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These Gun Owners Oppose the NRA’s Efforts to Allow Stalkers and Abusers to Keep Their Weapons

by FannieCrabtree Posted on July 30, 2014

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding its first-ever hearing on domestic violence and guns, in light of several bills that aim to strengthen federal gun restrictions against abusers. Federal law bans felons, people subject to permanent domestic-violence protective orders, and certain people convicted of domestic-violence misdemeanors from owning guns. But it does nothing to keep firearms out of the hands of a wide range of potentially dangerous abusers, including convicted stalkers, dating partners convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors, and people under temporary restraining orders. State laws largely don’t address these categories, either, and according to a Mother Jones analysis, the data suggests that states with fewer measures barring domestic abusers from possessing guns have more gun-related, intimate-partner homicides.

Several Democrat-backed bills that aim to strengthen federal law when it comes to gun ownership and domestic abuse are languishing in Congress, including one introduced in July 2013 by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that would bar convicted stalkers and abusive dating partners from possessing guns. The gun lobby has fought back against Klobuchar’s bill, with the Huffington Post reporting last month that the NRA sent a letter to lawmakers blasting the measure as a backdoor attempt to limit gun ownership. The legislation “manipulates emotionally compelling issues such as ‘domestic violence’ and ‘stalking’ simply to cast as wide a net as possible for federal firearm prohibitions,” the NRA told lawmakers. The powerful pro-gun-rights group has in the past fought to allow domestic violence offenders to possess guns, unless they’re convicted felons.

But not all gun-owners are siding with the NRA to fight these stricter gun controls. “I am a gun owner. I was shot and left for dead by my own gun,” says Christy Martin, a former championship boxer whose ex-husband was sentenced in 2012 to 25 years in prison for attempting to murder her with a firearm. Martin flew to Washington, DC this week to attend Wednesday’s hearing, at the invitation of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “I consider myself a physically fit, somewhat strong woman, mentally strong, emotionally strong, but it didn’t matter,” she says, noting that her ex-husband had a history of stalking behavior prior to the attack, and that she’d like to “close up some of those loopholes for stalkers.”

Elvin Daniel is a gun-owner and self-described NRA member who is testifying at the hearing in support of efforts to curb gun ownership for stalkers and abusers. He accuses the NRA of employing “a scare tactic” to prevent Klobuchar’s bill from advancing. “I absolutely do not agree with them,” he says. Daniel’s sister, Zina Haughton, was shot and killed by her estranged husband in October 2012. “I know that Senator Klobuchar’s bill will keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people,” he says, “not law-abiding gun owners.”

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These Gun Owners Oppose the NRA’s Efforts to Allow Stalkers and Abusers to Keep Their Weapons

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Watch: Freaked out NRA Scrambles From “Weird and Scary” to “We’re Sorry”

by KennithFregoso Posted on June 4, 2014

Mother Jones

In an extraordinary move last Friday first reported by Mother Jones, the National Rifle Association laid into a group of open-carry gun activists in Texas for acting “downright weird” and “scary”—but less than 24 hours after our report, with the enraged activists cutting up their NRA membership cards, the gun lobby beat a quick retreat, insisting that Friday’s lengthy statement was all just a big “mistake.” What’s going on here? Mother Jones senior editor Mark Follman explains:

For more of Mother Jones’ award-winning investigative reporting on guns in America, see all of our latest coverage here, and our special reports.

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Watch: Freaked out NRA Scrambles From “Weird and Scary” to “We’re Sorry”

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Fearing Rising Backlash, NRA Urges Gun Activists to Stand Down

by PedroFljuqey Posted on June 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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A woman with her 10-month-old twins outside a Home Depot in Texas on Saturday. Andy Jacobsohn/Courtesy Dallas Morning News

The last couple of months have been rough for proponents of open-carry gun laws. No fewer than seven restaurant chains have taken a stand against firearms being brought to their businesses, after activists in Texas conducted provocative demonstrations in which they toted semi-automatic rifles into various eateries. Texas law allows rifles (though not handguns) to be carried on display in public, but some patrons and employees were unnerved and angered by the demonstrations, and a national group advocating for reforms, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, pressured the companies using social-media campaigns. After Mother Jones published videos of the gun activists in action, Sonic and Chili’s Grill & Bar became the latest to officially reject guns on their premises.

