I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Posts of Naxos.
The building regulations on earthquake standards are strictest in states that have the most earthquakes, so it must be the standards that cause the earthquakes.
All sides of the gun control debate are worthy of ridicule. The assault weapon restrictions are worthless as they end up being about unimportant things like what a gun looks like rather than the key issue of high capacity magazines, but even then the number of incidents like Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting pale in comparison to the deaths from handguns. On the other side, please stop pretending that keeping dozens of guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition in your house are all that stands in the way of the zombie Apocalypse.
I can, however, respond to deliberate flouting of instructions to support your position with actual facts and logic.
This is a Warning to tone down your rhetoric while providing actual support for your “arguments,” rather than posting disparaging comments that do not address the issues.
[ /Moderating ]
I think the stridency of the NRA was a direct response to Bill Clinton’s “in your face” liberal approach to gun control. Clinton and his team had no ambiguity whatsoever when they came into office in his first term that they intended to sweep in “change”, and that change included a serious attack on several fronts on the gun issue. I had been a member of the NRA for about 4 years prior to Clinton’s election and during that time I did read a lot of objection to the proposed Brady Bill, but nothing that showed the NRA was “at war” with gun control.
I’ll wager not many people on this message board were adults who were actively interested in the politics of gun control at that time. Although I was an NRA member at the time it wasn’t because of the political advocacy, it honestly started out as being interested in all the well-written articles on mechanics and physics of firearms. However, you couldn’t help but read each month in the American Rifleman (a name I wish they would change) about some crazy new bill or law being proposed.
However, when Clinton came into office, everything changed tracks. That was when I started to notice things. The TV news almost nightly started to carry some short article which always seemed very slanted against gun owners. That worried me quite a lot, as up until that time I had this naive assumption that mainstream media was supposed to be reporting “just the facts” in an impartial way. Then I started noticing the errors and lies in the local newspaper, the Kansas City Star. I read perhaps weekly an anti-gun news article (not on the op-ed pages) which had clear factual errors which were easy to verify, but weren’t. The op-ed pages were worse. I also noticed that any time there was movement forward on a gun ban bill, it made the front page, often being the headline story. And when later the bill would die in committee or get voted down by one house or the other of Congress, it would be a tiny column buried in the “legislative roundup” on page 39.
One day I read an article which claimed that semi-automatic rifles were really fully-automatic and referred to them as machine guns. So I wrote in to the paper to correct them. There was no correction issued, nor any reply. The mistake was made again, and again, as were other “mistakes.” There was a blatantly bad op-ed piece once about how we needed sweeping gun bans, now, which had something like a score of factual errors in it - not differences in opinion, but clear factual errors - so I wrote in again.
Again, nothing. The student newspaper at University was even worse. When they claimed that anyone could walk into a gun show and with no trouble buy a machine gun, hand grenades, and even flamethrowers legally, and I wrote in to basically ask “cite?” the reply was a terse “our reporter sticks by their sources” or words to that effect.
Then one day there was a gun control “forum” on campus, which was run by some University student organization and local chief of police, and several other police officers. No one from the pro-gun side was present as a panel member - whether by accident or on purpose, I don’t know. It was an olde-tyme propaganda show, with the police - the ones we trust to “protect and serve” - saying things about firearms which were so ignorant they were worrying. One of the officers stood up and held an SKS and claimed it was an “AK-47 assault rifle, the primary tool of the drug dealer” and someone stood up and said “no it isn’t, it’s an SKS, don’t you even know the difference?” Some discussion occurred with the moderator telling the person to sit down and shut up, the officer saying “I’m an expert on firearms, I know what this is.” So the person in the audience yelled to the moderator “then read the model from the receiver out loud”, several times, and the officer looked down at it, then looked up and said “he doesn’t have to. I know what it is.” And the moderator, looking embarassed, said words to the effect of “I trust officer so-and-so.” A very similar event happened at the local Junior College, and yes, an SKS was misidentified too, as was a Ruger 10-22 with folding stock which was identified as an “M-16.” And if I have to explain to anyone here why that is so ludicrous as to be nothing more than a lie, or showing the officer had probably never been around firearms, then you shouldn’t be debating this subject.
