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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
Industry Role:
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 38,323
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Originally Posted by Yanks_Todd
The purpose of the NRA is to lobby for whatever combination of laws sells the most guns. Membership dollars are drop in the bucket.
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The NRA claims to represent gun sports enthusiasts, but they are really more active in representing the interests of the assault weapons manufacturers.
The NRA lets a coalition of hunters, collectors and firearm enthusiasts takes the heat for incidents of gun violence, like the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, rather than the companies that manufacture and market assault weapons.
The gun industry and its corporate allies give tens of millions of dollar to the NRA annually.
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"Today's NRA is a virtual subsidiary of the gun industry," said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center. "While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the 'freedom' of individual gun owners, it's actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry to manufacture and sell virtually any weapon or accessory."
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There are two reasons for the industry support for the NRA. The first is that the organization develops and maintains a market for their products. The second, less direct function, is to absorb criticism in the event of PR crises for the gun industry.
It's possible that without the NRA, people would be protesting outside of Glock, SIG Sauer and Freedom Group ? the makers of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre ? and dragging the CEOs in front of cameras and Congress. That is certainly what happened to tobacco executives when their products continued killing people.
Notoriously, tobacco executives even attempted to form their own version of the NRA in 1993, seeing the inherent benefit to the industry that such an effort would have. Philip Morris bankrolled the National Smokers Alliance, a group that never quite had the groundswell of support the industry wanted.
Notably, the tide has shifted slightly in the wake of Sandy Hook, with Cerberus Capital Management's decision to sell Freedom Group, the company that makes the Bushmaster rifle.
But if history is any indication, the NRA will be front and center of the new gun control debate, while gun manufacturers remain safely out of the spotlight.
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From the non-partisan FactCheck.org:
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Wayne LaPierre Falsely Claims "All" The NRA's Money Comes From Small Donors
The reality is that under LaPierre's leadership, the NRA has built extensive financial ties to the gun industry and other corporations. These arrangements have netted the NRA tens of millions dollars according to a recent Bloomberg News account and the gun companies funneling cash into the NRA's coffers have greatly benefited from the NRA's lobbying efforts. One former president of the NRA credited NRA-backed legislation that limited the legal liability of gun makers with saving "the American gun industry from bankruptcy."
The NRA pitches itself as a low-dollar, grassroots organization -- an annual membership currently costs $35 -- and maintains it is "not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition." However, the NRA has formally established many lucrative arrangements with "corporate partners."
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From 2004 to 2010, the group's revenue from fundraising -- including gifts from gun makers who benefit from its political activism -- grew twice as fast as its income from members' dues, according to NRA tax returns.
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"What are the current or even proposed gun laws that most threaten the rights of gun owners?"
Name the actual laws that currently threaten gun ownership, and stop bemoaning that someone or something is taking your guns away, when that clearly is not the case...no one and nothing is taking the right to own all guns away from Americans who are legally eligible to purchase, possess, and use firearms, not currently as law and not even proposed as law.
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Gary W. Bornman, a felon being held in a federal ?Supermax? prison in Colorado, penned an op-ed on Thursday thanking the National Rifle Association for killing a bipartisan gun bill to expand background checks earlier this year. Bornman, who is serving a 20-year sentence for bank robbery, wrote to the Hartford Courant explaining how easy it would be for him to get a gun even though he is legally banned from buying one:
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As a lifelong career criminal, although I no longer enjoy the right to keep and bear arms, I?d like to take a moment to express my appreciation to the National Rifle Association for nonetheless protecting my ability to easily obtain them through its opposition to universal background checks.
Upon release in a few years from my current federal sentence on bank robbery and weapons charges, I fully anticipate being able to stop at a gun show on my way home to Connecticut ? where new laws have made it nearly impossible for a felon to readily purchase guns or ammunition ? in order to buy some with which to resume my criminal activities.
And so, a heartfelt thank you to the NRA and all those members of Congress voting with them. I, along with tens of thousands of other criminals, couldn?t do what we do without you.
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Bornman racked up 81 convictions over his life, leading one judge to declare, ?It does not appear you can be rehabilitated, nor does it appear you can be deterred.? Even after this grim pronouncement, Bornman is mostly right.
Although he could not purchase a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer without undergoing a background check, he can easily avoid a background check by taking advantage of the many loopholes NRA-friendly lawmakers refuse to close ? such as by purchasing a gun through a private seller at a gun show or online.
As a result, many criminals, domestic violence offenders, and mentally ill people who are technically banned from buying or owning guns are able to get them without detection. Indeed, many infamous gunmen obtained their weapons because of the holes in the federal background check system.
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During his last conviction, Bornman wrote another editorial denigrating the prison system?s refusal to give him mental health care, despite his multiple pleas for therapy. Bornman warned, ?In all probability I?ll commit murder, perhaps even mass murder.?
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