NRA GET OFF THE AIR
Jun. 24th, 2014 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogRe: The NRA –
In the interest of passing on information, here’s a few links that supplement my earlier post about how the biggest problem with guns in America isn’t guns but the NRA.
1. Here’s something from The Week that has a good assessment of why yr never going to see gun law reform.
Key passage:
I think he’s being a little sarcastic, but I think that’s true at least of the NRA and its supporters. They don’t think of it that way, of course. But it’s kind of like speed limits. Driving slower saves lives, but no one wants to drive 40mph on the interstate. We’re basically willing to have faster speed limits even if it means 14,000 people killed in high-speed accidents every year. We don’t put it that way. But in reality, that’s what our speed limit policy says.
It’s the same with guns. The price of unlimited access to guns is 11,000 shooting deaths a year. The NRA is perfectly happy with that, even if they’re operating under the delusion that there would be less shootings if everyone carried a gun.
2. Speaking of which, this Marines weapons instructor has a very good list of reasons why that’s probably not nearly as true as ultraconservative NRA members think it is – especially the open-carry dingbats exercising their 2A rights to the point of being dicks. If we’re going to pass any new kind of gun law, I think it should be a legal requirement that anyone who buys a gun has to read this first and take a quiz to prove they read it.
3. One silver lining of the open-carry demonstrations is that the subsequent PR backlash may finally convince the NRA that its ultraconservative all-or-nothing Big Fear hardline is doing more to marginalize gun ownership than to preserve everyone’s 2A rights. It’s already clear that how Wayne LaPierre feels about open-carry and how actual NRA members feel about are two entirely different things. You know you’ve reached a tipping point when even Glenn Beck is saying, “Dudes, yr not helping.”
Of course, Wayne LaPierre has already demonstrated a general lack of good judgment, so the backlash may just play to his weird “Obama-wants-yr-guns” fantasies. But the open-carry embarrassment could convince responsible gun owners to abandon the NRA and form their own group that represents the interests of actual gun owners rather than gun manufacturers. Because that’s pretty much the only interest the NRA serves nowadays.
Ana Marie Cox has a good column about that here. Just one hitch: it’s been tried before. And there’s a reason it hasn’t really worked:
Put that thing away,
This is dF
In the interest of passing on information, here’s a few links that supplement my earlier post about how the biggest problem with guns in America isn’t guns but the NRA.
1. Here’s something from The Week that has a good assessment of why yr never going to see gun law reform.
Key passage:
Look, we've collectively decided, as a country, that the occasional massacre is okay with us. It's the price we're willing to pay for our precious Second Amendment freedoms. We're content to forfeit the lives of a few dozen schoolkids a year as long as we get to keep our guns. The people have spoken, in a cheering civics-class example of democracy in action.
I think he’s being a little sarcastic, but I think that’s true at least of the NRA and its supporters. They don’t think of it that way, of course. But it’s kind of like speed limits. Driving slower saves lives, but no one wants to drive 40mph on the interstate. We’re basically willing to have faster speed limits even if it means 14,000 people killed in high-speed accidents every year. We don’t put it that way. But in reality, that’s what our speed limit policy says.
It’s the same with guns. The price of unlimited access to guns is 11,000 shooting deaths a year. The NRA is perfectly happy with that, even if they’re operating under the delusion that there would be less shootings if everyone carried a gun.
2. Speaking of which, this Marines weapons instructor has a very good list of reasons why that’s probably not nearly as true as ultraconservative NRA members think it is – especially the open-carry dingbats exercising their 2A rights to the point of being dicks. If we’re going to pass any new kind of gun law, I think it should be a legal requirement that anyone who buys a gun has to read this first and take a quiz to prove they read it.
3. One silver lining of the open-carry demonstrations is that the subsequent PR backlash may finally convince the NRA that its ultraconservative all-or-nothing Big Fear hardline is doing more to marginalize gun ownership than to preserve everyone’s 2A rights. It’s already clear that how Wayne LaPierre feels about open-carry and how actual NRA members feel about are two entirely different things. You know you’ve reached a tipping point when even Glenn Beck is saying, “Dudes, yr not helping.”
Of course, Wayne LaPierre has already demonstrated a general lack of good judgment, so the backlash may just play to his weird “Obama-wants-yr-guns” fantasies. But the open-carry embarrassment could convince responsible gun owners to abandon the NRA and form their own group that represents the interests of actual gun owners rather than gun manufacturers. Because that’s pretty much the only interest the NRA serves nowadays.
Ana Marie Cox has a good column about that here. Just one hitch: it’s been tried before. And there’s a reason it hasn’t really worked:
Alas, the journey back to a more moderate gun owners' organization with real power has one enormous, obvious hurdle: the tens of millions of dollars that the gun industry gives the NRA and its carnival barker doomsayers. That money gives the NRA its lobbying muscle, but also the resources to buttress the parallel universe in which gun rights extremists exist: the one where Obama is coming to get your guns ... and you're going to need them.
Put that thing away,
This is dF