So what do these anecdotes which I’ve posted bits of before really mean? They mean that some gun owners in the 1992-1994 time frame who never even really gave a shit about “assault weapons” et al. were all of a sudden seeing a strange and suspicious onslaught of one-sided reporting in nearly all forms of media, and even seeing the authorities marching lock-step behind the movement to the point of openly lying to the public. They saw things like the dirty deal in the assault weapons ban where even cops no longer on the job got to keep all their weapons, thus creating a new special elite class of person, to get the FOP firmly behind the bill. They saw people like Senator Metzenbaum get up on the Senate floor and openly either lie or act so ignorantly about firearms that it was scary.
Even within the last few years I’ve heard an interview with Sarah Brady where she openly lied about the statistics on CCW permits in Florida, and when the host themselves corrected her she refused to retract it and quickly changed the subject.
I find the cognitive dissonance which is often exhibited on this message board among those who demonize the NRA for its strident advocacy, while ignoring the same from the anti-gun movement, to be very telling. If I wanted to be charitable I would chalk it up to the fact that since 1995 the anti-gun movement has been fighting a ground-giving defensive war, and since Heller and McDonald they’ve completely and utterly lost much of their fiber, therefore we don’t hear as much from them any more. Another thing which hurts the anti-gun side is the Internet - back in the day when a cop said something like…who was it…Darryl Gates? - that every day in American cops were killed by machine guns, or a newspaper claims “every day 100 kids are killed by assault weapons”, you can now look up the facts in Google and say “oh no they aren’t, why are you lying?” Back then, and I do know this personally, to try to refute something like that involved you spending hours in the library, possibly several libraries, or ordering reports and books from other places, so maybe a month later you could find out that no, it was in fact a lie. The Internet has allowed the truth to come out, and to a large extent the truth is in favor of the pro-gun side.
But even then it doesn’t work. Not too long ago I called out one of the anti-gun firebrands on this message board who openly and repeatedly lied about legislation, linking to the actual text, and all they did was dig in their heels and throw insults at me, and refuse to admit they were wrong. In fact they were smugly, in our faces, refusing to admit that a hard citation in direct opposition to their statement, even existed. IIRC I was the only person who stood up and called them on it. But as long as people are willing to post their Big Lie and stick by it, what can you do?
Does the pro-gun side lie and show ignorance as well? Yes, they do. The problem for the anti-gun side is that most of their lies and ignorance are fact-based: “Every day 100 kids die from assault weapons”, “semi-automatics are machine guns”, “I love hunting, but ANY gun that can penetrate a bullet-proof vest should be banned” (a subtle bit of ignorance, as almost all hunting rifles can penetrate such). These are easy for the pro-gun side to refute. The pro-gun side’s lies and ignorance deal with motivations and things which are difficult to prove or disprove: “Obama secretly wants to ban all guns”, “the government is about to have UN troops do house-to-house searches for guns”, and “the FOP is being paid off behind the scenes by Brady Campaign to back Senator Schumer’s re-election.” How does the anti-gun side disprove that hogwash?
So this is my opinion on when and why the NRA became so hyper-partisan and inflexible, and I’m pretty glad that they are too. I may not agree with many things the NRA advocates, but I think without them we would live in a very different United States, which likely by now would resemble Canada and within 50 years the UK from a firearms standpoint.
You make some reasonable points in the parts I did not quote. But then I strongly disagree with your conclusions here, primarily because it relies on the same slippery-slope fallacy that the NRA loves to peddle. By any objective standard, gun rights have improved over the last three years, both because of the Supreme Court cases and through legislation signed into law by Obama.
