“The NRA, which believe it or not used to be an organization devoted to promoting gun safety and good marksmanship, has succeeded over the last couple of decades in freighting guns with all kinds of cultural associations, making them one of the most powerful markers of identity in American life. They’ve encouraged people to think that gun ownership makes you self-reliant, independent, masculine, strong, capable, and patriotic — and anyone who thinks that 30,000 Americans killed by guns every year is a problem worth addressing must not be any of those things.” – Paul Waldman, Donald Trump’s corrupt bargain on guns [via washingtonpost.com]
100’s of millions of firearms, trillions of rounds of ammunition. If POtG were a problem, it would be known.
In their perpetual anti-liberty arguments leftists never make any distinction between criminals and law-abiding citizens. I suspect that’s because as leftists, they probably don’t know any law-abiding citizens.
Their leader is facing Indictment so there is some truth in there.
“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
“vowing to make sure guns are brought into as many places by as many people as possible, pouring sneering contempt on city slickers and egghead liberals, painting ludicrously paranoid pictures of America as a post-apocalyptic hellscape of crime and chaos”
Wow, this guy has just about lost his marbles. This kind of rhetoric has not even the slightest pretense of a being sound, reasoned and thoughtful discussion of a thing he disagrees with, this is a full on attack piece. He is making fun of the other side, denigrating and posturing, in the end this amounts to nothing but name calling. This is liberal, elitist dialogue? All I see if childlike neener neener neener here.
“Hillary Clinton will send her jackbooted government thugs to break down their doors and take their guns, leaving them defenseless against the dusky horde of low-lifes lying in wait to kill them and rape their women.”
Anyway, here’s the thing. Let’s just say this guy’s is right, and that the progressives do not plan on doing this. There is ample historical evidence of this literal thing happening in the past to other people – all of it including the rape the women part. So if they aren’t planning this then good on them. But in the end the only way to truly find this out is for the gun grabbers to have their way, and when that happens its too late. I say this is something we don’t need to know the answer to; the second amendment is clear, they cannot do this. So let’s just leave everything as it is, law respecting gun owners will continue to respect the law and no pillaging and raping will occur. That’s a win win for everybody.
And you will note Mr. Waldman, that I didn’t need to call you names or make fun of your argument at all to make mine. If we can be reasonable, then why can’t you?
“This is liberal, elitist dialogue? All I see if childlike neener neener neener here.”
Children often have delusions of superiority, brought about by a distorted/myopic view of the world and their place in it. Children also have no monopoly on childishness. Cosmopolitan folk seem to believe that their greater exposure to more diverse diversions make them immune to ignorance and misplacing of their priorities, and assume rural folks are living a less meaningful life (and therefore should be led).
Well, considering how disingenuous is is to use the “30,000 killed” figure when 19,000 of those killed themselves, I can guarantee that you’re certainly none of those things.
To be fair NRA members do think that 30,000 gun deaths are tragic. 21,000 of those are especially tragic, because those people could no longer bear to go on facing life. How many of those people would have been saved by gun control? How many of those were veterans who could have been helped by the VA?
Genuine concern for the lost would have led Paul Waldman down a different path with his remarks.
Yeah, nevermind two thirds of that thirty thousand are suicides. If this clown is righteous, why tell half truths?
Contrast that with the mistaken faith the police will save you from harm.
It is a strange condition being a leftist; “The police are all racist thugs who abuse authority”…”Only the highly trained police should have guns”… I wonder if they actually can smell the bull being shoveled or are they totally unaware
The NRA is far less FUDD than it used to be (still has more ground to cover, though) and the anti’s detest the NRA with every fiber of their being – all is well.
When they call for repeal of background checks at gun stores–instead of bragging about helping pass it–I’ll start considering them.
Yeah, I’m not their biggest fan, by any stretch…
But, as a Life Member, you can vote for the NRA Board, which is one aspect everyone on here should keep in mind.
If you really want to lose control of your blood pressure have a look at this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/05/21/armed-with-guns-and-constitutions-the-patriot-movement-sees-america-under-threat/
“Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism, said there were about 150 such groups in 2008 and about 1,000 now. Potok and other analysts, including law enforcement officials who track the groups, said their supporters number in the hundreds of thousands, counting people who signal their support in more passive ways, such as following the groups on social media.”
Just posted a blog on it.
Mark Potok, and in particular, the “Southern Poverty Law Center” are laughable joke with no credibility what so ever. Guy is weasel.
A quote from an article on Huffington Post, of all places: “Rather than monitoring hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center has become one.”
I wonder if that article is about SPLC speaking out against BLM or some such.
All this militia fear BS is right our of the 1990s Clinton playbook. This is all just battlespace prep by the Hilabeast.
I didn’t realize that I was old enough to watch history repeat itself within my adult lifetime.
Good luck linking NYC dandy Trump to these guys.
I’m glad the NRA is expanding its influence. Colion Noir Speaking for the NRA drives the racist left crazy. The WoPost would be very happy if “no guns for negros” came true.
Yep-Colion is a good spokesman for the “leaving the plantation” movement. I turned the TV on this morning and I saw black folks selling any security they had for $100 gift cards in Chicago. While pizzing and moaning about the po-leece. They had a violence meter going too…it’s not like they don’t KNOW who the shooters ARE.
Please. No one’s giving up their ‘only’ security at those buybacks, apart from fools who’d never defend themselves anyway. I’m convinced that, like most gun sales, buybacks are used to fund a person’s trade “up” to a different gun, as well as discarding the least useful/valuable items. Might as well get something for it, and convert the extra gun from that favor/trade/job/crime/etc into some fungible cash. To be honest, it’s not like you’d truly need more than a Hi Point and a mag of ammo for bare-bones defense purposes.
