Stop Saying the NRA is about "Promoting Gun Ownership." It's not.

[TygrBright]

It's about promoting gun sales. And ammo, and accessories.

There are already 300-plus million guns "owned" in America. That mission was achieved long ago.

Judging by their communications, their attempts to promote fear and paranoia, and their insistence that there's no such thing as "too many guns," it's not "ownership" they care about:

It's sales.

Lots and lots and LOTS of sales. For lots of money. To land in the pockets of the top executives, board members, and shareholders of five companies: Ruger, Smith & Wesson, the Freedom Group, Mossberg, and SigSauer. And a constellation of smaller companies and holding companies.

There are already almost nine guns for every ten Americans floating around out there. If "ownership" was all the NRA was in existence to "protect," they'd be the most successful 501(c)(4) in America.

A 501(c)(4) organization, by the way, is a category of nonprofit created in order to enable tax exemption for groups promoting the social welfare and mutual benefit of its membership.

I think it's time for the IRS to review that classification. The NRA does bupkus for the social welfare of its "more than 4 million members" (that's in quotes, BTW, because the organization is remarkably coy about the actual membership numbers. They're perfectly willing to tell you how HUGE they are and how FAST membership is increasing, but try to pin them down to an actual number of dues-paying members and suddenly you're lost in a morass of qualifications, outdated statistics, and obfuscation.)

The NRA is actually a trade and lobbying association serving the interests of the firearms manufacturing industry, maintained by ginning up fear and paranoia and us vs them creepitude in order to build sales and provide their cloak of tax exemption.

It's about sales.

How do you sell more guns?

Scare people.

Tell them they're under siege.

Tell them "their rights will be taken away."

Fill them with jingoistic paranoia and fear of "others" who are coming to do harm to them.

Claim that the government is their enemy and they need to buy more guns to prevent the government from doing horrible things to them.

Scare, scare, scare.

Sell, sell, sell.

bitterly,
Bright

[Warpy]

1. Exactly, I just posted that very thing to an apologist

who used that very line to me.

No, Binky, that organization you're sending your dues to every year is not looking out for you. You exist only as a mark, somebody who can be scared beyond all reason and counted on to keep escalating your firepower in an attempt to feel safe and powerful in an unsafe world where you are powerless against all the real threats.

You want that organization to shape up and start representing the views of the membership, 70% of whom were in favor of gun control before the Sandy Hook massacre, it's time to cut the bastards off. Don't send in those renewal dues. Force a change in leadership from the rank and file instead of a bunch of lobbyists proposed by the gun industry.

Kick them in the wallet until they remember who they're supposed to be representing. And kick them again if they ever start to forget.

[Recursion]

2. The 501(c)(4) comes because it's a mutual insurance scheme

Dues function as premiums to an insurance policy that comes with membership; ranges get their insurance through the NRA too.

[freshwest]

3. Excellent point. It can be said about other 'faux promoters of _____.'

[Toronto]

4. Add to that an increasingly nihilistic younger generation

and a society that values possessions over people and you have a recipe for disaster. Few parents have the time or inclination to explain simple morality to their children, preferring to leave that responsibility to television, movies and the schools. Of course some take their children to church, but unless the morality they hear about in church is reinforced at home, it doesn't make much of an impression. The example of the subway rider pushed onto the tracks with not a single person willing to rescue him is a prime example of the moral decline and selfishness of people today. Add to that sixty or so years of entertainment that glorifies guns and violence and it's not surprising that spree killing is increasingly occurring, particularly when the tools to undertake such an enterprise are just so available. Do the math. Nihilistic, unstable kid with a grudge + guns= death. It's as simple as that.

[riderinthestorm]

7. Wrong! Media has shit all to do with this

"60 or so years of entertainment that glorifies guns and violence"... Like the media hasn't ever sold newsprint with gore before 1950....

Church going has ZERO to do with morality. Demonstrably proven false.

"Nihilism" has been around for 200+/- years!!

The only relatively "new" item is easy accessibility to guns with high mag clips that can kill so many people in such a short amt of time.

[Toronto]

14. It has only been in the last 60 years or so that

people have been able to watch television, play video games etc. Newspapers traditionally have not been sources of entertainment, although more recently pander to the lowest common denominator.


Nihilism as a branch of philosophy has been around for centuries. Nihilistic kids (who wouldn't necessarily even know what nihilism is by the way) but who nevertheless are poster children for the term, are much more recent.

The term “morality” can be used either
1. descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or,
a. some other group, such as a religion, or
b. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or

2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

Religions by definition deal with the concepts of right and wrong and have been the traditional sources of education in what constitutes ethical behavior i.e. the 10 commandments. (I personally don't subscribe to any religion as I find them to be overwhelmingly hypocritical.) However the primary source of that information should be found in the home.


If people were more morally grounded, as opposed to being nihilistic, they would be less inclined to view life as something cheap to be wiped out, (both their own and others) when things are not going their way. They might even find the concept of using guns on other people morally reprehensible. A society of moral people has no need for guns. Instead, in the US, there is a proliferation of guns. Very soon the number of guns will outnumber the population of the country. The NRA's solution for gun violence is more guns - a kind of mutually assured destruction tactic. If that's not a sign of moral decay, I don't know what is.

[NashvilleLefty]

5. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun

is a good guy with a gun.

So buy a gun, today.

so, what is the problem? Aside from the fact that it doesn't work, but it does sell guns........

[NashvilleLefty]

6. wait, doesn't that help the economy?

do i really need this?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

8. And does one validate/reinforce everything the NRA tells it's drones?

Have mass media publicize all sorts of violence, death, and doom/gloom on every channel 24/7 (in spite of FBI stats showing violent crime has been trending down for almost a decade). But hey - blood sells, right? Then, play right into the NRA hands by talking about banning hi-capacity magazines and guns for days on end... just what the NRA overlords warned us about!

The NRA is a bunch of gun-pushing paranoids, true... but if the media and politicians aren't helping the NRA drive their point home to the masses, it's a mother of all coincidences.

[Loudly]

9. This might explain why makers and sellers now have special tort immunity.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[Coyotl]

10. Time to review this too.

[Mr. Mojo Risen]

12. Also time for financial disclosure

Just how much funding does the NRA receive from gun manufacturers?

[rustydog]

11. You are 100% correct. That is why I left the NRA over 20 years ago

all they are is a political arm of gun manufacturers.

[littlemissmartypants]

13. There is nothing new under the sun.

The Shock Doctrine

A documentary adaptation Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine. An investigation of disaster capitalism, based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism -- the rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling from shock -- did not begin with September 11, 2001.

The films traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.

New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, shock and awe warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

[Toronto]

15. Thank you for posting this

I'm certain there are many to need to see it.

[Toronto]

16. Here is another must see video

about the rise of consumerism. Ties in well with the Shock Doctrine.

&feature=endscreen