DEAR NSSF MEMBERS AND INDUSTRY ASSOCIATES . . . We at the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute have been deeply shaken and saddened by the horrible events that took place in Newtown last week. There are not many degrees of separation in small communities like Newtown, and so, not surprisingly, we had family, friends and acquaintances that were affected. We are weighed down by their heartbreaking stories and the sorrow that has blanketed our community. Our hearts go out to the families of the victims of this terrible tragedy.

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31 COMMENTS

  1. The NRA has completely shut down both their Facebook page and their “normally very active” Twitter account has gone silent since the 14th. I didn’t see it myself, but I understand that their Facebook was getting pretty heated before they shut it down, including death threats against NRA leadership by name (David Keene), and NRA members in general (“All NRA members should be shot” and “Murder every NRA member”).

    • I am dumbfounded to see Facebook, with everyone’s (assumedly) true name on every post, spawn more vehement and uncivilized outbursts than your typical blog with all its commenter anonymity. It’s an unbelievable population we’re a part of.

      • If this doesn’t fit the definition of a Hate Crime then I don’t know what does.

        I no longer think that it is a stretch to compare those who are pro-2A with those who fought for equal rights. In this case it is our right to keep and bear arms. Just because some people are uncomfortable with that idea doesn’t make it wrong. I think there were more than a few people uncomfortable with the idea of Rosa Parks sitting at the front of the bus.

        The Civil Rights movement was based on the idea that “all men are created equal”. My right to self defense is similarly based on the inalienable rights embodied in “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

        • God just created men, Samuel Colt made them equal. All joking aside, some of the earliest successful principals of the African American Civil Rights Movement were former American soldiers. Not surprisingly, they took up arms to defend themselves and their neighbors against the tyranny of the Southern States and the Ku Klux Klan. Not surprisingly, their efforts have been largely ignored in American History textbooks.

        • Being Pro-gun in almost every country is like being a jew during WW2 or a muslim in a redneck part of town.

    • I like what GOA has on their website:

      They Have Blood on Their Hands

      “A gunman whose name we do not need to memorialize took advantage of our gun control laws to slaughter some 20 children and seven adults in a Newton, Connecticut elementary school.

      In addition to the gunman, blood is on the hands of members of Congress and the Connecticut legislators who voted to ban guns from all schools in Connecticut (and most other states). They are the ones who made it illegal to defend oneself with a gun in a school when that is the only effective way of resisting a gunman.

      What a lethal, false security are the Gun Free Zone laws. All of our mass murders in the last 20 years have occurred in Gun Free Zones. The two people murdered a couple of days earlier in the shopping center in Oregon were also in a Gun Free Zone.

      Hopefully the Connecticut tragedy will be the tipping point after which a rising chorus of Americans will demand elimination of the Gun Free Zone laws that are in fact Criminal Safe Zones.

      One measure of insanity is repeating the same failure time after time hoping that the next time the failure will turn out to be a success. Gun Free Zones are a lethal insanity.

      We must tell our elected officials that they are acting as the criminals’ friends as long as they continue to support legislation that only protects criminals, not decent people.

      Oh, and we must also insist that these criminal friendly elected officials not even try to blame gun owners and our “gun culture” for what a criminal did. Had a few of us been available with guns at the Newton school, most of the victims might still be alive.”

    • “All NRA members should be shot”

      So now the antiguns are going to use “guns” to shoot people who loves guns? That does not make sense at all. Where’s the love? Perhaps they are making death threats with spoons instead…

    • The problem is that pro gun folks have nothing to say in this debate. We’ve tried it your way for decades, and it just isn’t working. But your response to a request to sit down and discuss sane gun policy in the 21st century is to stamp your feet and claim that because a couple of hundred years ago some dudes in funny hats said you should be able to own firearms that should be true forever more, regardless of how powerful and deadly they have become. So the world is just going to pass you by I’m afraid – if you are incapable of debate then you have already lost the argument.

        • Hope springs eternal ralphy – perhaps not everybody here is a reactionary old fat white guy who is too ignorant and set in his ways to see how the world actually is nowadays?

          I know you don’t like to leave your comfort zone of preaching to the sycophantic choir, but others of us choose the harder path.

      • You want us to give up our rights and offer nothing in return. That’s your idea of debate. When your ready to have a serious discussion and not just blood dancing let us know.

        • Go tell the parents of all those dead children that they are worth nothing. You make me sick jwm – go and live in Somalia if you don’t want to be a part of society, see how far your libertarian dream takes you there.

        • You’re the one saying those children are worth nothing hmmmmmer. I don’t need to go to somalia. I have the right to live here as I see fit. You can move on back to gun free England if you wish. The rest of us will stay here and sort things out.

      • I don’t think it is because they have nothing to offer to the debate. There is actually quite a bit that can be discussed, but it is less to do about gun control and more to do with gun free zones, restoring a moral fabric to our society, and providing tools to our educators to deal with existential threats of any type.
        There are many things that our educators need to be able to deal with. Natural disasters, bombs, fire, poisons, and yes active shooters. Having the ability to deal with the threats is critical. Having a plan, even a ballistic one is important and needs to be discussed.