There has also been a particularly dark side to the story of the gun activists: As I first reported in mid May, members of Open Carry Texas and their allies have used vicious tactics against people who disagree with them, including bullying and degrading women. Just last week they harassed a Marine veteran, pursuing him through the streets of Fort Worth on Memorial Day.

Evidently the National Rifle Association has come to realize that none of this is good for business. In an extraordinary move on Friday, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action—the organization’s powerful lobbying arm in Washington—issued a lengthy statement seeking to distinguish between “responsible behavior” and “legal mandates.” It told the Texas gun activists in no uncertain terms to stand down.

“As gun owners, whether or not our decisions are dictated by the law, we are still accountable for them,” the statement began. “If we exercise poor judgment, our decisions will have consequences…such as turning an undecided voter into an antigun voter because of causing that person fear or offense.” The NRA praised the “robust gun culture” of Texas—which recently has loosened laws as aggressively as any state—but then laid into those Texans “who have crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”

Recently, demonstrators have been showing up in various public places, including coffee shops and fast food restaurants, openly toting a variety of tactical long guns. Unlicensed open carry of handguns is legal in about half the U.S. states, and it is relatively common and uncontroversial in some places.

Yet while unlicensed open carry of long guns is also typically legal in most places, it is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms.

Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.

The problem has been on the NRA’s radar at least since April. In a roundtable discussion hosted by a Texas podcaster on April 28, Charles Cotton, a long-serving member of the NRA board of directors based in Houston, and Alice Tripp, lobbyist and legislative director for the Texas State Rifle Association (TSRA), squared off with CJ Grisham, the founder and president of Open Carry Texas. Cotton and Tripp, who have both been deeply involved in passing pro-gun laws in Texas for many years, warned Grisham that his group’s demonstrations were causing them major grief with their allies in the capitol.

“We do control a massive number of votes,” Cotton pointed out.

“I’m in the capitol three times a week,” Tripp added. “Every lawmaker’s office I went into today asked me, ‘Can’t you do something to stop the rifle demonstrations?'” One lawmaker told Tripp that he’d gotten a phone call from the Republican mayor of Arlington—the site of several provocative open-carry incidents—who’d been “absolutely incensed.” The demonstrations were seriously harming the overall mission to ease gun laws further, she said.

Grisham, whose group sees its demonstrations as a means to legalizing the open carrying of handguns in Texas, was having none of it. “I would like to vehemently disagree,” he said. He went off about “the two major foes” of his organization, the “ultraliberal gun control bullies” of Moms Demand Action—and gun rights defenders who don’t go far enough. “When you’ve got the TSRA and the NRA basically coming down on us for standing up for our rights, that’s where our problem is,” he said. “Because now you guys are siding with Moms Demand Action.”

“CJ, when you make a statement like, ‘We align ourselves with Moms Who Demand Action,’ or whatever the hell their name is, those are fighting words,” Cotton replied with growing exasperation. “You alienate the people that can get this done.”

He continued: “The New Black Panthers did exactly what you folks are doing. They marched on the convention center during the Republican convention here in Houston with their rifles and shotguns…No arrests were made, but the legislative response was, ‘We’re going to stop this.'” State law was watered down in the next session as a result, Cotton said, freeing local governments to ban the possession of firearms under some circumstances.

“They might not like our methods, but our methods are working,” Grisham told me in a recent conversation with regard to the NRA’s pushback. “We’re out there educating people on the street. We’re showing them firsthand that you can see a gun out on the street or at a restaurant and it’s not going to shoot you. I’m not going to let Open Carry Texas be beholden to anyone that doesn’t get our mission.”

For the NRA, furthering its agenda in state capitols may not be the biggest concern at this point. In light of the recent corporate backlash, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick proposed late last week that the war over gun policy may now be fought more in the crucible of the free market. The battleground has grown to include retailers: An open-carry rally at a Home Depot in suburban Fort Worth on Saturday drew roughly 150 armed citizens as well as some withering criticism, according to the Dallas Morning News. Home Depot, whose owner is deeply conservative, signaled that it was fine with the demonstration.