Yet the NRA has a consistent record of publishing “fact-based” bullshit like this. Stuff like that doesn’t warn gun owners about the possibility that Obama might try to do something on guns, it says in black-and-white text (well, white and blue) that Obama’s 10 point plan on guns is to “ban the use of firearms for home self-defense.” It’s just complete fiction. It’s a lie. Why are you glad that the NRA lies to its membership?
Let’s look at the facts: there has been no significant proposal on gun control from the White House in three years. Obama signed legislation to allow guns in national parks, has gotten constistent “F” ratings from the Brady Campaign, and the NRA sometimes has to result in making fun of Bill Clinton because they have almost no ammunition against Obama.
And yet the NRA-fed hysteria is going to peak again next year, because the threat to gun rights is “more severe than in 2000.” Link.
It isn’t shocking that many people are concerned about the issue of the lawful use of guns, and remain concerned about their ability to continue their sport and also defend their homes and such. What is nonsensical is that right-minded people can look at the continuing stream of lies from the NRA and say, “Well, even though I know they are full of crap, they should keep doing what they are doing because it is good and reasonable for the NRA to spread lies and misinformation so that they can raise huge amounts of unregulated money, which I’m sure isn’t lining the pockets of the tenth most highly-paid executive of a non-profit at all. That’s all cool: lies and paying high salaries to their executives. Good job, NRA!”
Because we all know what would have happened had Robert Bork been confirmed to the Supreme Court, right? Actually, we don’t. We have no idea. But the mere hint, the very idea that a single-issue lobbying group’s position was potentially threatened, resulted in attack after attack.
Ironically, we still have abortion on demand in this country in spite of the fact that we have 5 (count 'em, 5) Catholic members of the Supreme Court. Yet NARAL hasn’t back off its positions, and I wouldn’t expect them to.
The only “ammunition” they need against Obama is his own words, from his campaign website (change.gov) under Urban Policy:
There it is, in black and white. Should gun owners not take him at his word? That he hasn’t done anything in that regard does not repudiate his intent, it’s right there for everybody to see. The Brady Campaign gave him an F because he hasn’t followed through on that, not because he’s suddenly become a pro-gun politician. And guess what? He’s a virtual lock for a second term. I voted for him before and I will again, but that doesn’t mean that I should shrug my shoulders and look the other way over an issue that concerns me.
And what does you think of the words spoken by NRA’s Wayne LaPierre as shown in the OP?
I’ve said it before (in this very thread, no less) and I’ll say it again: I don’t think Wayne LaPierre is a good representative for gun owners. I don’t like his tactics and I don’t like what he says publicly. But as a gun-rights advocate I can’t deny that the NRA has been very successful at protecting the rights of gun owners.
Since he is one of the major players in the game, isn’t that the same as saying the ends justify the means?
Does it matter? I’d prefer someone less extreme, but Wayne LaPierre is what I’m stuck with.
What’s with the word games?
Perhaps you should start your on thread on NARAL or other lobbying organizations that you believe perpetrate lies. Because I can’t see a whit of connection between your bringing this up (and I’m not really sure what a list of “accomplishments” has to do with my link to an impartial organization catching the NRA in a string of distortions, misinformation, or fabrications), unless you are saying that as long as there is any other lobbying organization that misleads it members, then the NRA should have that right, too. Surely that isn’t what you’re saying, is it?
You are probably right on claim number 8 of the ad I linked to, in which Obama is claimed to want to want to expand the “Clinton semi-automatic ban” even though I think the statement is weasel-worded. Number 10 on that list is probably true, too, insofar as Obama would appoint judges that reflect his view of the Second Amendment, which as Factcheck states includes the statement that “Barack Obama believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right”… isn’t that what gun owners want and what the Supreme Court has affirmed???
