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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
the NRA tells a good story with heros and villains.
it's a story everyone knows; it's in every fucking western ever made. btw ever notice how we made like ten thousand westerns and only one or two easterns?
anyhoo, here it is: owning a gun makes you like clint eastwood, you can put down Bad Guys attacking your home, wife and children.
owning a gun makes you like the Founding Fathers, you can fight for liberty if tyranny comes.
this makes you a Man and a Real American.
furthermore, they're top political organizers registering and listing and contacting their adherents at every chance and stirring up THREATS to their members which hav ea basis in reality; in reality many of us, me included, DO want to take away all the guns, obviously.
it's an emotional world and all the facts, ratiocination and wonky wonky policy talk about death rates, japan, accident rates, Australia buy back plan whatever, none of that is effective in loosening the strong dramatic emotive hold this story has on the NRA member.
own a gun, you're an American pioneer. never know when the red man, the black man, the threat may emerge. and there is a historical basis for this story as in fact in many places American pioneers and colonialists were attacked and were in wars with native americans, bad guys, brits and whatnot.
you want it to change, you got to start telling more stories with simple hero villain storylines that make gun owners feel ashamed, what incredible in all this isn't the NRA success but the liberals' inability to understand it -- it's classic politics. the liberals are so irrational thinking that rational appeals should work, how much fucking evidence do we need to see to learn that they do not?
thus guy being nominated is a threat. nra mobilizes, nra delivers, their members feel their cojones, big time. repeat repeat repeat. too bad the liberals don't even try this, for example, they could initiative an immediate raise to $11 an hour right now just about anywhere and simply DON'T FUCKING DO IT. then they could do it again to 13, then 13 etc. and build their own fucking lists but they JUST DON'T DO IT.
To add to that: My red-state in-laws go to their Podunk town's NRA banquet every month. That's where the NRA's political power comes from, and we need to think about that. Every dang month they get the pro-gun folks together and offer them tangible, entertaining things: cheap food, raffles, door prizes, and social fun. You go, and most of your friends are there. And (it sure seems like) nearly everyone wins a door prize of some sort. And they're pretty cool-- the big one is often a gun, or a giant gas barbecue. Stuff that appeals to the rural NRA members.
And this happens EVERY MONTH as far as I can tell. NRA members are welcome to correct me if I'm wrong on the frequency.
Now here's my point: How often do pro- gun safety folks meet to socialize, get energized, and map out strategy?
Do they have the budget to give out door prizes and hold raffles?
Do they reach out monthly and get members, and friends of members, and others to attend?
How often does the northwest Democratic Party membership meet? How many people attend? How many even care?
See my point? The NRA is a populist juggernaut and there's nothing that even comes close to it on the pro- gun safety side. Nothing.
Fix that and you have a chance at steering the debate.
In my entire life, I'm having a hard time even remembering anyone who fits the description of #2 and #3.
It is true, though, that liberals haven't been getting their gun control utopia because gun owners vote.
Sad but true.
With that kind of product liability protection you can virtually sell any piece of crap you want. It mis-fires? So what! It jams? Tough!
But that is how the NRA likes it....
I only reported that the NRA holds monthly meetings/banquets and the content appeals to their core membership. Winning door prizes is fun. The swag is good.
I can show you my in-laws' house. There's probably at least one NRA-branded knickknack or tool in every room. Flashlights, holsters, mp3 players, you name it. That shit didn't fall from the sky, either.
Note also, CPN, I used neutral terms. Pro-gun. Pro-gun safety. You started with the 'gun nuts' stuff, and calling me delusional.
So you are the one coming off as unhinged and nuts. Care to continue?
the surgeon general is not the head of the ATF.
The fact is that the public health approach IS the compromise position. It WORKS; it's worked on seat belts and cigarettes and a hundred other things. But the gun nuts don't want it to work, even though their rights would not be harmed in any significant way.