But other corporations are growing nervous and moving proactively to prevent gun activists from putting their brands in the crosshairs, says Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action. A large restaurant chain and a major retailer, she told me, “have reached out to us to discuss what policies they could put in place to keep gun extremists out of their businesses.” (She asked that the two companies not be identified due to the sensitivity of the discussions.) “Gun extremists believe that when a company is silent they tacitly support open carry, which clearly isn’t the case.”

It may be that a broader cultural shift—or at least a strategic one—is stirring within the gun lobby. In its statement on Friday, the NRA also cracked open the door to so-called “smart guns,” which aim to improve safety through innovative technological features. Historically the NRA has vigorously opposed them as yet another catalyst for dubious government overreach, but now says: “In principle, the idea would seem to have merit, at least in some circumstances.” That pivot comes not long after a businesswoman in California and a gun dealer in Maryland spoke out about harassment and death threats for trying to sell the cutting-edge weapons.

The NRA has also backtracked recently from its long-held stance against laws meant to disarm domestic abusers—a major factor in gun violence against women—by quietly supporting recent such legislation in states including Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The NRA’s ability to wield outsize political control may now be starting to change, too—at least with some of the hardcore base to which it has long catered. On Sunday, Open Carry Texas dismissed the criticism of its tactics: “The NRA has lost its relevance and sided with the gun control extremists and their lapdog media,” the group tweeted, adding, “We don’t fight for rights at the discretion of the NRA.”

For more of Mother Jones’ award-winning coverage of guns in America, see our special reports.

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Fearing Rising Backlash, NRA Urges Gun Activists to Stand Down

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The NRA Meets Its Potent New Foe: Moms

by PrestonSidney Posted on April 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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For years, advocates of stricter gun laws have rallied at the barricades of the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. But this year, as the gun lobby convenes in Indianapolis, there’s a new posse in town. They’re mothers, they’re survivors of gun violence, and some of them are both. And they’re dead set on disarming the NRA of its outsize political power.

They operate as Everytown for Gun Safety, a new organization combining the grassroots group Moms Demand Action, launched after the Sandy Hook Massacre, and Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. At a press conference in a packed downtown hotel conference room on Friday, the group unveiled a forceful new report and political ad.

“We are in Indianapolis to send the NRA leadership a message,” said Shannon Watts, the 43-year-old mother of five who founded Moms Demand Action. Americans can no longer abide by “a Washington lobby run by extremists,” she said.

“Not Your Grandparents’ NRA,” a heavily annotated 21-page report, makes the case that there’s a schism within the nation’s biggest firearms group. “Today’s NRA has remained true to its roots in some important ways,” it begins. “The organization’s gun safety and marksmanship programs remain useful contributions to the shooting sports and to public safety. And it is largely because of these nationwide programs that the organization is well known, and relatively well liked, in much of the country. This is the NRA most American gun owners know and trust.”

“It was painful for me, but it’s been even more difficult for my family,” said shooting survivor Antonius Wriadjaja Everytown for Gun Safety

Then the report presents a stockpile of evidence showing how the NRA’s leadership “puts Americans at risk” by fighting for the interests of gun manufacturing companies under the guise of defending citizens’ constitutional freedoms. The Everytown report documents how the NRA has made it easier for felons to get guns, has fought local gun laws, and even backed an Indiana measure that would have expanded Stand Your Ground to include using lethal force against uniformed police officers. Everytown also calls out the NRA for blocking doctors from discussing the safe gun ownership with their patients, as well as trying to keep military commanders from asking soldiers at risk of suicide about their personal firearms.

