Email blast from the Violence Policy Center re: the NRA’s upcoming Annual Meeting (TTAG will be there):
Dear VPC Supporter,
Wayne LaPierre, Ted Nugent, and the rest of the NRA leadership will be in Indianapolis later this month for the NRA’s annual meeting which begins on April 25. We don’t expect they will mention the fact that Indianapolis has a murder rate higher than Chicago’s and that most of those killings are committed with guns. And we don’t expect them to stop opposing even the most limited policy changes that would help stop the gun violence epidemic. We do expect, however, that gun industry representatives will be there in force to promote “spectacular displays of firearms … from every major firearm company in the country.” . . .
It’s simple: Today’s NRA is a gun industry trade association masquerading as a shooting sports foundation. At the VPC, we are helping educate journalists, lawmakers, and the public as we pull back the curtain on what the NRA has become. Our recent report Blood Money II: How Gun Industry Dollars Fund the NRA reveals the NRA has received up to $60 million in donations from the gun industry since 2005. Companies that donate a million dollars are inducted into the NRA’s so-called Golden Ring of Freedom, and their executives receive a golden jacket.
One of these NRA honorees is Smith & Wesson — the same company that made the weapons used in several recent high-profile shootings. The lone gunman who killed three and wounded 16 at Fort Hood army base used a Smith & Wesson M&P (Military & Police) 45 caliber semiautomatic pistol. The killers at the Aurora movie theater and Los Angeles International Airport each used a Smith & Wesson AR-15-style assault rifle.
We share your outrage that so many innocent lives are lost to the gun industry’s deadly products. That’s why we are fighting to educate the public about the reality of this epidemic as we call for effective gun violence prevention policies. This fight is only getting started, and it will continue — even while the NRA and its gun-industry donors gather to celebrate.
Sincerely,
JS Signature
Josh Sugarmann
Executive Director
Your just jealous Josh because you can’t get in.
What Josh doesn’t seem to realize is that the gun industry and the NRA are just “miners’ canaries” behind the REAL problem of the rampant expansion of fascism and the cabal of bipartisan traitors that support it ……… under the name of Freedom and Democracy, of course. You can see them; they are the ones still wearing the shiny American flag lapel pins on camera even after more and more Americans are now starting to wake up.
The problem with Josh is that he is so caught up with the Jewish-Bloomberg-Feinstein identification thing, that the issue is about HIS safety, and HIS perception of the problem, not the actual problem.
Meanwhile, citizens who actually WORK for a living are snapping up out of their delirium and starting to smell the smoke, not of a brush fire, but of a well hidden conflagration, and these people are buying guns; LOTS of guns.
And when TSHTF, it will fruitcake libtards like Josh, who will be wondering how best to safe their sorry asses as they come to the sudden realization that they bet on the wrong horse. Josh, baby, when it all goes down, Diane Feinstein won’t be there to save you; she’s too busy putting doilies and flower vases in her taxpayer paid for bunker.
So the VPC – an intellectually dishonest hard-left anti-Second Amendment lobbying organization that masquerades as an educational organization and think tank – accuses the NRA of being a “trade organization” despite the more than five MILLION NRA members whose only affiliation with the firearms industry is an appreciation of their products…
This is rather like Mike Bloomberg pumping millions of dollars into organizing and overseeing what he refers to as “grassroots” activism.
You forgot about his comment how he will bypass any interviews on his way to heaven.
I guess he forgot about the mandatory background check and ten day waiting period.
BTW, Joshie – the gun industry’s products are much, much safer than the automotive industry’s. Suck on that.
Which is especially ironic when you consider that the gun industry products are SPECIFICALLY designed to kill things (when you want to), and the auto industry products are NOT.
So, which company made the box cutters that were used on 9/11? Just want to make sure I’m as conscientious as possible when I open the bulk ammo that I bought through the Internet.
So what, take away all of the LEO model firearms?? If I had 60 million bucks to spare, I’d want a Golden Ring, too.
