Anti-NRA vitriol increasing?

Badgerstate says...


"Personally, I wont support the NRA anymore because its turned into nothing more than a special interest group who uses our money to try to influence elections."


Unless you have donated money to NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, NONE of "your" money has been used to influence elections.

Per Federal law, ALL money expended on election issues MUST be raised separately and independently of other funds.

Your membership dues do NOT support political activities by NRA.


As for it being a "special interest" group... Holy hell, man, what do you think NRA's purpose is? To support lawful firearms ownership and activities through educational and political processes!

OF COURSE it's a special interest group!

It supports and defends OUR interests!

:rolleyes:
 
I don't think it's getting any more vicious, just louder. For most of the Obama presidency it wasn't really front page news because the assumption was that with D-D-D controlling the all phases of the government, well it was going to be a dark day for gun owners.

When Obama was elected in 2008 the anti-gun left thought it was a new day for sweeping gun control in America. Even though Heller had gone the "wrong" way, they figured that on a 5-4 decision they could get some friendly votes in the Supreme Court and it would be overturned.

After all, the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives were all Democrat controlled.

Living in DC metro I saw many gleeful predictions that "assault weapons" would finally be outlawed and there would be a rollback on the ability of Americans to purchase and own firearms.

Some of the call I saw for were based on California legislation HEAVY. $100 a year taxes on every firearm. $1 a round taxes on ammunition. Totally ludicrous stuff that never had a chance of passing, but it was being talked about openly and loudly.

In February 2009 Eric Holder, attorney general, proclaimed that one of the first things that was going to happen was the assault weapons ban.

A friend of mine was was a former Justice Dept. attorney who got information from his former colleagues that after Holder opened his yap, Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff, called Holder on behalf of the president and blistered him up, down, and crossways for daring to announce policy.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy... :D

But, it also gave the anti-gun left pause. They were jubilant when Holder yapped, and as time went on and nothing happened, they grew more concerned, and more vocal.

When Democrats lost the 3-way majority in the by elections, the anti-gun left, and a lot of the ultra left, started turning on Obama for failure to deliver what they thought should have been delivered.

We all know the rest of the story.
 
44 AMP said:
If you're a sports guy, do you stop supporting your team because they don't win every single game???

IF you're in a war, and you don't support your "army" with supplies because they didn't win every single battle, you won't be winning many more battles, nor will you win the war. If the Generals directing things lead to defeat more often than victory, you replace THEM, you don't cut off the flow of beans & bullets needed.
Click to expand...

The problem is that each victory of the anti-gun crowd is usually permanent while each victory of the pro-gun crowd is a temporary victory. Anti-gun laws normally stay on the books and fighting them, at best, postpones their passage. Do we have more freedom to bear arms now or when the country was founded? It is certainly better to delay laws which restrict freedom but I am not convinced that will have any effect on the outcome in the end.
 
Bottom line, as long as everyone refuses to relinquish their guns (in the manner that Australia, Europe etc. gave up theirs), we are golden. If we let the Left chip away at our solidarity, our rights WILL be infringed and crumble, just like the rest of the idiot world.

Hard to impose draconian anti gun laws on a nation with millions of gun owners, unless we let them.
 
Any new law gets passed, gun owners will be among the first to follow it.

Many people are enjoying much more firearm freedom than in the recent past. In small corners of the country, gun rights are leaving and gun control is taking over. I don't see much resistance in these cases. Gun owners follow the laws and tip-toe around any controversy.
Gun control is an election talking point.
Election talking points are never solved.
If these things are solved, the funds dry up.

In a hockey game with no net, both sides just push a puck around.
 
I've seriously considered joining the NRA. The only real reason I haven't has more to do with the idea that I'm not all that crazy about contributing to and PAC. I'm abit more inclined to put that money to the 100 Club. That doesn't make me anti-gun (far from it). It doesn't make me a liberal leftist either. Maybe at some point, they will bring me in. But not yet.
 
$700,000-1,000,000 is not much income in the grand scheme of things. The population needs to be in debt to be useful and profitable.

I'd expect the head of and large organization to make that or more.
 
The problem is that each victory of the anti-gun crowd is usually permanent while each victory of the pro-gun crowd is a temporary victory. Anti-gun laws normally stay on the books and fighting them, at best, postpones their passage. Do we have more freedom to bear arms now or when the country was founded? It is certainly better to delay laws which restrict freedom but I am not convinced that will have any effect on the outcome in the end.
Click to expand...
We have seen the rollback of a number of anti-gun provisions.

The GCA of 1968 was significantly softened by the 1986 FOPA. The AWB was allowed to sunset, carry laws have been expanded and relaxed tremendously over the past 30 years.

So it's not a given that anti-gun provisions are permanent. They can be reversed, but it certainly is not easy.

I do agree that the "outcome in the end" is likely going to be restrictive gun control, however that end may not come for a very long time. What we're fighting for is not a total, over and out, complete and final victory. I don't think it's realistic to think there will ever be a time when gun owners can relax and feel like there won't be any more attempts at gun legislation--but that is not an excuse to give up.

We are fighting to maintain our rights as long as is possible and even expand them when we can. Depending on how good a job we do and how good a job our gun rights organizations do, it looks to be possible to maintain our gun rights for at least a few decades into the future. It's even possible we could continue some gun rights expansions for part of that time.
I've seriously considered joining the NRA. The only real reason I haven't has more to do with the idea that I'm not all that crazy about contributing to and PAC.
Click to expand...
Good deal. It's time for you to join up then. The fact is that NONE of your NRA membership fees go to support the NRA PAC (NRA-ILA Political Victory Fund).

http://www.amarkfoundation.org/nra-who-funds-the-nra-11-13-15.pdf

"The NRA-ILA (Institute for Legislative Action, a 501(c)(4)), is not funded by NRA membership dues..."​
 
It's not just the anti-gunners that are anti-NRA. Unfortunately, a lot of Dems view the NRA as a political arm of the Republicans. Of course the NRA isn't, and never wanted to play partisan politics. The facts are that one party is far more inundated with Antis than the other. The NRA can't be expected to fix that problem overnight.
 
