NRA and Lobbying

[sailordeac]

The reason the NRA is effective is very simple. They are THE central lobbying arm for their position and their opposite position is lobbied by a series of different groups. Basically, the NRA power is consolidated like the Catholic Church, and gun-control groups are all over the place like the Muslim sects.

I too agree that this is a very good point ELC. Rather sobering to reflect how effective the NRA is, despite the fact that no matter what they say, their only goal is to increase gun sales. The fact that such an organization is necessary is testimony to the fact that the gun ownership mania in the United States can only survive if it is artificially maintained, in this case by well-organized cynical greed, pure and simple.

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

This may have already been discussed and does not really have an effect on any substantive issues, but this is something that just seems like it came out of an unbelievable movie screenplay.

David Keene, the president of the NRA, has a son serving 10 years in prison because when he was 21 he got road rage and fired a shot at a Mercedes on the freeway from his BMW... just missing killing the other driver.

More armed guards on the freeway?

 

[PhDeac]

Keene should be ashamed...that his kid is a bad shot.

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

I've been reading up on this Keene story just because of how cartoonish it seemed and stumbled across this aspect of the story:

David Michael Keene, the prominent national conservative activist’s son charged in a road rage shooting on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, was institutionalized with “severe emotional problems” seven times between the ages of 8 and 13, his mother said Tuesday.

“He’s had a continuing problem with impulse control, and an exaggerated belief that he was in more danger than he was in at times, causing him to respond in a way that was more excessive or out of line with what was going on,” Keene’s mother, Diana Carr, told reporters outside the U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

Carr said the gun was registered in Keene’s name and added that her son and his fiance were on their way to “target practice” at the time of the incident. Current federal state and gun laws prohibit sale and registration of firearms to persons who have been hospitalized with mental problems. A law enforcement source said they are investigating to see if Keene withheld information about his mental history when he purchased the firearm.

The son of the president of the NRA was mentally ill, purchased and registered a gun on his own with his parents knowledge, and almost killed a guy on the freeway in a fit of road rage.

What is the opposite of irony?

 

[PhDeac]

Keene's mom basically described gun culture in the US.

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

Keene's mom basically described gun culture in the US.

A Harvard professor who destroyed the ridiculous self-defense claims of the gun lobby, put it well here:

"How often might you appropriately use a gun in self-defense?" Hemenway asks rhetorically. "Answer: zero to once in a lifetime. How about inappropriately—because you were tired, afraid, or drunk in a confrontational situation? There are lots and lots of chances. When your anger takes over, it’s nice not to have guns lying around."

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

If Aaron Sorkin had penned a fictional screenplay about American gun culture, and had the president of the NRA's son have a history of mental illness and take shots at a Mercedes on a northern Virginia freeway out of his BMW while road raging... it would have been too ridiculous of a premise. People reading his first draft would have been like, seriously?

 

[PhDeac]

Well said. That's the biggest counter to the argument that VT needed more guns on campus.