It might be a decent way to get rid of a gun that is such a piece of shit, I could not in good conscience sell it to anyone who isn’t the sort of scumbag who’s a prohibited possessor anyway–and of course if I knew that about them, it’d be a felony AND it would suck if the gun actually worked right for them, at the wrong time.
The two guns in my safe that I consider “inoperable” are unfortunately, fairly likely to function–just not likely enough for me.
If it truly is a “no questions asked” scenario, perhaps some slam fire single shot pipe shotguns are in order. Can be made for $20. 80% profit seems like a good margin.
From what I see it IS no questions asked. And while I saw an extremely illegal sawed -off double barreled shottie I also saw some pretty nice looking revolvers(S&W?) and rifles. The semi’s included Hi-point/ Cobra representatives. Hard to tell but one old brown woman was interviewed saying”she had to get rid of this(revolver) so her(criminal?) grandkids didn’t use it”…all the usual suspects including fadda’ Pfleger,Jesse Sr. and da’ mayor- tiny dancer. And they got another one next week…they LOVE raggedy shotguns LOL.
“The NRA, which believe it or not used to be an organization devoted to promoting gun safety and good marksmanship,…”
Waldman, a longtime leftist, never explains to his readers how or why the NRA changed from a focus on marksmanship to including gun rights in his agenda. The answer is that attacks on gun ownership and the Second Amendment began in earnest and the NRA rose to combat them. In other words, if people like Waldman had not attacked gun rights, the NRA would not have focused on gun rights.
The only open question is whether many of Waldman’s readers will critically analyze his words enough to find deeper understanding.
A major part for the NRA’s focus is still on gun safety and marksmanship training.
Indeed. If I could figure out how to support those efforts without enabling more of their not-really-all-that-pro-gun legislative work, I’d do it. (Yes, I know it’s different funds, but putting a dollar “here” frees up some “general fund” money to go “there.”)
Those aspects are still going on. I helped teach a class last month. It’s just the membership demanded more.
My personal opinion is he lacks the courage to blame societys problems where they truly lie and therefore must blame a firearm for what amounts to the vast majority of these deaths. Gangs and suicide are not “gun issues” in most cases but rather societal issues.
Pretty sure to do so would require some ‘icky’ self-examination…
What they don’t understand is that if there wasn’t an all out assault on gun ownership by the left and the mainstream media, the NRA ILA would have no reason to exsist. To have an organization that promotes real gun safety and marksmanship is useless when no one has a gun.
It’s interesting – and a dead giveaway- that lefties always think culture is propaganda. What I mean is, they don’t think gun culture exists independently, that the People of the Gun would see firearms ownership as interconnected with Liberty, self-reliance, and so forth without some external force directing popular opinion. The notion the we ARE the NRA, and that that organization reflects OUR values and not the other way around, isn’t an idea that occurs to them. All this demonstrates what they think of people, and themselves, and politics and culture; people are just dumb animals to be manipulated, and if the animals disagree with you it’s because someone else manipulated them first. They think people are slaves by nature, and by God they want to be whip-crackers.
It’s projection, since their own world is awash in propaganda; advertising most prominently. A world where all is artifice, nothing exists in a vacuum, just a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, mystery wrapped in an enigma, where no one stands for anything and falls for everything (including false/pointless/stupid things to supposedly ‘stand’ for, like marriage licenses or perceived safety, rather than the ability to live a peaceful life unmolested by authority)
Exactly. All these associations they blame the NRA for creating were always present in American culture, is just that only recently has there been any concerted effort to suppress them. America’s gun owners, however, have not allowed that to happen. Since media mouthpieces can’t very well say “millions of ordinary Americans have refused to take our sh*t”, they have to cast the NRA in the role of the monolithic villain.
“They’ve encouraged people to think that gun ownership makes you self-reliant, independent, masculine, strong, capable, and patriotic”
The “masculine” is optional but the rest is pretty unobjectionable. It speaks to how divided America is that the intended audience would see this as pejorative.
More likely, they’re trying to imply that it’s erroneous to link gun ownership to those traits, not that the traits themselves are bad.
Or maybe, even more cleverly, they don’t care which of the two ways you read that sentence; if the reader thinks the traits are bad, they win, if the reader agrees that it’s silly to link gun ownership to some list of good attributes, they win.
“They’ve encouraged people to think that gun ownership makes you self-reliant, independent, masculine, strong, capable, and patriotic”
Not necessarily. It’s just that people who display these characteristics don’t have a problem with guns or people owning them.
Well, actually, I am self-reliant, independent, masculine, strong, capable, and patriotic. And as such, I believe that Paul Waldman is a commie twit who probably needs an instruction booklet to successfully flush his own toilet. So there.
I’ve shown people concrete evidence of the NRA being formed to train freed slaves to defend themselves and their families against Klansmen; photos of Charlton Heston, former president of the organization, marching with civil rights activists in the 60’s; old literature that shows how “devoted to promoting gun safety and good marksmanship” they’ve been this whole time. Many were pleasant surprised, but like almost anything progressives follow, they’re too fuggin’ dense to recognize when something is their own fault. In this case, when gun control schemes appeared in Washington and how the NRA and American gun owners in general reacted, leading to today’s attitudes the progs hate so much. The irony is delicious.
I’m glad the NRA:
Granted black gun clubs NRA status.
Sold ammunition to these clubs at discount prices just like the white clubs.
Sold blacks in the south guns through the US mail when they could not buy a gun in person at a white owned gun store.
Supported Robert f Williams
Supported the Deacons For Defense and Justice
Allowed blacks to use the NRA in door range in Washington DC. The only racially integrated gun range in America at the turn of the 19th century.
Bovine Excrement.
I’m very happy with decision of the NRA
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