The NRA Response

Even more interestingly, if one is to press the case. The Video Game industry at least has something that resembles self regulation while the 2A folks refuse to accept doing even that much.
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While I didn't particularly care for LaPierre's indictment against the video game industry, it should be pointed out that the gun industry isn't really allowed to self-regulate like the motion picture and video game industries because the gun industry already has so many legal regulations imposed upon it. Think about it, you don't have to have a federal license to sell video games, there isn't a list of features that cannot be legally incorporated into a video game, one needs no special license or permit to buy, use, or play a video game, and one needs not pass a background check to buy or possess a video game.

While you do have the ESRB and MPAA ratings systems, those are voluntary within the industry and not mandated by federal law. One could legally sell a M-Rated video game or R-Rated movie to anyone regardless of age, background, or mental status.

Your idea for a rating system for firearms really isn't feasible because they'd all wind up with the same rating: "Warning, this is a deadly weapon. Not suitable for use or possession by children, violent criminals, the mentally unstable, persons using mind-altering chemicals, or persons possessing poor judgement."

Also, as to your assertions that the firearm industry makes no attempt to self-regulate, that is untrue as well. Simply read the owner's manual that comes with any new firearm and you'll find all kinds of warnings about safe usage and storage, warnings about usage with alcohol or drugs, and warnings about keeping the firearm out of the hands of children. Some manufacturers like S&W and Ruger have even been known to engrave warnings right on the firearm itself. The fact of the matter is that firearm manufacturers have done all they can reasonably be expected to do to keep their products from being used negligently or criminally, but they simply cannot prevent everything.
 
No1der said:
@nate
I don't think I follow what it is you're trying to say.
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If I had to guess, I would guess that he was trying to say that, "U r not 1 of us."

In other words, you referred to "the" 2A folks. If YOU were a 2A folk, you would have written, "We 2A folks ..."
 
Yes, pardon the implications No1der. You see on TFL (The Firing Line), we give everyone the benefit of the doubt, about their veracity and intentions. We also have a very high standard of decorum, so nothing sould sound overly combative, or accusatory. We also never, ever rally around law breaking, or bad behavior. So when some one, or something is to blame, we call a spade a spade.

If a Law Officer, or anyone else does wrong, we say so. If something were defective and dangerous, we'd say so, etc. And from what I can see, almost to a man, all the long time members and staff, have stated their opposition to any type of new bans, or restrictions. Why do we not favor new restrictions? Its not because many of us are not in the NRA and other national gun organizations. If banning magazines, or types of weapons avalible now would help, we'd be for it. Its not reality though and it won't stop shootings. Then when the shootings don't stop, they'll want more.

Listen, I don't know buddy, maybe I'm just weary from all the letters, e-mails, etc I've been sending the last week or so. So, don't mind me, you guys go back to your debate, I wasn't even in it, till that last little quip about we and the.

Here is an Xmas song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvkzoqQ5Oak
 
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If I had to guess, I would guess that he was trying to say that, "U r not 1 of us."

In other words, you referred to "the" 2A folks. If YOU were a 2A folk, you would have written, "We 2A folks ..."
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Well, I also said "The First Amendment folks" instead of "we First Amendment folks" so why would I say "we 2A folks?"

It's pretty apparent from my posts that the 1A is at least as important to me. It would be kind of a clumsy sentence if I said "The first Amendment folks" and followed it up with "we Second Amendment folks." I'm not picking one over the other, I think they are both equally important. What next, is someone going to mention the 4A because I didn't mention them?
 
@nate, no sweat. I get it and I'm not insulted cause I'm sure that this is equally hard on everyone here. Some maybe even more than others since some of us think Wayne LaPierre isn't making a very strong case on our behalf.

One of the points I'm trying to make is that it's a tad hypocritical of Wayne LaPierre to be attacking my 1A rights in the same fashion that the 2A is being attacked by others. He's either pro Bill of Rights or he isn't and I don't like the way he picks and chooses which rights are "fair game" and which aren't.
 
I agree, I don't want to end up here, like it is in say England for example, where they jail people, for hurting some ones feelings. Having free speech and a rifle(or at least the right to have one) are what defines a citizen. Subjects aren't allowed either.
 
