It’s one thing for NRA to take a black eye over something like “Can you believe NRA wants to let people buy silencers?” or “NRA wants old ladies to be able to carry guns in church. Church!” But why the fuck does the NRA need to take a black eye over the Manchester Bombing?
Is NRATV a means to spread news about RKBA arms issues, or it is conservative entertainment akin to Fox News? Look, I get if you’re pressured to produce hours and hours of content, it’s hard to only talk about RKBA issues. I share the struggle. But this is getting out of hand.
You can say these people don’t actually speak for NRA all you want in the disclaimers, but the fact is they do. Dana Loesch was speaking for NRA as far the public was concerned long before she had any official sanction.
I don’t expect this will blow up into anything major, since I’m not seeing it spread in the media beyond Salon, but the day NRA suffers a major setback to its core issues because it’s bringing along a lot of ancillary issues with their own baggage that don’t need to be brought along is the day I start joining the malcontents.
Stay
Single
Issue
Focused
Not all NRA members are old, white conservatives…don’t give them a reason to drop.
It’s one thing to say that Dana Loesch or Colion Noir or Ted Nugent (just to give three examples off the top of my head) don’t speak for the NRA when they are speaking on their own, creating videos or having interviews on their own time.
But the moment you slap “NRA TV” on the video, or in the case of Ted, elect him to the Board, it’s *very* hard to justify the claim that they don’t speak for the NRA!
I think the stems from the constant narrative of our opponents of “this type of thing doesn’t happen in Europe/UK”
headdesk.gif
In similar news, I dunno what Trump muslim ban 2.0 has to do with guns, but Gun Owners of America was listed in the opinion as amicus in support of the administration. But then again, GOA never tried to hide their partisan sympathies.
Gun Owners against Abortion has always had a more overtly SoCon bent.
I’ll go you one better and say that Gun Owners of America has always been a Christian Reconstructionist front organization. At one time I was somewhat privy to some of their internal memos and communications, and those always opened and closed with rote “Glory to God” phrases that sounded every bit like Taliban documents praising Allah and The Prophet. Any other resemblance to the Social Conservatism of the Taliban was purely coincidental, I’m sure.
I’ve written before about my own experiences with “infiltration” of organizations on the right by “stealth” Christians; it is looking to me like the NRA has become victim to it.
Do you even know what Christian Reconstructionism is?
Why not have everyone just look it up?
After their first Google, they can narrow it further by looking it up with “Rushdooney,” and “Gary North” (Ron Paul’s staffer and business partner).
From there they can move on to looking up “Henry ‘Huck’ Walther” and who he worked for.
No need for anyone to take my word for it.
Oops, make that “Rushdoony,” as in Rousas John Rushdoony.
I’m not off to a good start if I spell the names wrong, am I?
Here, I’ll help get you started: Read this, and this, and this, on Rushdoony, North, and Christian Reconstructionism, respectively.
Be sure to at least scan the entire articles, as it would be a shame to miss the good parts, like about stoning your children to death, albeit in a biblical way.
Suppressors not like seen on TV and the movies.
And, if you lived near a firing range you would appreciate the muffled sounds of guns firing.
Also, common in Europe (to keep the neighbors happy that live near gun ranges).
I didn’t take it as him meaning that they deserved what happened, but that it’s been a long time in the making.
Two VERY diff things.
I concur. It is entirely reasonable to say that the mentality of defenselessness and bending over backwards to accommodate the enemy is greatly to blame for this attack and others like it. It is also a fact that the types who perpetrate, sponsor, or merely approve of it have been given too little to fear in consequence of it to deter them from being willing to do it, and the only way to prevail against it is to exact that cost upon them until they cease to do so. It is indeed justifiable to be disgusted with the lack of willingness to put an end to it by sufficient measures.
Of course that’s also what I have long said about dealing with the anti gun political complex and socialism/Marxism in this country but it has repeatedly fallen on deaf ears.
“It is also a fact that the types who perpetrate, sponsor, or merely approve of it have been given too little to fear in consequence of it to deter them from being willing to do it…”
OK, tell us what consequences someone prepared to commit suicide for their cause will fear?
The eradication of their genetic blood line for all time………..
Little Boy and Fat Man worked on the last enemies we had that employed suicide attacks.
None. Hence the logic of discouraging bringing in refugees likely to take this tactic.
Several years back, I came to the conclusion that the NRA has become nothing but a rubber stamp for the GOP. IMO, if Bloomberg had run and gotten the Republican nomination for President, the NRA would endorse him. I’ve given up on the organization because of this.
The NRA is about gun rights. Unfortunately, the majority of gun control advocates are liberal democrats. I personally believe that we (gun rights supporters) should specify the ones who are against guns, not liberals or democrats in general. There are many democrats in the NRA as well as other gun rights organizations. We can all work together to keep the second amendment alive and less restricted. I think a lot of liberals and democrats understand that Durbin, Feinstein, Schumer, Bloomberg, Soros, Clinton (pick one), Obama, Shannon Watts, etc. are who they are referring to, not your average home-grown, working class democrat necessarily. They’ve also had quite a bit to say about wishy-washy conservative republicans, who are not strong for gun rights, too.
I should clarify: The NRA-ILA, specifically, is about gun rights. The NRA in general is about gun safety and marksmanship. Both are for promoting the second amendment.
I don’t think it’s that bad yet. But it’s gotten much worse since 2010.