The new political ad, which airs in Indianapolis and Washington, DC, through the weekend, uses the pro-gun advocates’ own words to make the case against them. “The presence of a firearm makes us all safer,” intones 30-year-old Antonius Wiriadjaja, reciting the words of NRA figurehead Wayne LaPierre as he pulls up his T-shirt to reveal multiple scars. Wiriadjaja, whom I interviewed in Indianapolis, was shot in the chest in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on July 5, 2013. The intended target was a young pregnant woman who was being hunted by her domestic partner; Wiriadjaja was a bystander caught in crossfire. Others easily could have been hit, he said. Though the woman was not injured, the shooting occurred in broad daylight with children nearby. “There were two little girls and their mother and an elderly man very close to me when it happened.” (The suspected shooter is in custody.)

Wiriadjaja maintains a blog where he details his recovery process with photos. “It was painful for me, but it’s been even more difficult for my family and friends to watch me go through it,” Wiriadjaja told me. “They’re hurting too. I wanted them to understand how I’m healing.”

Getting survivors to tell their stories may be one of Everytown’s most formidable weapons. “I’m a supporter of the Second Amendment, I’m a gun owner, and I’m paralyzed as the result of random gun violence,” Jennifer Longdon said. Her then-fiancé, who was armed at the time, was also gravely injured when someone in another car riddled their car with bullets in 2004. “He was a good guy with a gun,” she said, but it was no help.

Indiana state Rep. Ed Delaney spoke of the legions of responsible gun owners in his state. And he denounced the NRA leadership for using the premise that gun rights are under attack to get legislators to ease restrictions on guns. Just last month, lawmakers here passed a controversial bill allowing guns in school parking lots. “There is no threat to gun ownership in Indiana,” he said, anger rising in his voice.

A few blocks from the Everytown press conference, the NRA was raising the curtain on “spectacular displays” of weaponry from “every major firearm company in the country,” banquets for its million-dollar corporate donors, and red-meat speeches from the likes of Sarah Palin, Oliver North, and Franklin Graham (who blamed Sandy Hook on godlessness).

There are plenty of responsible gun owners among the estimated 70,000 people enjoying the entertainment and weaponry on display in Indianapolis. Polls show that the majority of gun owners also believe in universal background checks for buyers—a policy the NRA leadership continues to vigorously oppose.

Indeed, some striking data from the Pew Research Center shows that the NRA leadership is glaringly at odds with the views of most of its members. (The NRA, of course, has its own data suggesting the exact opposite.) According to Pew’s polling from last year, three-quarters of Americans who live in a household where they or someone else is an NRA member overwhelmingly favor regulating private gun sales and sales at gun shows with background checks. A third of people from NRA households support a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And 28 percent of gun owners believe that the NRA exerts too much influence over the debate about gun laws—as do 44 percent of all women.

If the well-financed and growing Everytown succeeds, those numbers may well rise by the next time the NRA convenes for its annual bash.

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The NRA Meets Its Potent New Foe: Moms

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Fast Food Workers Will Protest Again Today. Here’s What They’re Up Against.

by BaileyD94oaqflt Posted on April 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, New York McDonald’s workers will stage a protest for better pay. It’s the latest effort in what has become a national movement aimed at increasing fast food wages—which average $8.69 an hour—to $15 an hour. The odds are steep, because the restaurant industry is dead set against it. A new report released Thursday details just how much power the restaurant lobby wields in Washington.

The National Restaurant Association (the other NRA), which lobbies on behalf of the $600 billion industry, has been fighting minimum wage hikes, paid sick leave, and food safety rules for decades. But over the course of the slow economic recovery, which has been characterized by a disproportionate increase in low-wage service sector jobs, the NRA sharpened its knives, more than doubling its lobbying force on the Hill. Between 2008 and 2013, the number of NRA lobbyists pushing the industry’s interests in Washington jumped from 15 to 37, according to the report, which was put together by the Alliance for a Just Society (AJS), a network of social justice organizations, and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROCUnited), an organization that pushes for better conditions for food workers.

“The NRA has super-sized its investment in insider influence since 2008,” the report notes.

In addition to the lobbyists working on behalf of the NRA, nine of the association’s biggest members—including McDonald’s, Marriott, Walt Disney, and YUM! Brands—were represented in Washington by another 127 registered lobbyists in 2013, according to the report. That’s up from 56 in 1998.