I agree, I don't want to end up here, like it is in say England for example, where they jail people, for hurting some ones feelings. Having free speech and a rifle(or at least the right to have one) are what defines a citizen. Subjects aren't allowed either.
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Amen to that.
 
There are many things I can find wrong with what the NRA has done/is doing, since Heller, but that is not the point of my writing, today.

Did Wayne LaPierre actually attack the free speech?

At first glance, it would appear so. At first glance, he enraged a large segment of the population that plays games. A segment that we get many of our new shooters from. Truth be known, a segment that makes-up a significant portion of NRA members!

Nor do I believe that Wayne is ignorant of what the Courts have said in regards to "violence" in games, TV and Hollywood.

I also think he had a sound tactic in trying to shift some focus, yes, even blame, upon the Media itself (before you answer, allow me to finish writing).

So I have to ask, why he would start his speech with those in particular?

I really think that the idea was to get the Media so enraged with this opening salvo (of blame), that they would put some small focus into defending their 1st amendment rights.

That right there, would have allowed the NRA to use the very same defenses for the RKBA. As a tactic, it could have worked wonderfully. The problem is that the Media did not respond to the script the way the NRA had figured it would.

This is where a good political analyst and speech writer could have been put to good use. Maybe the NRA was using such, and simply overruled the analysts! I really don't know.

What I do know is that the Media was smarter than the NRA gave them credit for. What started as a good tactic, became a terrific blunder. For the Media saw through the ploy and made little if any mention of this. Instead, they focused on putting more guns in schools and arming all teachers. That was not what was said, but it is what has been reported as being said.

That isn't even close to what Wayne actually said, but it was what came across to the average person watching/listening and then immediately pounded upon by the Media.

There was one other thing that happened in this speech, to those that watched the presser on the MSN (which is where most saw it). They saw a couple of very agitated and abusive protesters get past the NRA security! right at the start of the presser!!

It doesn't take much of a leap to think that while Wayne was talking about how good the NRA is at security training, yet anti-gun/anti-NRA protesters got through that very same security (if all you have done is to read the transcript or watch the presser on the NRA website, this was all edited out)! So how good could their vaunted training really be?

That right there undermined the credibility of anything the NRA (via Wayne LaPierre) had to say.

Even though I understood the message. Even though I agreed with it. Even though it was a lose/lose proposition to begin with, the NRA still had to take the stand they did... Yet, it was a virtual horror show.

That said, I don't agree with what No1der and some others are saying.

In the final analysis, the NRA is the only organization/speaker that has laid out a concrete plan to help thwart these attacks on our schools. Banning guns or setting limits on magazines have no chance of stopping these atrocious acts.

Webleymkv has made some very good points as to what we are up against, what the NRA actually proposed, why the anti-gun groups method won't work and what they are really after.

The NRA, love them or hate them, had to come out swinging as hard as they could. Their "take no prisoners," stance had to be said.

I'll go one further, we either stand behind them, united, or we will surely fall, separately.

One last thought, and I'll get off of my soapbox. Since the tragedy, the NRA has been registering 8000 new members a day. Since LaPierre's presser, that has jumped to 10K a day.

That alone says something about what the common man thinks about all of this. Have you done your part?
 
^^^Thanks Al.
I've been trying to consolidate my thoughts on this subject, and collect my thoughts into a coherent post. Seems we both have about the same view of the situation. Thanks for saying it for me.
 
My view is the NRA has gone from gun advocacy group to a octopus with gun advocacy on the side. I'm not sure what the NRA actually stands for anymore, which is sad since I am a long, long time life member...

However now is not the time to try to fix the organization. The current administration is very anti gun and we have a deeply sad situation that anti's are leveraging to the hilt to try to pass anything and everything they can pass. Like it or not now is the time for unity... "The enemy of my enemy is my friend".

I do agree that as a organization the NRA needs a major retooling, but its not enough to just say its broken, we have to be able to point at what's broke and suggest realistic ways to fix it. We have to breath new life and new ideas into the organization.

We also must meet the enemy with the same tools they use, we don't have to lie like they do but we must start focusing on perception. We must leverage every emergency to advance our heritage and our agenda and we need to do so tastefully, and morally but we must do so.

