Open carry gun law making its way through Texas legislature

Here's a nice place to learn some stuff about the NRA:

Frontline - Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA

 

You're right. My father, grandfather, and most all of my relatives wized up and quit being members and/or giving a f**k about the NRA sometime in the late 80's to early 90's when they morphed from their traditional stance as a sporting, hunting organization into a bunch of La Pierre political gun whores.

Started giving our money to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept instead. Much, much more beneficial use of funds.

 

...except that the whole "live and let live" argument breaks down when someone comes up to you with a gun.

 

It isn't like he was shooting randomly and 32 people happened to be killed. He killed people he was aiming at. If another student got the same result while aiming at him, it wouldn't result in 32 more people getting killed, it would just stop his rampage.

 

I know, but I think it would be pretty rare to actually see some DB open carrying -- you'd see it every once in a while but it wouldn't turn Houston into the WWW.

 

Is this a story after all the stories about how the gun lobby doesn't have power anymore and the tone has changed?

 

I'm right that you are probably completely misinformed? That seems to be because the NRA created the lobbying arm (NRA-ILA) in 1975 as a response to the gun control act. 40 years ago.

 

Talk about misinformed.


"The National Rifle Association unapologetically and unflinchingly supports the right of self-defense and what that means is that our members and our supporters have a right to carry a firearm in any place they have a legal right to be. If that means open carry, we support open carry. If it means concealed carry, it means concealed carry. So unequivocally we support open carry, we've been the leader of open carry efforts across this country, the leader in opposing efforts to curtail the ability to carry firearms, and that's something we're proud of and we do every day for our members."

NRA Chief Lobbyist Chris W. Cox

 

It's also the gold standard for how an industry can take over a grass roots organization and quietly reshape it entirely for their own interests. The NRA today is not remotely interested in the things it was doing when it was a grassroots rights organization for gun owners. Today, it is largely funded by and generally pushes the interests of gun manufacturers. It is essentially the gold standard for how corporations buy government policy.

 

Glad to finally see an opinion of your own instead of a hyperbolic tweet.

 

Yes, but if a quad full of untrained students started firing, while also taking fire, I'm not sure they would be as accurate. With all of the bystanders around adding more lead into the air ins't a good idea.

I was mentioning the untrained guy killing 32 because that was what was brought up in the post I was responding to.

The odds of an untrained guy hitting a gunman who is firing on him aren't very good. Bullets that miss keep going. In a potentially crowded area that's bad. It gets worse the more untrained gunmen's bullets that are being fired.

 

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Very good point. When you have nearly 90% of American supporting universal background check and Congress can't get anything done due to the NRA/Gun Manufacturers, what you stated is very true.

 

In 2004 it was given the option to get the gun liability bill in exchange for the AWB to not sunset. NRA said no thanks.

Article on NRA funding. http://www.factcheck.org/2013/01/do-assault-weapons-sales-pay-nra-salaries Nearly half comes from member donations. If the NRA was just a corporate slave it would have no power.

 

Really? If nearly half is from member, that leave the other half from non-members. I would assume large portion of that is from gun-related manufacturer.

If you have 4M contributing $50 each and 20 corp contributing $5M each, I think it's common sense that the 20 would have the much large voice.

 

The logic fails when the 5 million people can vote. They can also call/write their reps. The NRA grades are not just used by the 5 million paying members.

 

200+ Million can vote. 90%+ are for universal background check. Congress fail to act. Money speak loudly. Individual - yea right.

 

Money is not the NRA's power. The NRA has power because they can directly get you voted out. They are not threatening to cut funding to reps, the threat is you majorly piss off your voters. You know this right? The NRA is not oil and gas, banking or pharm.
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2014&indexType=i

Newton was a blip in a trend of people favoring gun rights.

http://www.people-press.org/2014/12/10/growing-public-support-for-gun-rights/

 

You are much more eloquent than I.

When are you running for office, btw?