra gun-hating co-plotters . . .” Seriously, there are a lot of bad things a gun owner might say about Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy or the UN, but the anti-gun lobby is not some individual super-villain, and it’s a bit insulting to have someone trying to invoke a Pavlovian response. If the pro-gun argument depends on mortal fear of Hillary Clinton, and not on a reasoned defense of the Second Amendment, than I don’t want to get behind it.

7

Oh, and my general beef about all fund-raising these days: (1) selling my name to every GD remotely-similar cause; (2) I’ll give when I want to give; (3) yeah, if you’re looking for money, don’t present it as some moronic fake “survey;” and (4) There probably shouldn’t be postscripts in pre-printed letters – say what you have to say in the letter, and don’t repeat the SAME EXACT THING under P.S.

8

Find a group of people who own guns. Sell them cheap alcohol. Then wake them up with demands for money.

This is a shooting spree waiting to happen.

9

They’ve gotta do something to justify their continued existence. They’ve won. The Dems are scared of gun control and it is a dead issue for the near future. No more Assault Weapons Bans, no more restrictions.

I hate how the organization is just a bunch of political whores anymore. “Enforce the existing gun laws!” they shriek. Which ones? The ones that I thought we opposed like the Brady Bill and background checks?

Oh, and I just renewed my membership 11 days ago. Please don’t send me another form offering a renewal at the low, low price!

10

Goddamn it. You made me laugh half-chewed carrot through my sinuses.

11

So glad they don’t have my e-mail address.

12

You know, Napa Valley’s wine companies probably don’t have as much influence on gun laws as you think.

13

Good point about the post scripts, what the hell is that? While we’re on the subject of the letters, why in god’s name do they have to be printed on the really wide paper? How much do they spend on unusual paper and possibly extra postage? I’m not taking you more seriously because your paper is larger than I’m used to.

14

They called my house in Georgia once, and my wife answered the phone. The lady kept pressuring her about making a donation, since I was a member back in the '90s.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a supporter of the ‘personal right’ intent of the 2nd Amendment, and I would be a member of the NRA, if I would live in one particular part of the country for longer than two years or so. But I do support most of their actions. . . most.

. . . because as of late, they’ve started this pushy telemarketing thing. And they were badgering my wife one day. It unraveled the first moment she said she wasn’t acually in the NRA or calling from them–she was calling from a third-party company that raises funds. She kept spouting off about membership benefits, and inflated the story of HR 45 about how it was “going to make you license all your guns!” as if it were happening right fcking now!!!*. (At that point, it was stalled in a Committee, and nobody but the author wanted to even touch it). The lady kept spouting factually incorrect, but a nevertheless incendiary sales speech until the kicker, “but doesn’t your husband want to be a Patriot?”

My wife said, “I don’t know. Ask him when he returns from his next tour in Iraq.”

NRA, if you’re going to be doing some fundraising, do it your damn self. Don’t hire sleazebag telemarketers to do it for you. And if you do, don’t be surprised when they insult the intelligence of your politcal base.

Tripler
I’m a supporter, but quoth Argent, “NRA, get your fucking act together.”

15

Unfortunately there’s not a lot of innovation in the civilian rifle market at the moment, 98% of all “new” (as in “new-manufactured”, not “new-found-at-the back-of-a-Yugoslavian-warehouse”) rifles on the market tend to be either generic “Remchester” bolt-actions based on the Mauser 98 action and all more or less identical to one another, or AR-15/AK-47-style semi-autos, with a few Garand-style rifles (like the Ruger Mini-14 and Springfield Armoury M1A) in there as well.

Whilst there are some new(ish) military weapons slowly rolling out, changes to gun laws (and costs of manufacturing!) in the past 50 years mean that civilian market versions of “modern age” military rifles like Steyrs and SIG-550s just aren’t that common (or affordable) for the most part, and I’m not aware of a “made for the civilian market” version of things like the SA-80, the INSAS or the FAMAS.

Handguns and shotguns do not tend to have as much of a problem with this, as most “military” handgun designs are legally available on the civilian market in more or less the exact same form, and shotguns are primarily sporting arms, and the most legally accessible firearm in most places- hence the large numbers of shotguns on the market for sporting and hunting purposes.

Interestingly, Argent, you’re not the first person I’ve heard lately mentioning that the NRA seems to be less about supporting firearms owners and their sport/hobby/constitutional rights, and more about fundraising and other things which are perhaps a little more tangential than many members would like.

16

Maybe they can start pushing cigars, too. Then they can really get the BATF upset.

17

Yes and no. If the NRA went away tomorrow, all those things would be back on the agenda day after tomorrow. And there are a lot of anti-gunners out there (pretty much any editorial board you can imagine, most urban elites, more than half of Congressmen in their hearts of hearts). And there are always clever clever little roundabout ways to screw practical ownership/use of guns – they’ve already toyed with the ammunition route, whether it be mandatory serial numbers for ammo, exorbitantly taxing ammo, banning sale of military scrap brass. No, none of those have happened, but are they impossible? The point is (cf. the military scrap), the attack might be direct, or it might be indirect. So while the NRA’s manufactured air of breathless, immediate crisis is annoying – it may be necessary. Eternal vigilance, and all that.