The NRA, which represents 52,000 member companies, including KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, has spent $2.2 million on lobbying since November 2012, and over $400,000 in campaign contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The industry group has lavished much of its money on Republicans, who are digging their heels in against President Barack Obama’s calls for a federal minimum wage hike from $7.25 to $10.10. So far, in 2014, 73 percent of the NRA’s campaign donations have gone to Republicans. Since 1990, the NRA has given $10.5 million to GOP candidates, and $2.1 million to Dems.

Today, fast food workers in New York will attempt to counter that money with protest signs. And congressional Dems, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), will hold a “Give America a Raise” rally on the Hill.

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Fast Food Workers Will Protest Again Today. Here’s What They’re Up Against.

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NRA attacks “shadowy network” of enviros and zoos fighting to ban lead bullets

by Raisacjayv Posted on August 6, 2013

NRA attacks “shadowy network” of enviros and zoos fighting to ban lead bullets

By Claire Thompson

Shutterstock

In search of the truth.

You might think the NRA would be busy enough fighting its current battles, fending off crazy ideas like expanded background checks for gun sales. But no. The group is now picking a whole new fight, this one against activists who want to ban lead bullets.

Studies have shown that as many as 20 million birds, including endangered California condors, die each year from lead poisoning after ingesting bullet fragments. Ammunition is likely the greatest unregulated source of lead released into the environment, according to a statement [PDF] from scientific experts in lead and environmental health. Some states, notably California, are now weighing regulations to outlaw the use of lead in bullets.

The NRA isn’t going to stand by and let that happen. The group has launched a campaign called Hunt for Truth to fight back against “the assault on traditional lead ammunition” by targeting the groups and individuals — mostly scientists, nonprofits, and government agencies — behind this unconscionable attack on American values.

But the thing is, requiring hunters to use lead-free bullets wouldn’t cause them any great hardship, the Huffington Post reports:

Lead-free bullets are widely available from top manufacturers, and have not been shown to function any differently than bullets containing the highly toxic element.

So this should be a no-brainer — an easy opportunity for the NRA to toss the bird-huggers a bone and get back to its more important mission of keeping guns less regulated than toys. But since when does the NRA cave that easily?

In order to rally its members to oppose the lead regulation, the NRA described a conspiracy theory involving crooked scientists, phony research, and a shadowy network of nonprofits, zoos and government agencies all conspiring to ban hunting.

According to the NRA, an “activist portion of the scientific community” has formed “a highly organized network of like minded researchers with an agenda to ban lead ammunition.” In order to thwart this looming threat, “Hunt for Truth will expose the researchers associated with ‘faulty science’ critical of lead ammunition,” the gun lobby says.

Scientists aren’t the NRA’s only new targets. Nonprofits like the San Diego Zoo and the California Condor Recovery Team are also on the enemies list. The NRA claims these groups “have considerable influence over many legislators and regulators,” which they use to “capture” the regulatory agencies and bureaucrats responsible for lead ammunition restrictions.

Now that’s rich: the NRA — perhaps the nation’s most powerful lobby, commanding mind-boggling subservience from Congress and other lawmakers — accusing nonprofit environmental groups of controlling the legislative process. The San Diego Zoo and the California Condor Recovery Team can only dream of having even the tiniest fraction of the “considerable influence” the NRA wields. But hey, these are people who think we’d all be safer with more guns, not fewer. I can only imagine the kind of paranoia that must go hand-in-hand with that mentality.

Although I am intrigued by the idea of an underground network of shady zoos; sounds spooky. Someone call M. Night Shyamalan. Or Scooby Doo.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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NRA attacks “shadowy network” of enviros and zoos fighting to ban lead bullets

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NRA to Supreme Court: Give Handguns to 18-Year-Olds

by Fredrick Wise Posted on August 6, 2013

Mother Jones

Last week, the National Rifle Association filed a petition with the Supreme Court (PDF) asking it to strike down a ban on the sale of handguns to people who are at least 18 and younger than 21. The NRA, which sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2010 over the age restriction, argues that it denies young adults their Second Amendment right to self-defense by suggesting without sufficient evidence that they are too irresponsible to own handguns.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled last year that the restriction was “consistent with a longstanding tradition of targeting select groups’ ability to access and to use arms for the sake of public safety.” It also acknowledged that Congress found people below the age of 21 to be “relatively immature and that denying them easy access to handguns would deter violent crime” (PDF). The Supreme Court has never considered the restriction since it became law as part of the Gun Control Act on 1968.

