Disclaimer: This isn’t a parenting post, per se. Unless, like me, you have kids and are scared for their safety. Then it’s definitely a parenting post.
Here’s the thing: The problem isn’t with people who own guns, or even with people who are in the NRA.
It’s with people who think owning a gun is something to brag about. Or, short of that, people who think, after all the carnage of the past day/month/year/decade/century/HISTORY, the NRA is a cool crew to ride with. These are people whom, indirectly or not, the NRA has patiently and purposefully cultivated and manipulated into seeing no distinction between owning a gun and owning EVERY GUN, between owning a gun for hunting and sport and owning a gun for sex appeal and status and a largely mythical idea of “self-defense.” People who see no distinction between gun control and fascism, between finding a solution and taking away freedom.
I don’t care if you own a gun. I do care if you think the NRA is a noble institution and that being a member is worth boasting about.
Guess what? The NRA doesn’t care about you any more than they care about the victims of the latest massacre. They are just happy that you’re buying the company line and being banner men for their army.
The National Stifle Association doesn’t care about you any more than the imaginary black president who is coming for your guns and your women cares about you. The NRA’s leadership and their agenda is for power and influence and profit and nothing more. Whatever they once were, whatever nobility of purpose they once had and continue to pretend to uphold- defense against tyranny and intelligent apes and boogeymen who want your Blu-Ray collection – is no longer relevant.
Their leadership has become blind to the realities of the dangers of what they’re promoting. No, most gun owners aren’t criminals or killers, but most people who are for stronger gun control have never said that. Unfortunately, the NRA makes it impossible to hear what anyone who opposes them is actually saying by refusing to give an inch, refusing to even consider that there might be a solution that involves stricter gun laws. This close-mindedness and reactionary closing of the ranks is the very attitude that makes people who support the NRA seem like criminals and killers. And that’s where they’ve got you.
They preach that membership in their club is righteous because they’re righteous and their cause is righteous, all the while using their numbers and our fear to maintain the status quo. The reasonable people within the NRA swear that they’re reasonable people but the all-or-nothing stance they’ve been sold and they promote on their leadership’s behalf makes them seem anything but. Only crazy people refuse to compromise; only crazy people refuse to listen to reason. Especially in the face of recent history.
No one is saying we want to take everyone’s guns or eliminate rights or enslave America. We’re just saying let’s consider doing something!
Is it not amazing that after all this insanity we can’t even begin to consider it?
But we can’t. The NRA doesn’t allow room for consideration. The NRA doesn’t allow room for rationality. Rationality leads to slightly fewer guns and slightly stronger laws and slightly less MONEY and slightly less INFLUENCE and that’s all they want. They already have plenty of it. But they want more. And they definitely don’t want less. And their everyday membership is helping them keep what they’ve got and go for more.
They use fear to intimidate and frighten normal, responsible gun owners into digging in against even the most basic, the most obvious laws that might slightly just maybe a little tiny bit prevent the shootings that have become an almost daily occurrence in this country. And they use their money and influence to bully and cajole already corrupt politicians into backing their lobby.
That’s why loudly proclaiming your allegiance to a group that isn’t all bad but certainly has its priorities mixed up is alarming. If you’re standing up and shouting for gun protection over people protection, you’re either brainwashed, shockingly unaware, or potentially very dangerous.
Where is your allegiance? To a lobby that is out for nothing but profit and power? Or to the citizens of this country that are watching innocent people die every day because too many of us buy into bullshit fear-mongering from a group that just wants us buying more of their products – and is succeeding! Every mass shooting sees gun sales spike. If that isn’t a frightening, even almost funny indication that we are misguided at best and completely under the sway of our perverted gun culture, as paid for and proposed by the NRA, at worst, then I don’t know what is.
Most people that are members of the NRA aren’t bad people, but many of them do buy into the us versus them mentality, a mentality completely devoid of nuance because nuance allows doubt and doubt promotes independent thought and that’s the last thing they want. They want us scared, scared of each other and scared of ourselves. It’s the same thing the one-percent want, and the worst politicians want, because it allows for consolidation of power and profit. The sooner we stop lumping ourselves into groups and reciting the same talking points and we start thinking for ourselves and pushing back against the totems at the top of the poles, the better off we’ll all be.
An NRA decal might as well be a Confederate flag. You can pretend it means something reasonable and rational and innocuous, and maybe at one point it did. But times have changed. No matter what it may mean to you, to many, if not most of us, it indicates something far worse.
Symbols change. The world has changed. You can’t ignore the new context or the new connotation that certain symbols and allegiances may carry. A swastika once stood for peace, but there’s not a person alive that remembers that.
Whatever your NRA membership once stood for is long gone. Now all it stands for is senseless death and callous, inhuman inflexibility.
Whether you own guns or not, is that really what you want to promote?
