Gun Control

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A high school classmate had an interesting suggestion.

Any chance we could infiltrate and take over the NRA? We could pretend we share their overarching concerns, and then use the organization for our own purposes. You know… the way the NRA did with our government?

Really- I just looked and they only claim 5 million members… at $35/max (discounts for kids and seniors- and we could probably get a LOT of students to sign up right now) it would probably cost around 130 million dollars to take them over and turn them into a gun safety research institute? It may well be the cheapest way to fix this.

I’m not sure how the rules of the organization work, and I’m sure that their membership dues are a slim portion of their money. One commenter on the Facebook thread said

Their money comes from the gun and ammo manufacturing industries. It’s a joke that they claim such a high membership and claim to be protecting gun owners.

and in other news, here is what the NRA is sharing on their Facebook page these days:

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Seems pointless; were the NRA to be neutralized, the NSSF or the NAGR or the 2AF or the GOA or another gun rights group would just take over the lobbying money and continue the same task.

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I doubt it would work. The NRA is a lobby, pure and simple. (Why anyone pays money to be a “member” of a lobbying organization is beyond me. Clearly the organization doesn’t pay any attention to their own members, who generally support background checks, if I remember correctly).

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I like the idea, and sometimes caucus as a Republican when I live in red states for that reason. But I think I agree with @kxkvi - does their membership even matter?

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Well, that is what I was wondering. It would all depend on the rules of the organization. It could be an inexpensive way to steer gun control reform if the members do have any power.

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I’ve also wondered. Maybe I’ll ask my father in law. He’s a firearms instructor, and has their certification.

I wonder if you can vote if you don’t go to meetings. My husband and I do own guns, but going into gun spaces, even a lot of ranges, is profoundly uncomfortable. It’s like being in a locker room where there are naked people just hanging out, naked, to make conversation (as opposed to changing and showering, etc).

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i don’t know anything about how they work, but members must get to vote and have some power, right? typically members get to vote on board members and the like…

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Spoiler alert: 97% want reasonable gun control, across all political, ethnic, age, gender, etc. demographics.

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Well. Depending on your definition of “reasonable gun control.”

97% want background checks for firearm purchases.

I would argue that that is an essential part of reasonable gun control, but insufficient to deserve such a label in and of itself.

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Okay, so upthread @ChickieD mentioned there are supposed to be ~5 million NRA members.

Assuming ~330 million Americans, that means the NRA is 1.5% of the population.

Which doesn’t contradict the 97% cited. But it helped me put things in perspective.

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Good point.

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My father was a “Lifetime Member” back from when the NRA may have stood for hunter’s rights. I know by mid eighties he was done with the organization. I remember the magazines in the bathroom and always thought the “I had a Gun and Saved my Family” stories always over the top. But the whole, “You won’t hear these stories from the media” was already apparent back then.

When pops passed, I let my share of the family arsenal (4 shotguns, a few rifles, the Frontier Colts and some other hand guns) go to my eldest brother (neither of my other siblings wanted any) because I didn’t want the responsibility of owning a gun. I wasn’t living in a great place then, not that I was burglarized, but place near me were and I did not want to worry about securing a gun under those circumstances.

There have been a few times I’ve regretted the decision, but usually just momentarily. I enjoy a day at the range. The smell, the blue haze in the air, the satisfaction of hitting the bullseye, but I also don’t have to worry about the security of the guns when they are not in my posession. That was one of the “perks” of my army service: fun guns (yes, I said GUN) to play with and then they went back under lock and key. Even then I remember several instances when a few rifles and even an M-60 went “missing” from Fort Hood in the late 90s.

I’ll never be one for complete disarmament of the populous (I grew up knowing too many families that fed themselves hunting) but - damn - the AR-15 and its ilk are designed for mass casualties. Full stop.

You need something for “Home Protection”? Shotgun
You “have” to have a CCW? Revolver would be my preference, but sure, pack your glock.
Hunting? Plenty of long arms that don’t have high-capacity magazines.

Yes. The proverbial cat is out of the bag. I have enough tools in my garage and with enough patience, I could construct a semi-automatic rifle. But why the hell do we make it so damn easy to go out and buy one?

I’m ranting now. Pissed off and just plain pissed.

At the end of the day I don’t want a gun in my house. You know the saying, “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

Now I’m going to go back to being a Regency era Space Moose because THAT MAKES SENSE

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I’m about as anti-gun as it gets, but yeah, the hunters are generally not the ones I’m worried about. I’ve known several; most of them go out hunting with the same friends every year, and arrange storage so that the household that stores the guns is not the same household that stores the shells.

The “for protection” types bother me more, even though members of my own family fall into this category. I have some sympathy for them in particular, because they always kept the gun in the same place, out of sight, and because they had survived a war. They also had locks on interior doors strong enough that if someone broke into part of the house, they wouldn’t be able to get to any other parts of the house.

Carrying around a gun just because… no.

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Or was it the taxation. Probably the temerity of suggesting taxes, fees, and insurance given the pain-in-the-ass factor of guns in the US.

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Three shooting survivors on CNN, being more thoughtful and articulate than the White House:

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Ouch. Talk about damning with faint praise.

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Oh, I thought the students were fabulous. It’s Huckabee and Trump who should be ashamed, as per bloody usual.

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Yeah, I figured. I just wanted to point out that “more articulate and insightful than the White House” is a bar cleared, with plenty of room to spare, by the average budgerigar.

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This whole town hall was incredibly beautiful. I wonder what the effect on the conversation will be of not being able to neutralize and silence survivors.

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Thread:

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