?? Not entitled to your own facts, Josh. Put the crack pipe down. There have only been two years since 1985 when Indianapolis had a higher murder rate than Chicago. On average, Chicago’s murder rate is 52% higher. That was such a bizarre claim I had to check it myself.
From the FBI:
Agency Chicago Police Dept Indianapolis Police Dept
State IL IN
1985 22.2 12.5
1986 24.8 13.4
1987 22.8 11.9
1988 22 16.3
1989 24.8 8.5
1990 30.5 12
1991 32.9 19.4
1992 33.1 17.8
1993 30.3 18
1994 33.1 28.4
1995 30 21.9
1996 28.6 30.3
1997 27.4 31.2
1998 25.6 18.8
1999 22.7 14.9
2000 21.8 12.1
2001 22.9 14
2002 22.1 13.9
2003 20.6 13.1
2004 15.5 13.6
2005 15.6 13.5
2006 16.4 17.5
2007 15.7 14.3
2008 18 14.1
2009 16.1 12.2
2010 16 11.1
2011 15.9 11.5
2012 18.5 11.6
Thank you. I live here in Indy and my Bull$hit meter went to eleven when I read that.
Your bulls&&t meter is on on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, where can you go from there? Nowhere, that’s right. What the VPC does is if they need that extra push over the cliff, they put it up to eleven. Here is a behind the scene look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc
Surprise, surprise! Another little white lie from the VPC.
Fits right alongside their fiction of an escalating national epidemic of “gun violence.”
Violent crime of every type has been going down steadily since the late 1980s, and the crime rate is is now the lowest it’s been in 50 years. (I’m giving numbers from memory, but the FBI crime statistics are there for anyone who wants to check the facts.)
If only we could suffer more epidemics like this one…
Not only were there only two years when Indianapolis topped Chicago, those years were during the last century. Things that make you go hmm.
My BS meter went off as well. These people…
What they’re probably hanging their hat on is the latest FBI data, which tabulates 2013 murders Jan. through June of last year. Based on the first six months of last year, Chicago comes in with about a 13.2/100K rate, while Indianapolis comes in at about 15.5/100K rate. Aside from simply cherry picking the data, the comparison is also troubling for a couple of other reasons.
First, the Jan. through June 2013 murder counts are compared to each city’s 2012 populations to arrive at the rates. To be fair, you should compare 2013 murder counts to each city’s 2013 population figures. If a city has grown from one year to the next, then the rate would be different than if comparing murder counts from one year to populations from the prior year.
Second, Indianapolis has a much smaller total population and total murder count than Chicago to begin with. Small changes in the number of murders in Indianapolis could swing the rates drastically from one year to the next; up or down, for that matter. That’s why longer term trends make more useful comparisons. Anything can happen purely by chance in a given year, which means nothing if it really was by chance and the following year it would swing back the other way.
I notice these people made no snarky comparisons last year of Chicago’s murder rate to last year’s NRA Convention host city, Houston, even though Jan. through June 2012’s figures for both cities were available. Would it be that similar-sized Houston’s rate for that period was only 9.6/100K population and only about half of Chicago’s rate, and so didn’t fit their naïve narrative? Nahhhh……..
Up to $60 million dollars in donations from the industry since 2005? Holy cow! That’s $6 million PER YEAR (counting 2005)!!!! Good thing those violence loving gun industry execs don’t spend like Bloomberg, Soros, etc., or we’d ALL be dead! Or not.
$6 million per year from the gun industry on one hand, 5 million members times $20 per year on the other hand…
EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Everyone should join. The fact that NRA is constantly under attack from anti’s proves one thing…NRA is the roadblock keeping them from shredding the 2nd Amendment. Whether you like them or not…we need to roll with them…got this discount link with my last ruger…join http://www.nra.org/ruger
So…my Smith and Wessons made me do it?
Ignores the question of how many of the LEO first responders were carrying Smith & Wesson products to do their job.