Ask any gun nut and he has a dozen vague ideas on how to deal with the problem of gun violence, but these ideas are either lies ("do something about mental illness!' they cry, knowing perfectly well that we spend a hundred billion dollars on mental health issues already) or, in secret, deeply racist (kill all the niggers and the problem goes away"). NO GUN NUT HAS EVER BEEN SERIOUS ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE, EVER.
This is why gun nuts are accessories to murder.
http://www.ruger.com/products/mini14Ranc…
but not this?
http://ultimak.com/gallery/M4-SKirkMaise…
That approach will surely win them over to your side.
So why not acknowledge the reality of the situation? Dumb, obstinate people are the biggest obstacle this planet has to solving our massive backlog of problems.
People who support gun control are the *majority*. The issue is that they're not riled up enough to make a stink over it. I'd hazard a guess that most Americans also didn't give much of a shit about Joycelyn Elders' statement (I'll bet that most never even heard about it), but the nuts went crazy, like they do, so she had to resign.
While I don't believe the NRA to be the devil incarnate or have the "astonishing power" as some claim, they have large sway as a lobby as some other lobbies have with Congress. Indeed, Murthy is a casualty. I disagree with some of the NRA agenda. I do support some restrictions on assault rifles, background checks and safety training. So, I'm not too far from Murthy's position. I do believe firearm deaths a public health issue.
I wasn't referring to your post specifically as delusional, although I've never known of anyone in my life who goes to monthly NRA banquets. I was referring to the collective delusional stereotypes of gun owners on the SLOG. There's a hell of a lot of groupthink arounf here that is sadly, and even willfully, ignorant of reality.
Violent crime has decreased 50% in the United States in the last 20 years and the vast majority of gun crime takes place in certain urban pockets around the country, yet these facts don't seem to matter.
Instead, many of my liberal brethren insist that feel-good bullshit like limiting magazine capacity and banning scary-looking rifles will somehow prevent criminals from committing crime. Then my liberal bretheren are incredulous when they get their asses handed to them at the polls by law-abiding gun owners.
I also might add that being catagorically demonized as baby-murdering slack-jawed psychopaths by the so-called liberal elite isn't actually conducive to a constructive dialog. Such stereotypes make it awfully easy to take a 'fuck you' attitude and dig in one's heels for a lifetime of no-compromise political battles.
to me, it's still a public health crisis until the level of shootings in America puts us closer to the level in Canada or W. Europe, versus the Dominican Republic or Afghanistan.
and I could give a fuck about the assault weapons ban.
Guns are not tools. Guns are weapons.
dude. these are the voters we got. can't change em learn to play the game. why can't liberals tell a fucking dramatic story with heros and villains? WHY?
they don't because they're scared to. you have to turn the gun loving crowd into the monster and the threat, and liberals are afraid to do so, preferring little namby pamby laws like gun checks at gun shows. you need a big law to solve a big problem to provide the level of dramatic threat, the monster, that us, the heros who saved the town and get the girl, have to fight.
iow you can't win I politics without a story of heros and villains or monsters, and if your proposals are always tiny steps toward eventual real change they're just too small to be dramatic at all; and also, they really don't work. passing gun checks at gun shows isn't going to reduce gun violence. banning assault weapons, and limiting gun ownership to the 5% of the public with actual super duper training from military or cops or actual need for guns (marijuana growers who can't use banks, maybe) would do it. full on UK style gun control. Australian style buy backs. something big. THEN you can paint the opponents as the monsters enabling the felonious gun users. it takes fucking balls and liberals used to have 'em -- now they don't. instead, they whine that the voters aren't smart like liberals. they then give up and leave the arena. it's fucking cowardly conduct, you need to propose real gun control and go have that argument and yes it may take 15 years to win it but if you don't argue it you don't win and without proposing real reform you're not even having the argument you want to have!
After all, look how well being crazy has worked out for the Tea Partiers.