The NRA’s petition, filed with two 19-year-olds, questions whether “a nationwide, class-based, categorical ban on meaningful access to the quintessential means to exercise the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense can be reconciled with the Second Amendment, the equal protection guarantee, and this Court’s precedents.” The petition argues that the appeals court’s ruling contradicts the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in DC v. Heller that affirms the right to own a handgun for self-defense, and the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in McDonald v. Chicago that applies the Heller decision to every state.

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who studies Second Amendment cases, predicts that the Supreme Court—if it even decides to hear the case—will uphold the restriction because of its tendency to be deferential to state and federal lawmakers on gun control. The court hasn’t reviewed a gun control case since 2010 and has turned down at least six since 2008. But if the court decides to review the case, the decision may be close because the NRA has a relatively strong argument, Winkler says.

“There’s something compelling about the argument that 18- to 21-year-olds who are able to bear arms in defense of the nation should be able to bear arms in defense of themselves,” Winkler says. “I think, symbolically, there’s a strong case to be made.”

On the other hand, the defense would have a variety of arguments for the law’s public safety merits. Risky behavior, which teenagers engage in more than older people, leads to increased gun accidents and violence. Greater access to guns would likely increase suicide rates among at-risk youth, and people between the ages of 18 and 24 commit the majority of gun homicides.

One complicating factor that may improve the NRA’s case is that the so-called gun-show loophole that Congress failed to close earlier this year already allows people between the ages of 18 and 21 to buy handguns. Federal law prohibits them from buying guns from federally licensed dealers but not from private sellers at gun shows or on the internet. “That strongly undermines the value of the law, and I think helps the NRA,” Winkler says. “Their argument’s made stronger by the fact that you can’t buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer, but you can buy a gun from anyone else.”

Still, Winkler says, “In general I think the idea of keeping people who are too young to use firearms responsibly from getting their hands on guns is a perfectly legitimate government objective.”

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NRA to Supreme Court: Give Handguns to 18-Year-Olds

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Charts: How Foreign Firms Flood America With Guns—and Get Rich Doing It

by 7GrittonMaine146 Posted on April 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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In 1791, America’s founding fathers enacted a constitutional right to bear arms, in part to help citizen militias protect the homeland against foreign invaders. Some 300 years later, foreigners have become some of the Second Amendment’s biggest beneficiaries and shrillest advocates. The vast majority of the millions of guns we import each year—think Beretta, Glock, Taurus, and other name brands—come from countries with far stricter gun control laws than we have in the United States.

Every time another mass shooter unleashes a torrent of bullets in a school or theater, the world puzzles over America’s permissive approach to gun ownership. A story following up on the Sandy Hook massacre in Austria’s largest daily, Krone, noted the apparent link between “lax weapons laws” in the United States and our “high rate of gun killings, compared to other western nations.” But the newspaper didn’t mention how Austrian gun makers profit from and help perpetuate those lax weapons laws. In 2009, a whopping 67 percent of Austria’s gun exports went to the United States. Here’s the breakdown for our top 10 foreign suppliers.

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Charts: How Foreign Firms Flood America With Guns—and Get Rich Doing It

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Welcome to the NRA Wine Club

by trasze2aja Posted on January 17, 2013

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The NRA may or may not be a gun club for whiners, but it does have a wine club. The NRA Wine Club, as it is known, offers “limited collector’s editions NRA wines.” If you sign up, you’ll also get a “Custom NRA Engraved Wine Box.”

Sadly, the NRA does not offer a domestic-beer club. Yet in one sense, marketing alcohol of any kind to hard-core gun owners is a stroke of brilliance: According to a 1997 study in the American Journal of Public Health, owners of semi-automatic weapons are more likely than other gun owners to report binge drinking.