How about that guy in Arizona upset with Gabby? How many of the cops on the scene were carrying Glocks?
The Violence Policy Center’s main support is The Joyce Foundation — of course. If there’s a left-wing loon that TJF doesn’t support, let the Foundation know and it will come up with a check.
Sugarmann, who apparently has no marketable skills, earns $145K annually from the VPC, as does his “legislative director,” Kristen Rand. The VPC has no other employees. About 1/3 of VPC’s contributions pays the salary of those two gerbils.
In other words, the VPC is run for the benefit of Sugarmann and Rand, and financially, it’s a pimple on The Joyce Foundation’s ass.
From Ms. Rand: “Concealed carry permit holders don’t prevent mass shootings, they perpetrate them. They don’t support police, they shoot them.”
Sweet.
Dang, I’m way behind. I haven’t shot anyone yet. I better get right on that.
Make sure you bring a Smith & Wesson, shoot mass quantities, and be sure to include a cop or two. We wouldn’t want you to throw VPC’s stats off. (/sarc)
Did not know this but will store away for future usage. Thanks!
“gun violence epidemic”
I see carefully crafted language from the antis. It’s not “gun crime epidemic,” it is gun VIOLENCE epidemic.
This means that if they are anti-self defense, they can claim a justified “good shoot” in their epidemic. Heck, worded that way, they could technically include in their numbers (to inflate them) cop involved shootings (including the good ones).
While the term “violence” has a connotation as something bad, it’s just the “use of force or threat of use of force to achieve a desired result” to use William Aprill’s definition.
So, in calling it “gun violence epidemic” they can inflate the numbers at will and not have any underpinning of the data on criminal use of guns.
In other words…they get to criminalize ALL of us for the purposes of their definitions and statistics.
Yep you nailed it. “Gun Violence Epidemic”
Gun… violence… epidemic. What about Car Collision Epidemic? All arbitrary nonsense. Delusional propaganda.
Wonder how many Facebook followers–uhhhh, supporters–this outfit has?
This is more of the “Evil Big Tobacco” tactic.
I don’t care if the NRA BoD are rabid misanthropes who eat aborted fetuses.
It does not change the meaning and sanctity of the Second Amendment.
Period.
Just like we shouldn’t expect the VPC to tell us which race is doing almost all of the killing in Indianapolis and Chicago, right?
Stay classy.
He’s right. As a black man, I have to ‘fess up and admit it. It’s like the conversation I (often) have with my relatives when the subject of profiling and shooting-deaths comes up. No smoke without a fire. If blacks didn’t commit so many crimes, we wouldn’t be the ones being profiled.
Things don’t get better if we duck our heads and try to be politically correct so as not to offend somebody with the truth. It’s up to all Americans to honestly and respectfully tell the truth. Then maybe we can get to the reasons why so many black men are involved in the drug trade and killing each other.
More than one rapper/musician has called it “self-genocide”, and they are correct. Who needs the KKK, when you can do YOURSELVES in.
$60 WHOLE million? Hmmm. Even if one used the most conservative estimates of the NRA membership, mutiplied it by the fee, and then by the 9 year period Sugarman used…..that number would DWARF $60 million.
Ok, I’m just getting to be damn sick and tired of these lies already. We’ve had laws against many drugs for how long now? How are those working out??
MORE LAWS WON’T STOP CRIME.
You mean to tell me that gun companies are supporting the only organization standing between the citizens God given rights and total disarmament? What an outrage…
Its all about the evil MONEY Joshie boy. You REALLY should marching and shouting to ban MONEY ! Dammed dirty apes…woops…I meant, Dammed dirty lucre….who even wants to touch the stuff ! You don’t know where any of it has been…
Dear Joshie Sugarteats
I’ll certainly be in Indianapolis. With my minor sons. And an 100% sure will be a spectacular event. Guns galore and normal Americans by the thousand (you won’t fit in at all).