Sure, take him at his word. But the NRA has a consistent history of not simply using Obama’s words against him, which would be fair play. It lies to its membership about what Obama is saying. Seriously, 500% tax on ammunition? Ban the use of firearms for home self-defense? Close down 80% of the gun shops in the US? Why not just say that Obama is going to eat the babies of gun-owning Americans?
ETA: I see that you have addressed the issue of Wayne LaPierre being a self-serving egotist and liar. (Well, my words, not yours, but it is implied :)) But let’s get real, the NRA and LaPierre are inseparable. Efforts to oust him have failed on at least two occasions I can think of. Why support an organization that is built around the ego of a pathological liar? The ends really do justify the means?
I’m not playing any word games. This attitude of “It doesn’t matter how we win, as long as we win” really disturbs me. Why are you “stuck” with LaPierre? In forums friendly to the NRA, do people who oppose his rantings get labeled as “anti-gun”?
I think the problem is the NRA acts as if any decisions that restrict any parts of gun arsenals is a potential foot in the door. I am sure plenty of NRA members don’t think machine guns in civilian hands is a good idea. But if they agree to end that, then the terrible anti gunners will demand the end of guns. But almost all people realize guns are here to stay.
No. I’m saying that it is a common tactic. Don’t put words in my mouth. As for NARAL, their activities were so effective that we have a word for it. To reiterate for at least the fourth time, THAT IS WHAT THESE PEOPLE DO. The goal of a single-issue lobbying group is to protect their single issue and nothing more.
The Supreme Court has affirmed that the 2nd Amendment confers an individual right, but they have also allowed for regulations. That’s what we are now fighting over.
Last time: THAT IS WHAT THESE PEOPLE DO. Really, is it that difficult to understand? Again, take NARAL. There is absolutely zero chance that abortion will be banned. None. Nada. SCOTUS has had the opportunity and the “votes” many times, and they never dropped the hammer. Yet NARAL is still lobbying to prevent something that will never happen, using the same scaremongering tactics. “Give to us or they’ll take your abortion rights away!” That’s a lie. It’s an outright, baldfaced lie.
Those tactics work. For single-issue lobbying groups, that is all that matters.
No. they don’t. There are a lot of people who support gun rights that think that LaPierre is a jerk. But you know, it doesn’t matter how we win as long as we win. I’d rather criticize a guy for being a jerk than lament the loss of my rights. Politics are dirty. Such is life.
As point of fact, almost to a man gun-rights advocates think that the 1986 restriction on machine guns (the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986) is asinine.
To be clear, the NRA accepts loads of restrictions. They accept the National Firearms Act of 1934, they accept the Gun Control Act of 1968, they accept (and endorse) the National Instant Check System, and they back the banning of guns for felons convicted of a violent crime, mental defectives, and domestic abusers (with caveats). Don’t act like they oppose everything.
Life is what you make of it, and what parts of it you are willing to swallow without protest. What you are saying here I reject as unsuitable.
If you’re trying to make the point that NARAL’s advocacy against the nomination of Robert Bork is somehow similar to the NRA making crazy, unsupported accusations against Obama, you’ve chosen a poor example. Bork made it clear that he felt that civil rights decisions like *Roe v. Wade *were contrary to the original intent of the Constitution and that they were glaring examples of judicial activism. So it’s not like NARAL drew a connection from appointing Bork to an eventual weakening or overturning of Roe out of thin air. His judicial philosophy was no secret.
Thank you for your philosophical criticism. What I think is unsuitable is the loss of my rights, and that’s the bottom line.
I understand that you are saying “that is what these groups do.” It’s the “do” that we are quibbling over.
When a lobbying group says that someone has proposed x, whether it is in relation to guns, abortion, taxes, welfare, or whatever, and there is no evidence whatsoever that x is the actual position of the person, and there is evidence that x is NOT the position of the person, do you consider that a lie?
To be specific, do you believe the NRA lied when stated that Obama has proposed to eliminate the right to use firearms in self-defense in one’s home?