While most of these companies cutting NRA ties is symbolic, any chink in the NRA armor is good. Ever since the 1994 assault weapons bill and the Republican congressional landslide in 1994, almost every politician has treated the NRA with kid gloves.
Of course, the actual history behind the 1994 is far more complex than guns. Clinton bumbled around with gays in the military, health care, having to beg to get his budget passed as well as the rise of right wing talk radio.
I just found this out today from Snopes:
The National Rifle Association is indeed a tax-exempt nonprofit organization. To be specific, it has 501©(4) status, meaning it is regarded as a “social welfare organization” by the Internal Revenue Service.
I’ll be calling my congressman on Monday to ask him to look into changing that.
It’s about normalization.
What do people expect to happen? What groups do people expect to be tied together? Those things define what the default is, what normal looks like, in any given society. If all peanut butter brands had Scientology labeling on them, you wouldn’t question it: Peanut butter and Scientology would be yoked together in your mind, and the fact peanut butter is normal would help make Scientology normal.
Well, the NRA has managed to normalize itself into an almost-unquestionable place in a lot of subcultures in our society, and having it constantly being there, not necessarily in an ostentatious way but there nevertheless, makes it seem like NRA support and, therefore, NRA values are just normal, and not to be questioned without looking a bit odd.
Removing the NRA from all of its little niches will make it less normal and more of an explicit option: Do you want to be grouped with the NRA? Once people begin to ask that, it’s harder for them to get people to say yes outside of certain subcultures which are already very explicitly pro-NRA. This will, in turn, serve to disabuse marketers of the idea that NRA-supporters, and I mean the people who explicitly go out of their way to be aligned with the NRA, are any more populous than they are. That marketing revelation will serve to further isolate the NRA, making it even more explicitly a lifestyle brand for a very specific lifestyle, and, moreover, a brand which must be disavowed if you want to pursue certain markets.
In short, aligning yourself with the NRA will come to mean aligning yourself with a whole lot of other traits, such as Evangelical Christianity and anti-immigrant sentiment, and a brand which wants broad appeal cannot afford that. Only the ones which want to chase that specific subculture all the way can.
Even shorter: This will turn the NRA into NWA, a brand which is massively popular in some subcultures and actively repulsive to others.
“Political and civic cowardice”? Right.
And it’s cute how not giving a special discount for NRA membership gets rewritten as “punishing NRA membership”. I’ve paid non-discounted prices for most of the stuff I’ve bought all my life, and never whined that I was being “punished” for not being offered a discount based on membership on an unrelated organization.
Oh yeah. like Rush getting now support mostly from Quack supplements, lenders or gold bugs…
I would not be surprised if those brands will now get lots of orders from Cyberia or Siberia…
Funny how the NRA is not at fault when for most of my life they have fought all reasonable gun control with claims of the slippery slope. They will probably try to blame Hollywood or the Internet for this in the next few weeks.
What is the essence of the NRA’s power?
The True Source of the N.R.A.’s Clout: Mobilization, Not Donations
No issue with people expressing their opinions and organizing a boycott but I note that one of the targets has been insurers who underwrite firearms liability insurance.
I thought requiring firearms owners to carry liability insurance was a fairly common proposal by gun control activists. If that were to come to pass then there would have to be some insurers in the market. No chance such a law, if passed, would not have an exception to mandatory coverage if no policy is available.
Look, I hate that my auto insurance rates depend in part on the carnage wrought by drunk drivers but I accept that requiring mandatory liability insurance to drive is a reasonable regulation. It does not mean that auto insurers support or encourage DUI. An insurer offering gun owner liability coverage does not mean they are in favor of spree killers.
Sure. But presumably they offer that insurance to all gun owners. They’re just going to stop offering a discount to NRA members. If reduced premiums are justified based on other criteria than NRA membership, they’ll probably do that instead.
"Trump’s flirtation with a set of modest gun control measures drew swift condemnation from gun groups, hunters and sportsmen who banked on the president to be a stalwart opponent to any new gun restrictions. In his pledge to make schools safer and curb gun violence after the massacre at a Florida high school, gun advocates see a weakening resolve from the man they voted for in droves and spent millions to elect.
“Out in the firearms community there is a great feeling of betrayal and abandonment, because of the support he was given in his campaign for president,” Tony Fabian, president of the Colorado Sports Shooting Association, said Friday.
The comments highlight how little room the president and his party have to maneuver without angering and activating the politically powerful gun rights community. "
These days even Nixon wouldn’t be able to go to China.
NRA’s plan for “hardening” schools includes no trees (except thorn-bearing ones to act as natural fencing) no parking lots except patrolled by armed guards, no windows, high prison-style perimeter fences.
Maybe we can just have the children attend school in actual prisons. Wouldn’t that be more efficient?
The really sad thing is that these ‘solutions’ and these arguments and these bloody rationalizations are ONLY happening in the US. No other country in the world has a group like the NRA fueling and focusing on ensuring fucking GUN SALES to the populace.
Get rid of the NRA. Period. Slam them into oblivion.
These two posts really highlight where the GOP is today: They come up with stupid ideas because they’ve purity-tested everyone who could call them out as being stupid right out of the party.
And, yes, the NRA is a part of the GOP, or vice-versa, given how the GOP’s purity testing on gun issues works: Agree with the NRA or be cast out. They’re something more than just a lobbying group if you get the bum’s rush for disagreeing with them.
So the NRA makes plans most people can see are transparently idiotic, the GOP is fated to go along with them because GOPpers can’t disagree with the NRA without being run out of the party, and only gerrymandering can save Republican seats in states which lean even somewhat purple. Once there are more favorable court cases about redistricting, rocks fall and the GOPpersaurus dies.
That would be season three of The Walking Dead. We know how the GOP likes to model policy after movies and TV.
Your logic is confused. In what way do auto insurance rates “depend” on drunk drivers such that one might conclude that insurers “support or encourage DUI”? DUI is the scourge of auto insurers and they run campaigns against it because it costs them big money. That is not, however, even the point here. One might say that auto insurers facilitate car ownership by providing a necessary service for it, thus helping to enable a car-oriented society and the auto industry. The problem with the gun liability insurers is that they help enable a gun-oriented society and the gun culture, and have a financial vested interest in the proliferation of gun ownership. They are not pure evil like the NRA, but I don’t consider them my friends.
Much more efficient. Prisons are already devoid of trees which is a great start, and they have massive walls, so they’re already halfway to the NRA criteria for the ideal school. Some prisons do have windows but I imagine those could be bricked up when converting them into a school. And they already have machine-gun equipped guard towers. All that remains to be done outside the building, besides all the thorny plants, is the introduction of packs of rabid wolves.
Actually, I don’t know if the guard towers have machine guns, but that would just be a minor upgrade. They would also be useful if an armed teacher went berserk and starting shooting up his own class. They could fire a hail of bullets right in through the windows. (ETA: If there were any windows. Otherwise, never mind. The teacher can just go berserk. Maybe the kids could be trained to fire back.)
+1. Maybe this is what this new generation of motivated kids will be able to accomplish. And the spineless politicians who refuse to lead will be compelled to follow.
FedEx has announced that they will maintain the relationship with the NRA.
If they had just kept their head down, it probably would have gone better for them. But by announcing they won’t discontinue the discount program, they’re inviting more focused attention. If they wanted to stay out of the fight, this probably wasn’t a good move.
Streisanding themselves but good, eh.