NRA spat with hunters could spill into politics

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04193/344806.stm

In a spat that could have implications for the presidential campaign, the National Rifle Association has angered a group of opinion makers among America's 50 million hunters and anglers.

The president of the National Rifle Association warned a convention of outdoor writers last month that it should not be seduced by environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, which promise to protect hunting habitat but actually are scheming to ban guns.

"It's pretty hard to hunt without guns," Kayne Robinson, president of the NRA, told the Outdoor Writers Association of America at its annual meeting in Spokane, Wash.

At the convention, the Sierra Club had offered to join forces with hunting groups to protect wildlife habitat, a proposal that generated considerable support. But Robinson said the NRA, which has 4 million members, half of whom are hunters, would never cooperate with the Sierra Club, which he suggested was trying to "hoodwink hunters into voting for gun ban candidates."

Robinson's remarks have prompted an unprecedented rebuke from the Outdoor Writers, a 77-year-old group of newspaper, magazine, radio and TV commentators who for decades have had a somewhat fawning relationship with the NRA. Many are longtime NRA members and contributors to its publications.

[Langis]

1. What is the NRA without hunters?

Just a buch of crazy Cheneys with guns. Oh wait..

[madrchsod]

2. my father in law was a life time

member and a hunter/fisherman all his life-he dropped the nra when they backed the assualt rifle. he said hunters don`t use ak47`s..there won`t be any place to hunt or fish when bush gets done. yet they don`t care, if they want to hunt they will go to a game/hunting club and "hunt" "wild" animals...

[Columbia]

6. Interestingly

The Assault Weapons Ban has nothing to do with AK47's which are automatic weapons that have been regulated since 1934.

[pinniped]

22. Ya, he should have said AK-47 clone.

But if it looks like an AK-47 people will continue to say AK-47 regardless of whether it functions as a MG or not.

You really can't fault regular people for not knowing the difference. At times even the SKS qualifies as an AK-47 on the nightly news.

BTW- Dealers used to sell semiauto Polytechs marked AK-47S until import was banned under elder puke * in 1989. So technically there are semiauto only AK-47s.

[Swamp Rat]

7. Amen!

It's one thing to own a varmint gun, but it's something else to own an assault rifle. How the HELL folks think they can fight off a platoon let alone entire military with an AK is beyond me. Anyway, Gandhi has proven that non-violent strikes is the better alternative.

[Jack_DeLeon]

9. Depends...

Both violence and non-violence have thier places.

The thing to know is when to use one or the other.

Using violence when non-violence is needed is just as wrong as using non-violence when violence is needed.

[Columbia]

10. Gandhi

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."

Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography

[daleo]

11. Another interpretation of the Gandhi quote

A quote advanced to support the armed populace fantasy is from Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of nonviolent resistance to British rule in India. His objective of Indedepence was achieved in 1947. Gandhi wrote in Chapter XXVII, "The Recruiting Campaign," in his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth:

'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

"Arms" in this context were military arms not the personal weapons of private individuals. The context of "depriving of the whole nation of arms" was the refusal of the British to conscript Indians into the British Army during the First World War. Gandhi was an extreme anti-militarist. The statement is odd coming out of him, but he used the circumstance for political purposes to advance the cause of Home Rule and Independence.

http://www.potowmack.org/gandhi.html

[DBoon]

3. The NRA is insane!

So the real agenda of the Sierra Club is to "hoodwink hunters into voting for gun ban candidates."? What a bunch of absolute lunatics.

[PragMantisT]

4. What? Half of the NRA are hunters?

What are the other half? Sociopaths who want to kill anyone who cuts them of in traffic?

Fuck the NRA! The 2nd amendment was gutted in 1958 when switchblades were outlawed.

[booley]

5. Apparently the NRA never heard of a magazine called BOWhunting

or considered that just becuase conservative orgs cross polinate to get repub canidates in office (even if it hurts the very people supporting these orgs) doesn't mean liberal orgs do the same.

The sierra club is already trying to keep racists from taking over thier group on immigration policy (which the Sierra club has decided is outside thier area) I don't see them wasting time on gun control which also has little to no bearing on protecting the environment.