I don’t know that it’s worse, so much as that they have gotten less subtle about it, and make less effort to conceal it.
I’m confused about your message in this post. Are you for guns? Are you against Islamic terrorism? The NRA represents the majority of its members. The leaders see the trend of thought running through the members and jump on board. It’s their job. It’s not their job to state their personal opinion. This video is discussion of the realism of some of what is involved in the “defense of themselves and the state” as you have in the header of your website. To know the enemy, whether foreign or domestic, and to understand what is happening and why, is to know where to stand and how to react. To ignore it or say that it’s not the belief of the majority of Muslims, for instance, as some do, is to be caught off guard when the fat hits the fan. You don’t have to like everything the NRA says or does, but they are the largest and most effective defense of gun rights we have.
No. The NRA’s job is to defend my gun rights. If I wanted to join a general conservative group I’d donate to Heritage Foundation.
In the other thread some commenters were discussing the history of the ’60s and ’70s as compared to today.
In that spirit: Memory may have failed me, but I’ve been an NRA member since the early 1960s, and (for example) I don’t remember the NRA taking a public position on the Vietnam War, even after it became controversial, though “patriotism” and “conservatism” demanded supporting it. Certainly being pro-military the NRA “leaned” toward supporting the war, and dutifully carried relevant stories about Marine snipers and the problems with the early generation M-16s; and individual authors may have made passing comments in their articles, supporting the war; but I don’t remember the NRA taking a position on how the war should be either prosecuted or resolved. 99 percent of their war-related commentary I recall being focused entirely on firearms issues.
I agree with that. I don’t think they should single out any gun rights supporter, regardless of political stance, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I personally think they need to work on that.
“The leaders see the trend of thought running through the members and jump on board.”
So you’re saying the leaders aren’t really the leaders? That they are just mass-men, delivering whatever will appeal to the most people at any given time?
I’m sorry, but that’s not leadership.
You’re right that wouldn’t be, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying if you want to advance the fight for gun rights and you have an organization that has become a force to potentially make that happen, you listen to the majority of your members. If they think they are not being heard because you are focusing on the minority (not saying that’s wrong essentially), they may go somewhere else, and some have. You want numbers and you want gun rights enthusiasm. At the end of the day you have to look past what you don’t agree with as long as it doesn’t subvert the main goal–gun rights. Like I said, I agree that they need to focus more on inclusiveness rather than making it a partisan issue, but we need to call out what those who may happen to be liberal are doing to destroy gun rights.
“If they think they are not being heard because you are focusing on the minority (not saying that’s wrong essentially), they may go somewhere else, and some have.”
But supposedly what everybody attracted to the NRA can agree on is gun rights issues. (To a point of course; we can quibble over minor details like the long-term desirability of federally enforced national reciprocity, etc.) If the NRA starts having opinions about Muslims, abortion, you-name-it-else, they may appeal to a majority, but they also risk offending some minority among people who mostly agree on gun rights, and losing them.
I consider myself to the right of the NRA on gun issues; but if you’ll look elsewhere in these pages you’ll find me branded a leftist for, e.g., thinking Trumpakov is a moron patsy for the Russians; that “leftists” aren’t the only “subversives,” or that Gianforte may have deliberately gotten physical with a reporter because he knew it would help his candidacy. But, none of those issues has a damned thing to do with guns. Yet a majority will always demand conformity with its opinions, on everything.
What do you do when defending gun rights requires joining an ongoing culture war? Do you limit your activism to just the legal aspects? Or do you jump in with both feet?
What if someone is on the other side of those culture wars? Personally, I do t have a dog in a lot of those fights, and in a few cases, where I do I side with the Democrats. How many other people out there are like me?
Seems to me NRA was doing fine when they were more a gun rights group than conservative group.
The NRA channel rarely has videos that get more than a few hundred views, and the NRA hides the subscriber count. No one is watching or paying attention to the NRA TV outlet. Really, I’m more disappointed that the NRA keep dumping money into youtube productions that no one is watching. The show format pretty much stinks and isn’t worth watching at all.
Heck, Colion Noir who once got 100k views per video (a week after release) is only getting 500 views per day on his NRA videos. I can get nearly that many views with a POV IDPA match video from a local match.
“I’m more disappointed that the NRA keep dumping money into youtube productions that no one is watching.”
How do we know the NRA is paying for it, and that it isn’t “donated” by one of the factions that have infiltrated them?
In my earliest days of “activism” I was warned about the tactic, of how certain groups would maneuver you into appearing to align with them, and then count on that once you were identified with them, you’d decide “I have the name, so hell, why not have the game?”
Part of that tactic is, that once you are attacked for an alignment that you never intended, the psychological process of “the enemies of my enemies (the people who are attacking me) must be my friends.”
The people who set you up in the first place, become your new and only friends.
I know who is producing those videos, and trust me, NRA is paying a lot coin for them.
I always thought Colin Noir was more valuable to the movement on his own, though Ack-Mac probably pays better than Google Ads.
“NRA is paying a lot coin for them.”
A long-time complaint that some people bad-mouthing the NRA would make was, that an awful lot of money got routed to friends of “insiders” through “consulting contracts” and over-priced “services.”
I personally never had any knowledge of that, however.
I will say that having once had several friends who were medium-profile NRA employees (old timers would recognize their names) who were personally non-political, but got fired after a turnover of leadership, that factionalism was and presumably is very strong in the organization. And, factionalism always needs to be both enforced and rewarded.