I’ll suggest to the NRA guys they start a “guns for the poor” program for Indy in order to arm those who obviously need better selfdefence options. Perhaps 22LR revolvers, double barrel shotguns. and entry model ARs.
Aside from the unfortunate association with Adolf or the Soviets, I would suggest a lot of good could be accomplished by a major manufacturer marketing a well designed, perfectly serviceable and reliable no-frills pistol in the 9mm range and calling it “The People’s Pistol.”
I would suggest both a compact semi-auto version and a 5 shot revolver, along the lines of the Davis/Raven/H&R pistols (Saturday Night Specials), but with higher production values. Mass marketed to the urban citizens at the lowest possible reasonable price they should include with purchase price all necessary training to get a (unconstitutional) government permission slip in your local jurisdiction. And see if you can get Remora or Uncle Mike to donate holsters.
Some might object, “What about cutting into the market for our other products?” But these folds weren’t going to buy your $500 plus guns anyway, so why not service the market?
These folks are bridging that gap…not coming from the manufacturer’s side, but it’s a pretty cool step.
http://armedcitizenproject.org/
$200 buys a shotgun and training for qualifying folks in high crime neighborhoods. I’d like to see this program expand to other cities.
There have always been the various Tokarev TT-30 variants. Latest is from former Yugoslavia & not at all pricey. Entirely made of blued steel which is a plus to this old timer.
Should I not lift weights because strong men have killed others with their bare hands? Should I not drive a car because of drunk or reckless drivers who have killed others? Should I not own a knife because knives have been used as a murder weapon?
Why is my gun ownership compared against the most evil crimes? Why can’t I be compared against the most responsible gun owners?
Better yet, judge me by who I am, and not the actions of other people.
You should probably stop using the Internet. Pedophiles use the Internet.
And if you have a mustache, you better shave that too. No chomos!
Sugarmann…. HA! Sorry, cannot take that guy seriously after that…..
God, but this malarkey gets old after a while.
Gunners gotta gun; banners gotta ban. Which side is better to be on?
*raises hand*
Ours?
Maybe Josh should actually attend the NRA convention so that he will not be so ignorant of what actually goes on at the convention.
Here are a few things I noticed in his article that…well, are just plain crap….
He says that the gun industry has given the NRA $60 million since 2005. That breaks down to a little over $6.5 million per year. In contrast to that, and Sugarman completely failed to mention this, Bloomberg just pledged $50 million to be spent on gun control….presumably to be spent this year before the midterm election. One gun banner is spending 7.5 times what the entire gun industry gave to the NRA this year. Really? Josh, you are a complete liberal hack not to have even mentioned this.
Josh mentions in his article that Smith & Wesson is one of the companies that has given the NRA over $1 million dollars. Smith & Wesson has a long history in American shooting sports. You may ask, so what? Well, Josh says that the recent Ft. Hood shooter used a Smith & Wesson pistol, but he fails to mention the long history of Smith & Wesson firearm being used my the military and police….Josh seems ignorant of the fact that M & P stands for MILITARY AND POLICE…..
Josh rambles on and says that there is an epidemic of gun violence….he is right about that. But he fails to take into account that the vast majority of all that gun violence is committed by criminals and gang members, NOT law abiding citizens. It is committed by people that don’t care about laws any more than Obama does.
If Josh really wants to stop gun violence, then maybe he should suggest cracking down on those committing the crimes with guns instead of cracking down on law abiding gun owners. Maybe he should suggest getting rid of the catch and release prison system….a life sentence should mean you will never see the light of day as a free person again. But then, liberals like Josh would rather pass laws that will do nothing to stem the tide of gun violence, but do take guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens. Josh should read the constitution’s second amendment and take note of the clause that states “shall not be infringed”, and then he needs to break out a dictionary and learn what each of those words means. And lastly, Josh….MOLON LABE
…Nor will the VPC mention the fact that they are, for an incontrovertible mathematical fact, categorically wrong about Indianpolis having a higher homicide rate than Chicago.