[Kolesar]

17. The Board of the Sierra Club will revisit the immigration issue in 2005

It was decided last year to put off this issue until after November 2. I know some of the prime activists in the club who were advocating for immigration restrictions, and they are not racists.

[JayS]

8. I have friends that are members of both the NRA and at least...

...one environment group and they thought this was a bad idea also as the "fit" just was not there. Continuing to band together on legislation is cool but the NRA would have little if anything to gain by banding together beyond that.

[0rganism]

12. "It's pretty hard to hunt without guns"...

...yet our primitive ancestors managed to do it for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Maybe it was a bit trickier, but they figured out how to do it: spears, javelins, bows and arrows (and not those nice compound bows with machine-tooled arrows, either), slings and rocks, deadfall traps, herding prey off cliffs. Clever guys, those early homo sapiens sapiens.

Sometimes I wonder if, just maybe, guns haven't made hunting too easy. Is that ever discussed at NRA meetings?

[Jackpine Radical]

23. I'm a lifelong hunter & gun rights advocate & was an NRA member

for a year or 2 back in about 1971. I was also a McGovernite back then (still am, by the way; they don't make 'em like ol' George anymore), so they lost me pretty quickly with their wingnut politics.

[fujiyama]

13. It may be harder to hunt without guns

but it's even harder to hunt, when you have little left to hunt!

More of Bush's terrible environmental policies and we'll destroy the habitats which hunters use.

[quaoar]

14. Just out of curiosity...

Does the NRA do anything to protect hunting habitat? Do they lobby to maintain wilderness areas? Do they get involved in any programs to address the overpopulation of deer? Do they do anything to enhance populations of ducks and geese?

[underpants]

15. Boy, talk about shooting yourself in the foot

Hunters (the ones I know) have always been as concerned about the hunting areas as the environmentalists. Good for them.

The NRA has 4 million members? ONLY 4 million? Geez I thought they were a HUGE organization, at least that is what you would be lead to believe.

[Kolesar]

16. Great quote about the roadless rule & hunting

The NRA wants to make access by car to hunting areas a priority, said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the NRA. He added that Robinson's major complaint about roadless areas is that they limit "mainstream hunter access to valuable hunting land.

"You are talking about people having to hire hunting guides, which is a financial burden, or you are talking about trekking," Arulanandam said. "It would take exceptionally long to hunt, and what about disabled hunters?"

The NRA's insistence on drive-close hunting has, itself, generated considerable heat among outdoor writers. An editorial last month in the Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune said that "most of the legions of people insisting on a driveway right" to hunt "simply have more invested in their beer bellies than their boots."
.............
It is obvious to me that the NRA is nothing but a divisive GOP organization. Their trying to triangulate on the roadless rule is truly pathetic. Their concern for the disabled is heartwarming--not.

[NashVegas]

19. Fuck, Just Give Them a Drive-Through Range

and be done with it.

[DavidMS]

18. bad stregic move

In adition to angering a large group that naturaly agrees with it, the NRA also looses an oppertunity to find common ground with enviromentalists and hunting/habitat perservation groups. Not smart. I alwasy though that even boneheaded conservatives would do smarter things than that.

[lowreed]

20. If the NRA were real hunters

they wouldn't need guns to do their killing.
Real hunters get in there with there bare hands :)

[cosmicone]

21. I was daydreaming of a scenario ....

where the hunting NRA members go after the urban NRA members with rifles and shotguns while the urban members defend themselves with handguns and semiautomatics.

Nothing kills the membership like .... ummmm... guns!

But then ... guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people.

(unless the butt of a gun is used to hit someone on the head hahahaha)

</sarcasm>

[OnionPatch]

24. Black and white again.....

These people are totally incapable of thinking in any way but total black and white!! Ban one type of gun.....zing!!....they're ALL gone now! GOP is a party of people with half their brains. My husband and I have a cabinet full of guns. I'm not the least bit worried that anyone is going to take any of them away. Our natural lands?....that's a different story. They shrink smaller and smaller as we speak.