“…economic conditions play an important role in the laws that pass or fail. To Americans, supporting economic growth is paramount in our country; it’s unfortunately even more important than protecting our children or our future.” – Darian Shirazi in Guns And The Small Business Economy [at forbes.com]
Oh joy yet another hoplophobe that is advise of scary guns so he want them all taken away
english, mothereffer, do you speak it?
I don’t usually take pleasure in mocking someone’s appearance, but he looks like a pair of prank shop disguise glasses.
He is, the nose is a different shade.
Nope. The nose is permanent and the glasses are his current choice. His Radius startup publicity photos look just the same.
Eugene Levy ?
They are Groucho glasses
We use to call those “BC” in the military… Very similar to what was issued.. Stands for Birth Control because you’re not getting a date wearing them… The crazy thing is that they’re popular now in some circles… Thankfully not in mine…
The lead singer of a band I was in back in the day had those Birth Control glasses. He had contacts, but he’d wear his glasses whenever we played a show. They didn’t work very well, though — he got more action than anybody I’ve ever seen.
He looks like Squidward from Spongebob.
Little pencil necked libtard geek. Classic. Funny thing is, only firearms can protect him.
I wonder how he’d feel about lowering the national speed limit to 45. After all, it’s for the children.
we should ban abortion, its for the children! see how easy that is?
+1 ericcartman.
i think people should be able to choose to carry, but not be able to choose to kill the innocent.
It’s for the children (TM).
fixed……………………
Since he looks like an urban douchebag hipster, and probably does not own a car, I bet he’d be ok with it.
What a bunch of false choice BS. “supporting small business OR protecting our children”. To these people it is a foregone conclusion that firearms=nothing but innocent death. Rack your brain on the issue all you want kiddo, all you are doing is rationalizing and trying to sell your foregone conclusion, you aren’t actually analyzing anything.
lol hipster liberal, thinking he knows anything about the gun industry. im glad newspapers are dying. i hope poverty and unemployment on all these pussies
OHH i forgot. ITS FOR THE CHILDREN!!!
cant they come up with new arguments?
I agree, hipster liberal turd.
I have a daughter that is a lib. We agree to disagree but fire stuff back forth constantly.
I have a folder on my computer with her name on it.
Inside of that are folders on all of the issues on which we disagree.
Of course, one of those folders is titled: “GUN CONTROL ”
Inside of that folder is one labeled “JUST PLAIN STUPID”
That’s where I filed this Forbes article.
Even she will gag on this one.
Bash the guy for his appearance and politics all you want, but he’s right.
If there weren’t business interests aligned behind protecting gun rights because it was in their financial interests we’d be facing a radically different legislative climate than the one we have now. And this is basically the case with every issue on which legislation could have an impact, simply because getting elected is expensive, politicians want to get rich like everyone else, and they’re going to do what they get paid to do. Do you think politicians give a shit what you think about the 2d Amendment or your rights? They don’t. What they do care about is the fact that if they don’t serve the interests of business, and particularly the interests of businesses aligned with the NRA-ILA or, more accurately as of late, Cerberus Capital, lobbyists will either start funneling money to their opponents in primary elections (if they’re Republicans in a jurisdiction where Republicans are likely to win in the actual election) or will just stop funding them all together (if they’re Republicans in contested or at-risk jurisdictions). And the political machine runs on money — stop the flow and that candidate’s machine stops too.
All of the above is fine and good so long as our interests are aligned with theirs, but when that changes, we’re in deep, deep trouble. The social will to make sweeping policy changes tends to follow the money in any political context; let’s not kid ourselves that the legislative environment on guns is what it is because politicians believe that we’re “right” — it is what it is because there’s money behind it, and the ability to mobilize at least some portion of the electorate.
Yep John Smith, the NRA doesn’t get any power, influence or it’s large lobbying war chest from it’s 5 million dues paying members, it all comes from the gun industries.
It’s obvious.
This last bunch of gun control laws that were defeated wasn’t because of average citizens like myself melting the phone lines telling those”representatives” that we would vote them out office if they voted to those gun laws; it was because those same gun stores and gun makers wouldn’t give them donations.
Wow, it’s obvious, thank you Captain Obvious for pointing out the delusion I was under.
Did you miss the last paragraph, and in particular the last two lines, of my post?
“The social will to make sweeping policy changes tends to follow the money in any political context; let’s not kid ourselves that the legislative environment on guns is what it is because politicians believe that we’re “right” — it is what it is because there’s money behind it, and the ability to mobilize at least some portion of the electorate.”
