This is real Baghdad Bob shit right here. Basically, to sum up, the NRA is increasingly dependent on the firearms industry for money, because $14 million has been donated by gun makers over the years. The author even mentions NRA’s revenue is $310 million from membership dues. Do you even math!?!?
But even with that, white men are headed to political extinction, gun ownership is in decline, especially among women, because the General Social Survey says so. NRA is facing stiff competition from Larry Pratt and Dudley Brown, most of its members secretly hate the NRA and disagree with it. Members will probably revolt just like Republicans did against the establishment because they secretly support gun control. Â 3D printing will be the end of the NRA because it will dry up that 14 million a year because it will put all the manufacturers out of business.
Seriously, Sarah Ellison ought to stick to writing about topics she knows about, and should also stay away from math. Last I checked $14 million dollars was 4.5% of NRA’s revenue from individual members. We call that “not really a lot.” Ms. Ellison could also use a lesson in discerning propaganda from gun control groups from actual research.
Ooohh you even get a shout out in the “”article”” ! :-)
Nice Baghdad-Bobbery indeed. Math is hard; let’s go shopping!
That’s funny. I didn’t even notice that. I have to skim over articles pretty quickly to get at the core arguments, and I totally missed that.
If she had stuck to the idea that NRA could be in real trouble because it will get swept up in the GOP civil war, having lashed itself too strongly to conservatism in general, there could have been a really insightful article there.
If the Democratic party wants the support of the NRA, they can take gun bans out of their party platform.
“there could have been a really insightful article there.”
Hey, she did make you “prominent,” didn’t she? Can’t get much more insightful than that! ;-)
Vanity Fair? Isn’t that a magazine for Limousine Liberals?
So what’s really going on is with that story is nothing more than ruling class liberals trying to convince themselves that the mean ‘ol NRA is a fake bogeyman.
Of course that same kind of myopia is why the Democratic Party today holds less elective offices than at anytime since the 1920’s. And why the cosmopolitan class didn’t see a Brexit victory.
Baghdad Bob indeed!
Prominent! Wow, vanity fair. I would say that you’re moving toward the target when you get on their radar.
So, the NRA “leadership is ferocious” and we’re fudds. Um, backwards day again.
Markie Marxist sez: “Yeah! Yeah! My understanding is that most of the NRA membership has already switched over to the American Hunters and Shooters Association, because they support sensible gun control:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Hunters_and_Shooters_Association
See! See! We’ve beaten the NRA! Ha! Ha! All your NRA are belong to us!”
When people say “members secretly hate the NRA and disagree with it”, the implication is that such members want to ban all guns and only ensure that muskets can be legal, but probably only on Wednesday afternoons, during Winter Solstice, or something like that.
But how many NRA members (and would-be members) fit this description because the NRA won’t support the legalization of machine guns, and the NRA occasionally supports (and is probably a little too eager to support) compromise bills?
I don’t wanna give them the ad revenue from clicking.
Is that $14m actually “donations”, or is it “round up for NRA” individual donations curated by companies?
Last time I saw someone try that tack they were confusing individual round-up donations with “corporate donations” because the companies were doing the collection and forwarding.
But they glossed over “every actual dime came from individual voluntary donations”.
“There is no mollifying the gun lobby, in part because the N.R.A. can’t afford to be seen as soft. Referring to the N.R.A., one Democratic senator told me, “It’s my way or the highway every fucking time.â€
That’s correct.
When a law abiding citizen can be sent to prison for sleeping in a federal park with a legally owned firearm whilst doing no harm; when the NYPD tells its subjects who hold permits that they can’t leave the city to use an outdoor range -where no NYC range allows firing from a holster or holds any decent training classes- unless you want your permit revoked; where the law-abiding gun owner can be tripped up on the most nonsensical technicalities, arrested, have to pay for a legal defense (if you can), lose your job or have your business suffer and have friends and family stare at you as if you were a real criminal, then yes, *every fucking time*.
You can go suck a bag of exploding dicks every fucking time when a organization like the NRA or SAF makes a demand.
Every time I write a check or drop my CC info over the phone, I’m telling you to suck on a 32oz frothy brown santorum* milkshake. If it goes down easier with ice, knock yourself out.
Every time this week I am told that “Due process is killing us” -especially by constitutional “law professors”, they can all sit on a sybian covered in rusty nails and discarded chainsaw blades. Same goes for the author of the article.
Nick
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_%22santorum%22_neologism
10/10; would rant with
But that doesn’t fit the narrative!
Seriously, they also love to argue that NRA members- who by the way make a decision to pay dues every year- don’t agree with the leadership:
Then why do they continue to support the NRA? Because they DO know what the NRA stands for, and they DO support it.
And yes as Sigivald noted, some of that $14 million is the result of donations from gun purchases my rounding up sales. So its not even the manufactures actually giving them money, but the customers giving extra because of the NRA.
A lot of that article is wish casting- just because a few members or former members are going against the NRA doesn’t mean they all will. In fact, I feel like on gun rights the NRA membership is really pretty unified.
But like you said, Trump and other non-gun rights issues do have the potential to fracture it.
“Then why do they continue to support the NRA?”
I know I’m not supposed to say this out loud in public, but there are a lot of gun clubs that require NRA membership as a condition for membership; and most shooters in suburban and urban areas will go along with that just to have a place to shoot. And those are the areas where club memberships will be large.
Now probably the majority of the members of those clubs support the policy. But, I have one data point that showed the percentage of members who did not support that policy was significant. I will not report that in public.
As someone generally to the right of the NRA on gun issues, my guess is that most coerced NRA members are coming from that angle, rather than from the left, “moderate gun owner” side. But I also believe there is an increasing number of NRA members who are dissident to it becoming a conservative rather than a gun rights organization, and elevating loons like Ted Nugent to prominence. We would prefer not to have that associated with our names.
Right, but again, they don’t have to go to those ranges, and they could choose another range without that requirement.
I’m sure there is a percentage that supports UBCs and other moderate gun control, just like there are some that completely oppose background checks all together. NRA members aren’t monolithic. But I tend to believe the moderate gun control supporters are a small minority, otherwise I think we’d here a LOT more from them.
I definitely agree with your last point. Lots of members are worried about it becoming a conservative organization instead of a gun rights only organization. That’s a much larger danger than members who support gun control.
“they could choose another range without that requirement.”
Depending on where you live, that can be easier said than done.
I have a friend who, while a long-time gun owner, has only recently come to shooting as a hobby and pastime, and he has been weighing those tradeoffs. The last I knew he had chosen to continue going to commercial ranges rather than join a club that required NRA membership. But that was less ideological than it might sound. He has nothing against the NRA, but also has no great belief in its value and virtue, the way most of us did in the Old Days.
We’re not dealing with a rational opponent.
The anti’s are relying on emotion and slogans to convert enough non gun owners to pass laws.
Reality is fine when there’s a rational discussion. On a positive note, I am seeing a slight but noticeable shift to rational thought on some of the left.
But its not enough and this fight remains one of soundbites, slogans and emotion.
“DON’T INTERRUPT THE ENEMY WHEN HES MAKING A MISTAKE.”
We WANT them to hold absurd, incorrect baseless beliefs. it helps us.
“We WANT them to hold absurd, incorrect baseless beliefs. it helps us.”
Only if the masses, who seldom pay attention or care, don’t start believing them. All it takes is repeating them often enough.
Look what the German Nazis accomplished politically with absurd, baseless beliefs.
If the masses believe it too, so much the better. It only reinforces that which causes them to ease off their pressure, and no longer get involved.