      • How can you even call your decades-long side of the argument fair when compromise doesn’t even exist? I’m sorry, but dangling a right in front of someone’s face that just got further restrictions and saying “At least we’re not abolishing it completely” is not compromise, not in the slightest.

        This is how a real compromise would work in a gun debate:
        A: We want to enact a new assault weapons ban.
        B: We aren’t going along with that. We want national concealed carry permit reciprocity.
        A: All right, we’ll let national permit reciprocity pass if you let the new assault weapons ban pass.
        B: Splendid. We have an accord (firm hand shakes all around)

        It’s a simplified example, but pay close attention to the fact that one side isn’t attempting to eternally screw the other side out of existence. In the real world, the anti-gun side will ceaselessly cut away until there is nothing left and will never give anything back to the pro-gun side. There is no real compromise.

      • You want a compromise? I’ll agree to increased mental health background checks if you remove the 1986 ban of newly manufactured fully automatic weapons and the $200 tax stamp required for NFA items.

        Obviously banning “assault weapons” and extended magazines are non-starters.

      • @hmmmmm
        Hey Adolf Hitler Jr. Shut the hell up!!! You are an ignorant ass fascist control freak, tree hugging dumbass!!
        You apparently do not seem to realize that even without guns this tragedy could have and would have taken place since the murderer would have used gasoline or some other means.
        I suppose you would rather those children have burned to death or been blown up instead!!
        You sir are a calloused cold hearted bastard!!
        Forgive me Lord for my words but this inhuman man needs all of the guidance and help you can give him.

      • Excuse me, why don’t you take a musket ball to the chest then let me know how inferior they were.

        And before you start to tell me how the founding fathers could never have envisioned the devastating weapons of today, I submit to you the Nock or Volley gun. Invented by British engineer James Wilson in 1779, and named after Henry Nock. The gun consisted of seven barrels welded together. It was quite a devastating weapon back in the day. So our founding fathers were well aware of more innovations to come.

        You say our way hasn’t worked for decades. When in reality it is actually your way that isn’t working. You can look to gun free Chicago and New York as prime examples of this. Then there’s the first AWB that statistically did nothing so it was rescinded.

        This last Friday there were two separate events that occurred, one in Connecticut, the other in China that involved 23 children until stopped by teachers and police. One involved a gun the other did not. These were both heinous acts and tragedies of epic proportion, period.

        Hmmm teachers. Israeli teachers have been arming themselves since the 70’s because of outbreaks of violence, but we don’t hear of that happening now over there, just saying.

        One last cold hard fact for you. A young adult male could’ve taken out all those kids and a few adult woman in a few minutes time with the back end of a kitchen spoon.

        A firearm is an inanimate object that will collect rust laying on the ground until someone good or bad picks it up. So why don’t you focus on the real problem. The mental illness’s that drive these people/sub-human animals to do this evil.

        Oh and the world isn’t passing me by, I’ve tooled up. You however just might want to, so you’ll be around for that debate.

      • Same dudes in funny hats that gave you freedom of speech. You give up your freedom of speech and I will consider restricting my 2nd amendment. Yeah, I see you doing that!!

  4. Death threats? There you go… A bunch of psychologically immature kids have found an excuse for “socially acceptable” ways to (want to) kill their fellow men (as Sarah Thompson put it).

  5. Shoot all the NRA members? With what, their mouths? Don’t tell me some are packin,lol. They’ll just have to chill out & let this settle, after they wash their mothers hair of course, Randy

  6. I have met people of all races who have shown surprising amounts of interest in my gun collecting/shooting hobby. One of the first things they almost always ask me with the stone cold face of an interrogator is “Are you an NRA member?” Their faces relax and some even smile when I reveal (shockingly to them) that no, I’m not an NRA member, and only was for a year because my dad signed me up on a whim unbeknownst to me. So many people think the NRA is this cult of baby killing OFWGs with political views so far right they’d make Mussolini blush. In a sense, I guess the NRA brought this outward look upon itself.

    Facebook. I jumped that ship four years ago when I realized it was a waste of time and that everyone of substantial meaning in my life can be reached by phone. I never realized how much of an anomaly I was given my age group ’til now because everyone’s addicted. Since then I’ve gotten in better shape, try to read books every day, and consider myself an amateur scholar on German WWII military history which I love learning about. I feel stronger, smarter, happier, and I will happily never look back.

  8. I never understood the part about “more powerful weapons” today. The British Long Pattern Musket was in use from the early colonial period all the way up to the Civil War. It was .75 caliber. Between you me and the lamppost, I would not want to be hit with a .75 caliber musket ball. All firearms are powerful, then and today; they would lack utility if they were not.

    Interesting post on the Economist by a Brit reporter ssigned to the US. As is typical, he is anti-gun, thinks they are insane, but recognizes that (1) they are not going to be banned and disappear, and (2) gun control restrictions will have little if any effect on crime.

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