I am a gun owner and received a free NRA membership with my last handgun purchase. I signed up and was not only disappointed in their tone and stance on issues, but it actually disgusted me. When I received a call asking me to extend my membership, which I declined. When asked why, I stated much of what you wrote, including their alarmist attitude, fearmongering, and extreme stances. She had no response.
I can be a responsible gun owner and not buy in to the NRA’s absurd priorities. Unfortunately, imo the most visible gun owners seem to identify so strongly with their weapons that it seems to cloud their judgement.
I’m a proud gun owner, we have several guns in our home, loaded and accessible. We have never been NRA members, just because what’s the point?
My kids know how to handle a gun and they shoot them often.My kids are badasses that can shoot a deer from 300+ yards and kill it in one shot. <—– and that I will brag about.
Our guns don't harm people, they do kill animals we eat and yes, I'm very proud of that.
So whatever the NRA stands for or doesn't, I know I live in a state where EVERYONE owns a gun, most members of the NRA, and the death rate by guns in 2012 was 12, YES!! only 12.
How much do you actually know about the NRA-ILA? Or the NRA? Or those of us who are not ashamed to let you know that we are gun owners?
I own an AR-15. A couple of then actually. Like any other rifle or caliber, from trapdoor Springfields, to bolt action 30-06 rifles, when a cartridge or firearm adopted by the military makes it into the market, people don’t buy them because they’re “cool”. They buy them because there are literally millions of people trained to use them and work on them. There is relatively inexpensive ammunition available. There are parts and accessories readily available.
Am I supposed to be ashamed that I own one of the most popular rifles in America?
I also am an NRA member. It is the largest firearms safety and training organization in America. Probably in the world. And I’m supposed to be ashamed of that?
I have to be honest with you. I don’t understand why your friend cringes at the thought I might be an NRA member. Without ever meeting me. And I suppose that’s why so many people were taken aback by it. He equated millions of people with murderers. It was a vast sweeping genaralization, and it was insulting.
And I understand what you’re trying to say. You don’t hate gun owners. You just hate gun owners who are out of the closet. The uppity ones.
I have to say, there doesn’t appear anyone vocal on either side of the issue that is willing to (or perhaps able to) have a rational discussion on the topic. Unfortunate it has become a standard in our culture to be more engaged to prove we are right than to have a rational discussion to find a solution.
Instead the goals seems to be to find someone or some group to become the scapegoat of our outrage in order to feed an politically inspired anger. It is a very effective way to summarily dismiss the opposition’s point of view so we don’t have to consider it.
If you’re not part of the solution there is gain to be had in prolonging the problem.
Compromise. It’s a recurring theme…almost a mantra…among the anti-gun crowd. I don’t believe you really understand what the word means. To compromise means that two parties in opposition to each other both agree to concessions. It’s a give and take. The pro-gun side is always asked to compromise, and we’ve been doing so for close to a century. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of laws restricting gun ownership have been passed since 1911.
What exactly have the anti-liberty minded folks conceded to? Nothing. Not a single goddamn thing.
So, no….no more compromising with you people. And this is coming from someone who will never give a single dime to the NRA.
Also, your comparison of the NRA logo to the Confederate flag or Nazi swastika is ridiculous. Absolutely fucking ridiculous. Typical whitebread racebaiting bullshit statement, designed to mislead and inflame minorities, and make them equate the NRA with a racist organization. Go fuck yourself, with that statement.
And to quote a friend of mine: “A swastika once stood for peace, but there’s not a person alive that remembers that”
^Tell that to 1+ billion Indians, the amount of ethnocentrism in that statement is staggering”
I don’t freak out because someone has an NRA sticker on their car/truck whatever because I don’t know what their beliefs are.
I can’t say if they are a good or bad person from that alone.
What I do know is that lobbies work hard to protect themselves and their positions and that it is not always in line with the thinking of all who might support such things.
I am confident in saying that a big part of the problem here is that there is a lack of real conversation on both sides.
I don’t care if you own a gun, I might choose to buy one myself one day.
But I do care about the screaming at each other and the lack of dialogue and I wonder why more isn’t being done.
I wonder why we aren’t doing more with tech to try and cut down on some of these problems and ask people to answer why there are so many shootings here in the US.
Sure responsible gun owners are getting hammered by some of the bad press and some of that is unfair, but so is being executed on camera or shot for watching a movie.
So the question is what are we going to do about it? How are we going to try to fix the problem?
Don’t tell me it is because of a liberal media or that the press hates guns. The NRA has ample money to buy air time and to run a PR campaign.
There are other ways to get the message across too.
I don’t believe that being a member of the NRA makes you bad any more than I think being a white male makes you bad.
I judge you on your actions but sometimes you have to take that extra step to help move things along and this might be one of them.