It's not just the anti-gunners that are anti-NRA. Unfortunately, a lot of Dems view the NRA as a political arm of the Republicans.
Click to expand...

John Dingell jr was a life long dem and was elected to the house before many of us were born. He was always protective of 2A rights and had a great NRA rating.

It can't be a valid argument against the NRA that they oppose legislators who are vocal opponents of the rights the NRA defends.
 
The core problem is that the Democrat party wants to take things from one group and give it to another to buy votes and power. They want to make sure you can't do anything about it. They don't want any discussion about it and absolutely no resistance. A very large and vocal portion of the population has fallen for this lunacy.

Vitreol against the NRA is just a small sampling of a growing population of people with murderous intent against those who they feel are "intolerant". It's not difficult to find quotes of politcians and other figures who openly vocalize these with zero repurcussions.

As much as I hate to say it, in the not so distant future it might come to a point where many of us have to defend ourselves or perhaps face something like a china style "cultural revolution".
 
If I were to give any outward indication that I support anything considered a republican talking point, I would loose my job. My wife, unrelated professional field as I, would suffer the same fate.
As much as we everyone wants to believe otherwise, firearm ownership is a partisan issue. It's tied to the Republican Party, but republicans, really only support it to get votes.

The war was lost years ago its just ending slowly. Once you have to apply for and pay license fees to exercise a right, it is no longer a right; it is no longer a freedom, just the dying vestige of an old ideology.
 
The war was lost years ago its just ending slowly.
Click to expand...
Very slowly indeed. In the nearly three decades since I purchased my first gun, my gun rights have not decreased at all, in fact, they have actually expanded considerably. I could stand another several decades of that kind of "loss".
 
You're correct, mine have increased a great deal in my lifetime, but I live in an area inacting gun restrictions regularly now. Those political views that allowed this are spreading around the country. Those views are shared with people of the same political ideology, gun control comes with the package.
Gun rights are perceived to be in the same sphere as right wing hate. Socialism has a pretty strong foothold now and conditions are ripening for a socialist candidate to win in the near future. These are the last years of conservative influence.
 
^^I wonder about that. The Midwest spoke rather loudly in the last election. I think there is more of a conservative voice than ever, it is just a quieter more sensible voice.
 
There are alot (and I do mean ALOT) of people out there that are only recently getting into guns. It is not reasonable to assume that anyone not 'for' the NRA is automatically against it. Not everyone actually knows and understands what the NRA really is. Sure, Plenty of people have heard the name. But that doesn't mean they know anything about it. From my perspective, few people would even know the difference between the NRA and the NRA-ILA.

How about a more permanent section of the forum that readers can goto for a direct explanation of what the NRA is all about? With detailed information and more simplistic data for the layman?

As a direct result of the combination between the idiocy and childish brats both in the media and in Washington, there is a tremendous amount of mis-information (even dis-information). People often get turned off by the politics of it all and end up tuning out. This is something that people NEED to know. Not something that first-time gun owners should be left guessing about (falling prey to the distortions of the left).
 
...few people would even know the difference between the NRA and the NRA-ILA.
Click to expand...
Not knowing something is one thing. A person can't know everything.

It's another thing entirely to make decisions based on assumed knowledge when no attempts have been made to gain the knowledge or verify the assumptions.

For example, a person might decide not to put smoke detectors in their home because they are concerned about exposure to radiation. The problem is that their concern is based on assumed knowledge, not real facts, and is unfounded. For one thing, not all smoke detectors even have radioactive materials in them. And the ones that do are designed in such a way as to prevent any significant exposure. The upshot is that they've made a potentially life-threatening decision on the basis of assumed knowledge.

Just a few minutes spent with an internet search engine would clear up any misconceptions. The problem is that it is often true that people would rather continue to assume that they know something rather than expend the minimal effort required to actually learn.

Getting back to the topic at hand--an internet search using the terms NRA PAC revealed, in the first search result, that the name of the PAC was the NRA Political Victory Fund (PVF). The first result of an internet search using the terms NRA PVF "funding" was the pdf document I linked to in the earlier post which explains how the NRA PVF is funded and how the NRA and NRA-ILA are different.
How about a more permanent section of the forum that readers can goto for a direct explanation of what the NRA is all about? With detailed information and more simplistic data for the layman?
Click to expand...
Given the ready access to huge amounts of information, when people don't know things these days it can only be because one or more of the following four things is true:

1. They don't care enough to try to find out.
2. They think they already know it. There are two subcategories here.
--A. Because they think they know it they don't know that they need to learn more.
--B. They don't want to search for information because they aren't interested in the possibility of being proven wrong.
3. They can't comprehend the information even when provided the facts.
4. The topic is arcane or outside the realm of human knowledge.

But that's all peripheral to the real issue. You said the only thing preventing you from joining the NRA was that you didn't want to contribute to the PAC. Now you know that joining the NRA won't send any funding to the NRA PAC which means that the only thing keeping you from joining isn't a thing.

So...
http://www.shootingusa.com/LATEST_UPDATES/NRA_news/NRA_Membership/nra_membership.html

https://membership.nra.org/Hickok45/Join
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top