UncleEd said:
The NRA's biggest mistake in the last decade
was never getting out in front of the issue with
proposed legislation on limitations of ARs,
hi-cap magazines, bump stocks and other
issues.
Why should the NRA have ever proposed banning ARs? They are one of the best and most versatile weapons a person can purchase, hence their incredible popularity. They would be the epitome of the type of weapon that the Second Amendment was written to protect. As for "high-capacity magazines," the idea that anything over ten rounds is "high-capacity" was made up by the gun control movement. The reality is that they want to ban what are standard capacity magazines and limit people to what are arbitrarily-determined reduced capacity magazines.
Limiting people to reduced capacity magazines inhibits their ability to defend themselves. If they end up against some drugged-up criminal on a cocaine-fueled rage, it could require quite a number of shots to stop said criminal, they could be facing multiple criminals, and due to adrenaline, they could miss. The idea that a person has to be limited to just ten rounds is a blatant violation of their right to keep and bear arms. There's also that whole aspect about fighting tyranny should one ever form.
The NRA has grown fat with monies from the
AR industry and its ancillary businesses that
supply all the Tinker Toy stuff that can be
added onto or modify the ARs.
No it hasn't. The NRA is a grassroots civil rights organization. The gun manufacturing industry is tiny. It's only about $12 - $15 billion dollars a year. That's a fraction of Target's revenue alone, let alone Wal-Mart and the entire retail industry, or the financial and banking lobby, for example Bank of America makes like $100 billion a year, Wal-Mart and Amazon in the hundreds of billions, then there's the oil and gas industry, the pharmaceutical companies, the defense industry, etc...
those are lobbies. The idea that the NRA is able to have the influence that it has due to some shrimpy little $12-$15 billion gun manufacturing industry is laughable. What gives the NRA its influence is the massive amount of the American people that support it.
The NRA's major problem has been its success
in the last decade or longer. I wouldn't call
it NRA complacency but every time a mass shooting
has occurred, the NRA was able to stall on
any action.
...YEAH, because every time in the past it caved, all it led to was further gun control proposals.
Avoiding the "slippery slope" is to try and level that
slope through negotiations with the antis. That "slippery
slope" will always exist.
That will never work. The anti's will simply sense weakness and push for more. Understand this, the anti's right now are like a group of pirates sailing a boat against the winds. When you have to sail against the wind, what do you do? If you try to sail directly into it, you'll just get blown backwards, so you instead have to come at it from an angle, and basically zigzag your boat and work your way upwards. That is what the anti's do. However, should the anti's sense the wind as beginning to blow in their direction, do you think they will then become satisfied? NO WAY. They will just accelerate the boat in the direction they want to go.
At a certain point, the political cost for elected
officials to support NRA positions, even if they
believe in them 100 per cent, grows too great and
then it wouldn't be a "slippery slope." It can
be a total plunge in the rights of all gun owners.
I remember one outdoor range owner in Illinois
who said as the sales of ARs started to grow:
"These guns will only cause us nothing but trouble."
With the anti's, he's right, BUT that is why vigilance and public education is key.