That said:
4.3M members and $205M in revenue a year matters, sure. But remember this: (i) not all of those 4.3M are one-issue voters, and 4.3M when compared to the 200M+ eligible voters in the U.S. matters, but certainly isn’t definitive of an outcome; and (ii) the NRA spent about $10M in the 2008 elections. The presidential election in 2012 had spending of $2B, and all elections over $6B. $10M in the face of those expenditures is functionally irrelevant.
I think your dick and common sense are functionally irrelevant in your little world.
John, the NRA is probably up to about 5.5 million members/households at this point.
And your logic on spending is flawed. I tend to give to political candidates and parties and not through membership organizations. They know my position on gun control. Just metering the NRA spedinging is only the tip of the iceberg. That would be like metering AIPAC funding and not counting what Jewish Americans give directly to candidate and parties while promoting their interest in the US – Israeli relationship and claiming the AIPAC is the only metric.
And politicians simply know the facts of their constituents feelings better than the anti second amendment nuts do. Gallup late 20111 poll showed 47% of households have guns. That number is surely up to 50% now. Those people feel strongly about their constitutional rights. They want their persons and homes safer and know background checks are meaningless — and worse, a scapegoating and distraction from the actual cause of violent crime: the left and “progressives” letting all those prior arrestees on our streets
It’s at the least a symbiotic relationship, why does the gun industry have any money to lobby those law makers in DC?
Because hundreds of millions of Americans buy their products.
Also do you remember the assault weapon ban of 1994? after it’s passage, the house and the senate for the time first time in decades went to the Republicans primarily, according to Bill Clinton: because of the PEOPLE voting those same democrats out of office.
Let me say that again, the PEOPLE, not the gun makers, voted those treasonous democrats that voted for the ban out of office.
So at this point, it a mutually beneficial relationship, between one issue voters like myself and the power we give to private industry by buying their product, we have increased our gun rights and continue to fight back the gun grabbing statists intent on our enslavement.
So you magically assume the other 100 million gun owners don’t vote or weren’t deeply involved in the issue? I am not an NRA member and I gave my senators hell. There are plenty of gun owners here that are also not NRA members.
John,
The author of the Forbes article is wrong in every. He won’t address, and indeed won’t mention, the central fact that while the number of law abiding gun owners has dramatically increased, that gun crime and gun murder has fallen 40%.
And have you considered applying the same logic as the Forbes author and yours to the ACLU? The ACLU is an actual industry front. Unlike the NRA which has membership contributions as the largest segment of funding, the ACLU gets virtually all its funding from the industry it protects: the crime business, and criminal defense attorneys.
The NRA is way down the list of money donors, trailing banks, law firms, and even seven unions. What the NRA has is members, lots of them. Why are gun rights popular? 1. The Constitution says they are rights. 2. The political authorities can’t or won’t severely punish crime or contain criminals to some “law-free zone.” Crime in my town is almost exclusively the business of people who come from somewhere else, driving, walking, or taking a bus or train for miles to get where they think the loot is. Vagrancy laws were gutted. Mental hospitals were gutted. So we have guns for defense. There’s nothing new about the gun industry. Nature keeps producing criminals and the insane. Cerberus isn’t such a power, and the second the AR-banning scare arose, Cerberus tried to sell their gun assets fast.
All these nasty thing you guys say about this guy, I say he’s a pussy. How would you like this sissy to be your Dad? You would grow up playing with Barbies
He’s wrong: Culture trumps money.
Just ask war veteran, Drummer Lee Rigby of the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
His reasoning seems to suffer from the chicken and egg issue. More small gun-related businesses in an area may simply reflect more gun owners (i.e., bigger market), with the latter being the reason for opposition to bad gun laws rather than the direct influence of these businesses.
It’s a no-brainer that passing restrictive laws in a State with a 50 percent gun ownership rate is a tad harder than in one with a 10 percent ownership rate, while a few more gun stores and retailers are not as likely to sway the legislators.
Oh I bet nobody made fun of this geek in school. I’d like to punch him right in the stomach when he gets off the bus.
And maybe he’ll culture up something clever in the AP bio lab and keep your a$$ sick for the rest of the school year so you don’t ever have the opportunity to do it again.
Before we all pick on how he looks, I kind of look and dress like that, except for the nose.
Did you ever get punched in the stomach getting off the bus?
be careful. some of us geeks have a much bigger gun than you. And, we can shut down your internet with the flip of a switch. Be thankful a lot of us are libertarians.