Think about what small percentages of our population enjoy power out of all proportion to the actual numbers of people who engage in whatever fringe activities. Its perception that is winning their battles, not their actual membership numbers or even participants in their activities... We must focus on the words "Gun Rights" in every sentence and define the anti stance for its lack of regard for human life and the right to self defense... We must equate the anti stance as outdated, unenlightened and contrary to the ideals of freedom. We as gun owners need to be vocal and come up with a very simple bumper sticker that says our base belief in a positive way...
 
In the final analysis, the NRA is the only organization/speaker that has laid out a concrete plan to help thwart these attacks on our schools.
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What plan would that be? Putting an armed guard in every school? I suppose that technically is a "plan," but it's certainly not concrete, and in my opinion is so laughably unrealistic that I'm surprised anyone would take it seriously.
 
Not if teachers were allowed to carry it wouldn't be unrealistic. Also many schools have security and one or more police stationed at them now. The school David Gregory's kid goes to has high security, oh he's special, I forgot.
 
There are armed guards in the schools in the small towns i live near. Each had a school shooting in the past. Its not unrealistic at all for a town to do this with pd officers which is what they do here. Usually its a older officer sometimes nearing retirement some not. If these tiny budget towns can do it anyplace can.
 
Not if teachers were allowed to carry it wouldn't be unrealistic.
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You seem to be assuming that all teachers would carry if the option were available. Being from a family of teachers and knowing quite a few of them, I'd say that your average teacher is much less likely to carry than the general population. For the sake of argument though, let's assume that they would carry at basically the same rate as the general population:

In 2011 the GAO estimated around 8 million CHL's in the US. We'll round up to 10 million. With a US population of 310 million, that means that about 3.2% of the population holds a CHL. Generally, the discussions I see/hear on the topic conclude that well under 50% of CHL holders actually carry on a regular basis, but for the sake of argument let assume that they all carry regularly.

So, in an average sized school with 50 staff members, at a carry rate of 3.2%, you can expect perhaps 1 or 2 people to be carrying. Bear in mind also that if they're teachers, their responsibility is to stay in their classroom with their students, so their CHL only helps if the shooter actually comes to their classroom.

Bottom line, allowing teachers to carry would be unlikely to actually stop a school shooting.
 
I guess nothing will work involving guards or armed teachers, at least according to you Merad. I guess will just have to outlaw law abiding people from having guns and get brave people like you who will volunteer to act as human shields and block bullets or try and wrestle down the shooters, knifers, axe wielding maniac or whatever attacks.
 
I guess nothing will work involving guards or armed teachers, at least according to you Merad. I guess will just have to outlaw law abiding people from having guns and get brave people like you who will volunteer to act as human shields and block bullets or try and wrestle down the shooters, knifers, axe wielding maniac or whatever attacks.
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Um, sure?

I've already explained why I don't think teachers will be armed even if they're allowed to be. Guards could work but you'd need a minimum of 2-3 for every school, and that's not financially viable because schools & police depts around the country already have budgets that are stretched to the limit. I'm a from a fairly small (and poor) county, but even we have 10 schools to cover. 2 guards per school, even if they're only minimum wage rent-a-cops, requires the county to come up with an extra 300 grand every year.

If you want to stop school shootings, you need to address the actual problems that cause them. But those are hard topics that no one wants to deal with, so we'll just get more of the same crap that usually boils down to "ban guns" from the left and "more guns" from the right.
 
In 2011 the GAO estimated around 8 million CHL's in the US. We'll round up to 10 million. With a US population of 310 million, that means that about 3.2% of the population holds a CHL. Generally, the discussions I see/hear on the topic conclude that well under 50% of CHL holders actually carry on a regular basis, but for the sake of argument let assume that they all carry regularly.
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There's one major flaw with this argument, it assumes that the entire population, or at least the vast majority of it, could get a CHL if so desired. How many teachers teach in places like Chicago, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Baltimore, or San Francisco where CC is either banned outright, or at the very least made so difficult an onerous that only the very elite few who are wealthy and/or politically connected are able to do so. If these places were shall issue, I suspect that you'd see a significantly larger number of people carrying.
 
I know a number of teachers who are former military, who have carry permits, and who would carry at school if they could.

Remember, too, that janitors and other employees could conceivably be authorized.
 
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