Again.
Still.
More.
Directly from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports, 2012, Expanded Homicide Data, Table 8:
Indianpolis: 97 murders among 838,650 people for a per-capita rate of 11.57.
Chicago: 500 murders among 2,708,382 people for a per-capita rate of 18.46.
Oh, and let’s not mention the CPD’s very well-documented and very deeply-entrenched departmental policy of deliberately fudging crime data, along with their partners in crime in the NYPD.
COMMENT MODERATED you, Sugarmann. COMMENT MODERATED you, everything you stand for, the horse you rode in on, and the COMMENT MODERATED that bred you.
Fail. You forgot to say “… for the children” and didn’t use the hip catch phrase “common sense”. Nor did you go retro and use “cop killer bullets” or “Saturday Night Special.” You didn’t even try to trick us by saying, “I believe in the second amendment, but…” You do, however, get credit for using the trendy “gun violence” phrase. Overall though, you really do suck at propaganda, Josh. Your effort is underwhelming and I cannot give you any more than 1 out of 10 hammer and sickles.
Excellent rant.
Went out today and bought a new gun before I read the above nonsense. Think I’ll send a check to the NRA thanking them for helping make it possible to do that.
Heard a rumor that in high school Josh was voted the most likely to breed out side his species. Seems to be the case.
“…It’s simple: Today’s NRA is a gun industry trade association masquerading as a shooting sports foundation…”
Huh? So much uninformed stupidity in one sentence. Since when the NRA is a “shooting sports foundation” or masquerading as such? I thought NSSF is the “gun industry trade association” and ISSF is the “shooting sports foundation”. But who am I to expect any reason, fact or logic coming from Bloomberg’s corner? These people count on one thing and one thing only: a complete and outer ignorance of their supporters.
Why oh why can’t they just pass a law making it illegal to beak the law so those cowardly criminals would stop murdering innocents? (/ Sarcastic as I can be)
Then maybe they can leave the rest of us truly innocent alone. (/ Serious as F***)
The VPC is the gangbanger’s best friend.All killers carrying guns[and they will no matter how you try and disarm them] love these guys , The gangbangers motto; VPC… PLEASE BE SUCESSFULL IN DISARMING THE PUBLIC, WE ARE BEHIND YOU, YOU MAKE OUR PROFESSION SO MUCH EASIER, WE LOVE YOU signed MS-13 AND ALL OUR AFFILIATES. P/S. WE HAVE SOME NEW MEMBERS WHO NEED A TEAR TATTOO IN THEIR EYE WHICH MEANS YHEY HAVE TO KILL SOMEONE, ANYONE IT DOESN’T MATTER WE DON’T CARE, DO YOU KNOW OF ANY VICTIMS WE CAN MURDER ,JUST FOR FUN? THANKS ,YOUR FRIENDS THE GANG[HA HA HA!]
I’m guessing these two fools are aspiring to become the SCLC of gun control. So far it doesn’t seem to be working out that way, based on what I saw at their website (yes, I did it again). They seem to be more at the now-defunct Moms Who Couldn’t Get Action level of actual effectiveness.
Most pie stabbings happen with forks. therefore if we “regulate” forks we can decrease the intensity and frequency of pie-trocties. Do you really need a high capacity fork?
And they don’t say a word about the $50M Bloomy dropped yesterday for their cause.
60 million over 9 years is nothing. 5 million members at 35 bucks a year is far more. I’m sure the industry helps but how dare ignore the INDIVIDUALS (aka voters and citizens) support. And that doesn’t include private individual donations I’m sure.
Join everyone. I have a link with a discount http://www.nra.org/ruger
“AR-15-style assault rifle”
AR-15s are not assault rifles a-hole.
An “AR-15 style assault rifle” is an M-16.
Next month: VPC inspires me to sign up for life membership with the NRA.
Sugarman is a prime example of the adage that it is better to keep ones mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and erase all doubt.
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