Now if only the NRA could start a tobacco club, it would be primed for a raid by the “jack-booted thugs” in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

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Welcome to the NRA Wine Club

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The lesson to be learned from the politics of gun control

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 14, 2012

The lesson to be learned from the politics of gun control

By Philip Bump

askjoanne

Newtown, Conn., from a distance.

What’s amazing about the tragedy in Connecticut today is how little we do to prevent things like it from occurring. The American people, the putative leaders of a democratically elected government, see shooting after shooting play out — in movie theaters, shopping malls, elementary schools — and get saddened or outraged until our emotions dissipate. This is why opponents of gun control insist that the time is never right to discuss gun violence. When we’re angry, when our passion is tangible, literally can be tasted on our tongues, the condescending demand is to wait. To calm down. Let that anger dissipate, so nothing is done. Fury is a powerful motivator but a fleeting one. And once it fades, those who righteously or cynically want to continue America’s gun culture exhale and move forward.

The bias among elected officials is toward two things: inertia and capitalism, to do nothing unless money is at stake. Doing something carries risk; changing the status quo means that some people will be forced to change their behavior. This is why it’s much easier to pass legislation affecting the poor and dispossessed — they have less power to exercise. What tips that balance is when politicians see a coming surge of opposition or have a groundswell of support they can leverage. Popular movements of those outside the established power structure are rare because they are hard and they are incremental and they are easily defused or redirected.

The most recent popular movement seeking to upend the entrenched power structure was Occupy Wall Street. It surged forward, but fell apart for a variety of reasons: the onset of winter, a lack of direction, and the progressive obsession on derived consensus. It also fell apart because the powerful sapped the rage of the protestors, redirected it for other purposes or flowed with it to build credentials. In the end, all that was left were the endlessly furious, the mad. Occupy was the closest we’ve come to reshaping a more egalitarian society, and it didn’t come close at all.

Earlier today, a kid walked into a school where his mother taught and shot 20 children to death. Standing in a classroom, with desks that came up to his knees or maybe on a brightly colored mat that displayed the letters of the alphabet, this kid still in his 20s aimed a gun at small children and shot them dead. Imagine that scene. Stop and think about what that looked like. The children’s drawings on the wall. The cartoonish, oversized lettering of the teacher on laminated posters. Think about being one of the last children to die.

What happened today was as bad a scenario as can be imagined in a country where gun laws are so lax as to be a punchline. And think about what was happening today among those whose careers or income are predicated on ensuring that those laws are kept lax, places like the NRA. At the NRA today, they had a conversation about how to counteract the predictable push for new regulation. Maybe the NRA even had to cancel another round of focus groups it had scheduled, part of an expensive, long-term effort to generate phrases like “it’s too early to politicize this” or “if more people carried guns, we’d be safer” — phrases that have resulted in looser gun control after tragedies, not stricter. Think about the institutionality of America’s gun culture, written into the Constitution under some interpretations and fueling millions of dollars a year in gun sales to perpetuate a particular impression of self-importance. This is the political and economic force working to dissipate and co-opt America’s fury.

After more than 200 years and countless mass shootings, we as a self-governing people have weaker restrictions on gun ownership than even two decades ago. The rigid political wall presented by advocates of laissez-faire murder is undented. And in a week, the fury over it will almost certainly have faded again, as it has four times before during Obama’s first term alone — even after this unspeakably horrible day.

I mourn deeply for those killed today, both the children and the adults the town of Newtown hired to teach and protect them.

But consider this: On any other day, my obsession would be on climate change, a much different and less immediate threat, with much richer and more powerful interests advocating against action. Climate activists hold out hope that public opinion is shifting in the wake of Sandy, seize on every poll showing that people see a link between storms and global warming.

This morning, multiple children were shot to death in a room likely festooned with holiday decorations and their own tentative attempts to figure out what their handwriting would someday look like. If this horror isn’t enough to spur reasonable limits on gun ownership, why would we ever think that a flooded subway would be enough to halt Exxon?

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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The lesson to be learned from the politics of gun control

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