So true. I am a nerd and work with a lot of nerds. Most nerds I know are rabid conservatives and many of them are serious gun collectors. A lot of them have CWPs, and have trained for it fairly intensely. I have one friend who has probably every Sig Sauer model sold in the last 20 years. I have another nerd friend who has been to Gunsite in AZ. I have another nerd friend who built himself a world class private gun range on his ranch. I have to argue that real nerds support the 2nd amendment.
Was I ever beat up? No. Nerds are smart and often lack the ability to empathize with other people. I was that kind of nerd who knew how to use a gym lock on an a$$hole before he beat me up.
how did this liberal drivel make it to Forbes?
He is totally right about the money, but its all about the drug money. Small businesses selling to drug gangs are not real worried about laws.
Say what you want but this guy is a dangerous liberal. He has a $$$T-ton o money and is CEO of a company that gathers info on millions of small businesses. He also likes to tour Eastern Europe. No word on his country if birth or religious leanings. Here is his business:
http://www.crunchbase.com/person/darian-shirazi
I hate to see him use all this info for a crappy agenda or worse.
I hate to break it to him, but economic downturn puts children much more at risk. If the root of crime is poverty (as we are told), than any increase in poverty leads to more crime, much of which will be violent, puting those weakest (The Children™) at most risk. It’s imperative we repeal restrictive gun laws (and a buttload of other regulation and taxation) if we are serious about helping The Children™.
What puts kids at risk? A single parent that has to work twelve hours a day just to pay for rent and food. Nominal fathers that have no intention of educating and disciplining the children they spawn. Fewer mothers at home raising their young children, keeping eyes on the neighborhood, hurts children, and even a liberal like Jane Jacobs saw that truth. Civil rights reforms that had to be fought for instead of being delivered to a pre-radicalized minority before the press legitimized hate…didn’t help. And now we have drug laws that spin dross into gold for the ambitious dealer. Darian Shirazi would curtail rights because he has no solutions for the problems listed above.
Backpfeifengesicht.
Its always a dead giveaway that people have no logic to support their argument when they imply that two unrelated things are mutually exclusive. Another epic fail for the opposition.
John Smith and the author are guilty of using a common leftist argument trick to attempt to support their cause: they want readers to believe that correlation is causation.
Look at the following premise in Shirazi’s article:
“I wondered whether gun violence correlated with the number of gun-related small businesses in a particular State. Additionally, I looked at the voting results of the Senate Gun Control measures that all failed to pass this April, and found that the states with the most gun-related small businesses voted against all of the gun control laws in question, and in favor of all the measures that would expand the freedoms of gun owners. In the top 10 states with the most gun-related small businesses, only one states’ Senators voted for the gun-control amendment. ”
He is correlating gun-related small businesses with the Senate vote. However, an equally likely reason for those Senator’s votes that also accounts for the numbers of gun-related small businesses is the fact that the majority of residents in those states are strong supporters of the 2nd Amendment, people who enjoy legally owning and shooting firearms – which fact would lead to a good business environment for gun-related small businesses, thus explaiing the larger numbers of such businesses. No businessman in their right mind would open a gun store in NYC, or Connecticut, or California. And Magpul will soon be leaving Colorado.
This does not fit the hoplophobe visions of a vast, gun-related business conspiracy, so he is unable to consider it as a possibility.
“Correlation is not causation.” Unfortunately, this is one of the rules of formal logic, and is thus anathema to leftists. Their arguments are all about emotion, not logic. “Guns make me feeeel bad! Oooooh.”
Hey, wait a minute. I saw that guy at the Boston Marathon . . . .
Where do we get these images of these people looking so smug, its great. But if he wants to play economy to children, lets talk every other item that is currently bought or sold in this country, guns are a small part of a large wheel. Even if the entire economy was run by firearm sales, im fairly sure its better to have a working economy, and being able to keep your house and so on, then worrying about whether some random child will get injured. People die everyday, kids are so exception, if he wants to ban objects that harm kids at a high rate daily, he may as well fight to ban cars and drain cleaner.
There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. ~ M. Twain
“Three of those ten states also had the highest rate of gun-violence in
the nation.”
Did you notice how he didn’t divulge the identity of those three states?
Could it be that they have been, run by liberal democrats for years?
Like maybe, Illinois, Michigan, or….California? Gee, ya think it matters?
About those OECD countries? Most all socialist, and most with gun bans.
Basically, all are countries that identify as having a culture of the West.
It’s also interesting how he chooses to ignore any mention of the 2nd A.
Protecting our Constitutional principles doesn’t even rate one mention.
Typical liberal. Knows the cost of everything, and the value of nothing.
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