I write a regular column for a major website on the shooting sports, and there is so much ridiculousness found in both the original article about being scared of someone displaying the NRA sticker as well as this follow up piece. Im not even sure where to start dissecting all of it. So for now, i will leave it at this. Just about every single point or issue Carter or you raised is absurd on its face and is constructed of decades of misinformation, Anti Gun, Anti Self Defense propaganda and out right LIES created by Anti Gun Groups and dutifully regurgitated as etched in stone fact by the Main Stream Media. Here is just ONE example. The NRA obtains roughly ONE percent of its annual funding from the manufacturers, yet any hardcore Anti will insist till the end of time thats not true, and yet the evidence to prove it is readily available. In a recent UN Report, the US ranked 111th in World for violent crime per capita, far, far below many other Countries with total or near total gun bans. Mass Shootings are NOT increasing, nor are they an “epidemic” according to the FBI. Further, the FBI/DOJ annual Uniform Crime Reports show that gun violence is at near fifty year LOWS, having dropped a full 49% since its peak in 1993, while gun ownership and concealed and open carry has exploded across the Country. Now, about the numbers. There are roughly 30k deaths every year that are somehow related to firearms. Approx 19 to 20 thousand of them are suicides. I have yet to hear a single gun control supporter explain logically why that is the business of ANYONE other than the person involved and their immediate family OR why 100’s of MILLIONS of Citizens should have their rights curtailed as a result. That leaves us with roughly 10k or so gun deaths per year. Again, according to the FBI’s own reports, violent criminals, engaged in criminal acts with or against other criminals are responsible for 80 percent of those 10k or so shootings. Now we are left with the lawful shootings by police or citizens in self defense. In short , THERE IS NO EPIDEMIC PERIOD !! In a population of 317 million people, with over 100 million guns in circulation, your talking about .00027 percent annually and describing it as if its something happening literally every second of.every day or every week of every month. Less than one percent of all guns and gun owners will EVER be involved in some sort of criminal activity or act,.yet Anti Gunners would have people believe there is a daily slaughter taking place. Its absurd. Everytown For Gun Safety, who was caught last Spring inflating the numbers of “school shootings” by counting ANY shooting, regardless of reason, that took place within a few blocks of a school, or had NOTHING to do with school activity, like a drug deal on the playground at 3AM on a Saturday. Now,.they just recently announced the FBI definition of a “mass shooting ” isnt good enough for them and they have unilaterally decided.to.change the definition to any shooting involving two.or more.people !! And THIS is why there can be NO ” compromise” when the Gun Control and Gun Ban Groups and their followers, as well as the media that eagerly spreads their nonsense starts telling the truth and being HONEST , then MAYBE we could start having a conversation, but not a moment before that. NRA Life Member, as are my kids, and damn proud of it and will NEVER be shamed for it .
The NRA has saved more lives than any anti-gun group. They have defined the worldwide gold standard for training. They certify most instructors. Most military and police in the US train using NRA standards and instructors.
So, here is the elephant in the room: We don’t have a gun problem or a mental health driven murder problem…
Blacks account for 14% of the population but 52.5% of homicides. The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites (US Department of Justice.) The leading group of offenders is young black males by a very large multiple.
The increase in murders are a political fiction. Murder rates have been dropping every year and are about 50% of what they were 40 years ago. They are near all time lows for this country (FBI).
Meanwhile the incidence of concealed carry permit holdings committing gun-related crimes is lower than that for law enforcement officers. Legal gun owners are less likely than others to commit a violent crime.
Until we are able to have a rational discussion about those critical stats, how will we ever be able to discuss effective solutions?
I just don’t judge people by a sticker on their car – I’m just not a bigot like that.
I get to know someone before I form an opinion on them – especially a negative one, perhaps you and your friend should do the same.
If you support an organization that prioritizes money over lives -I will judge you.
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Ha! All of the sudden there are a lot of NRA membership following the page talking gabou all of the good the NRA has done. Tell me, what has the gun lobby, gun -rights advocates or NRA compromised on? While the rest of the country has comprised on the lives and after of their family, even the simplest of regulations gets vehemently opposed by the NRA – for one reason – money. Don’t pull out this NRA saved lives bs (but nice shilling). If they cared about lives, they would be fine with extending background checks or putting regulations on gun shows and private sales in states that don’t have them. Instead, within hours of another mass shooting they send their comment board propaganda army.
When are you people going to figure it out! Every incident put on the front page of media is seed for the next incident! If media would leave it alone or move it to a back burner the crazies would find something else to do their crazy on!
When someone breaks down your door and starts raping your kids, be proud that you were noble enough to forgo owning a tool that could have protected them.
Wallow in your sense of self satisfaction, as well as the blood of your family, knowing that you did not support the NRA, and guns were taken by the government. Of course, the man mutilating your kids has a gun, because he’s a criminal.
As a means of self defense, display your “OUR HOUSE IS A GUN-FREE ZONE” placard in order to convince him to disarm himself.
Meanwhile, my family sleeps well knowing that I care enough to take every precaution to protect them. If your kids ever want to talk to a man, instead of a neutered pacifist, let me know.
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