First of all I trust the NRA to know the desires of it’s members more than outside polling groups. I’m an NRA member and at least once a year I get questionnaires to fill out with my views on various gun issues.
Secondly, the bill was 800 pages long. It wasn’t just a straight up choice between background checks and no background checks. It’s more complicated than that.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the NRA support a bill that was written differently, such as having the requirements and cost of a FFL go down so that more private citizens could become gun dealers and thus do background checks.
Here is a Washington Post story on the history of NRA background checks.
It’s an oversimplification to say the NRA used to be for background checks and is now against them. The NRA isn’t opposed to background checks generally speaking, but they do want them done a certain way. They oppose or support bills based on what’s in them. It’s not as simple as a pro-background check or anti-background check binary choice.
Well, a couple of decades ago people were talking about a culture war, which sounds worse than red vs. blue. But to the actual question: a big part of this is the Internet. Local politics is national now, and there’s much more pressure toward party uniformity on a federal level. You can see the pressure that gets put on people who are wavering from the party line.
Gun dealers are required to do the background checks with the federal system. Having more gun dealers (like there used to be before they made it so difficult and expensive to become a dealer) means more gun sales are subjected to background checks.
Yeah, I suppose there has been the whole culture war since the 60s. But it seemed a lot more moderate in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. Now you have these strident, white, conservative, ultra relegious, pro-gun, anti-gay, anti-immigrant types screaming about how “liberals” and “foreigners” and even "the Federal government are destroying America.
Their “America” is being destroyed. Or at least it is changing from the rural monoculture they grew up with. The world is becomming more globalized, more urbanized, more interconnected, more diverse and more secular. That is scary for them.
Well, if you’re talking about globalization, there’s been liberal fear of that as well(check out the Seattle protests), and their crusade is just as doomed to failure as the right-wing version.
The reality is that on both economic issues and social issues, those who seek to control are going to fail.
I get frustrated that every issue seems to come down to Rep vs Democrat. No matter what the issue happens to be. One party is for it and the other against. I often wonder how some issues get embraced by a party. Ok guys you want to take this one? Or lets give it to the other guys. They need a new issue.
It doesn’t really make sense. You know there’s got to be people within the party that don’t support that issue. But, this attitude of vote the party line usually wins out.
It’s a big part of todays problem that the votes are so black and white. It’s rare to see any bipartisan votes anymore.
Part of the problem of incivility is actually because of something good:
“Bribery isn’t what it once was,” said an official with one of the major gun-control groups. “The government has no money. Once upon a time you would throw somebody a post office or a research facility in times like this. Frankly, there’s not a lot of leverage.”
Used to be that differences could be smoothed over with taxpayer money. Now that this can’t be done anymore, bills actually have to pass on their merits, which results in more “incivility”.
I don’t see where that piece makes that claim. Could you quote the text?
And FWIW, both my wife and son are NRA members alongside me, but we only get one magazine, and for several years refused all magazines. I cannot explain why the refusal should surprise the analysts who wrote that piece; why get a free glossy magazine you don’t really want?
In other words, the incredulity in the article seems forced. Or foolish.
It’s the Senate and House Republicans that are throwing a tantrum. For going on five years now.
But I guess many Republicans like that, because they are so very misinformed that they want self-destructive policies enacted, and see gridlock as an end in itself.
Tantrums by definition are ineffective. The Republicans have been very effective at getting their way since taking the House, so you need to find a different term.
