I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you, that Al Jazeera is willing to print libelous drivel about gun rights, and generally seems unsupportive of the RKBA. The notion that NRA protects its pocketbook is also a common theme you’ll hear from gun rights groups that don’t know who the real enemy is.
20 thoughts on “Consider the Source, Part II”
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Darn, I guess Al Jazeera won’t be reporting from Egypt anymore…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110204/ap_on_re_us/egypt_journalists
Did you notice that Al Jazeera is running articles written by Huffington Post bloggers now?
Cliff Schecter is an author, pundit and public relations strategist whose firm Libertas, LLC handles media relations for political, corporate and non-profit clients. In 2008, his first book, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him—And Why Independents Shouldn’t, was published by PoliPoint Press and became a political (#2) and non-fiction (#17) bestseller at Amazon. As founder and President of Libertas, he has counseled Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), Chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and The Alliance For Climate Protection, run by former Vice-President Al Gore. Other clients have included IBM, The American Association for Justice (previously The American Trial Lawyers Association), Global Strategy Group, Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, and the Earth Day Network.
I forgot to add the link! Sorry!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cliff-schecter
With their decision to reject the calculated negotiation of their previous “old guard” board members, who for example, came out publicly in support of a proposed ban on .38 Specials by then-senator Birch Bayh of Indiana…
Wait, what?
Is this a hole in my education, or does the writer think .38 Special and “Saturday night special” are the same thing?
Did anyone else notice that Wayne’s salary in the article was calculated at a price of 35,000 membership renewals annually by the Freedom States Alliance?
That is 35,000/4,000,000 x 100% = 0.875% of membership renewal cost if all 4 million members are renewing annually. Of course you can subtract life member annual renewals and similar things and the percentage goes up. But also remember to take into account donations and benefactor members, so I’d call that percentage about accurate.
So it looks like the NRA is a lot more stingy when it comes to CEO pay than what percentage of budget VPC or the Brady’s spend on their CEO’s.
That’s a great article, but you don’t have to go all the way to Al Jazeera for the truth about the NRA. The Washington Post and the New York Times have their number too.
I was wondering when MikeyB would show up for his usual babble-and-run.
Which members does the NRA not represent? While there seem to be some that want to ban certain types of guns, there are certainly others who wish the NRA would do more to legalize more of them.
Overall, I’m guessing that everything balances out; I’m also guessing that, if they did a horrible job of representing their members, they would leave in droves. Many of the ones who think that the NRA should be pushing harder for gun rights, however, have mostly just questioned whether their membership was worth it!
“This opinion was bought and paid for by Joyce Foundation.”
They quoted the “Gun Guys”. BWWAAHAHAHAHAHA!
Isn’t Al-Jazeera coming out against the NRA kinda like Coke coming out against Pepsi? The next question of course would be:
WHY WOULD ANY AMERICAN CARE? (sorry for the shouting)
mikeb, you still have an amazingly elastic definition of “truth”. Hint: it does not mean “false myths that mikeb believes”.
Some recent reports indicate that the majority of NRA members agree with certain gun control ideas that are being fought tooth and nail by the NRA as well as the very vocal but minority of gun owners, like the ones who comment around here. The majority of NRA members and gun owners in general are just like the rest of the people, pretty reasonable. But they, the reasonable gun owners deserve special credit because they have something to lose. Stricter gun laws would inconvenience them to some extent. Yet they agree with the gun control folks.
Is that a bit more than the “usual babble and run,” BobG?
mikeb302000 Said (February 5th, 2011 at 2:26 am):
Some recent reports indicate that the majority of NRA members agree with certain gun control ideas that are being fought tooth and nail by the NRA as well as the very vocal but minority of gun owners, like the ones who comment around here. The majority of NRA members and gun owners in general are just like the rest of the people, pretty reasonable. But they, the reasonable gun owners deserve special credit because they have something to lose. Stricter gun laws would inconvenience them to some extent. Yet they agree with the gun control folks.
Personally, I tend to take those reports with a grain of salt. Almost universally, reports claiming NRA members support stricter gun control are sourced to groups who support gun control. That fact cannot be ignored when you consider such reports.
Stepping back a bit, to consider which people are vocal and which are not … NRA is constantly polling membership. Quite frankly, I suspect there is little evidence that NRA members are calling for the NRA to support stricter gun control. In terms of who is making noise … look at groups such as Brady Campaign, VPC, Mayors against illegal guns, and so forth. Perusing the media, it seems that these groups are making far more “noise” than is the NRA and other gun rights groups. But when it comes to influence, it’s the groups with membership (as opposed to just money) that stride ahead. The reason you see NRA win is because they have membership, while the other groups generally do not.
Mike, it’s interesting what you imply above. What you imply is that NRA members (whether they truly exist or not) are reasonable when they support stricter gun control, and that they are unreasonable when they do not. I find that to be disingenuous on your part. It’s kind of like saying that anyone agreeing with my position is reasonable, and that anyone who disagrees is not reasonable. I am sorry, but it’s not that simple, even though that is largely the over-riding message of those supporting gun control (to cast anyone who disagrees as unreasonable, or even potentially dangerous).
@mikeb: The “majority” (debatable) of gun owners in the US are mis-informed by the popular media, and don’t quite understand what they stand to lose in this fight. Its not just about magazines and “assault rifles” — its about “sniper” rifles, “armor piercing” bullets, pistol grip shotguns, ANY handgun, ANY centerfire rifle, etc…
The question isn’t what you’re looking to ban/restrict today — it’s what you’ll do tomorrow…meanwhile you fail to address the mental whackos and drug addicts who make up the criminal element, and the lack of prosecution/penalties regarding their actions.
Sorry – until you do that, and as long as you try legislating to the lowest criminal element, I’ll continue to “educate” the “majority” of gun owners exactly what the “other” side is truly looking to do.
Markie Marxist sez: “See! See! Those NRA guys are capitalists! Just like we suspected all along, but now we have proof that they’re not good communists! Ha! Ha! Gotcha!”
I’ve been meaning to ask … what is with this “Markie Marxist” stuff? At best, I don’t really comprehend it.
Carl from Chicago, Isn’t it always like that, that what’s reasonable is what the speaker agrees with? Couldn’t all of us say that?
In defense of my definition of what’s reasonable I’ll remind you that I don’t find all gun control initiatives reasonable. McCarthy’s idea about magazine size and jail time for violating it, to me is unreasonable. So is the suppressor business. The worst lately is the 100-ft gun-free zone around politicians.
Some of the other things are reasonable, in my opinion. First and foremost is the background check cleanup, the private-sale loophole, if you will.
So, yeah, I say people who oppose that one are unreasonable.
Markie Marxist sez: “Of course anyone who opposes our legislation to close the “private sale loophole” is unreasonable! That’s the next increment in our gun ban agenda!
Once we require every private sale to go through a dealer for a background check, we’ll get oodles of instances where people have bypassed the dealer. We can even video one sting after another of them doing it, which they will do to avoid spending time and money to comply with an onerous law that they deeply despise and think is ridiculous.
That will give us the opportunity to demand total registration of all firearms in America, so that we have a record of who owns what gun, so that we can claim that we’re going to eliminate the thousands and thousands of illegal private sales that we can show are repeatedly taking place. We’ll say that registration is required to make the background check requirement work.
Once we have most guns registered, we can ban them as we please, and confiscate them as we like, just like we banned and confiscated registered guns in NYC.
Step by step, we will march American gun owners down the road to elimination of any privacy in private gun sales, total registration, occasional confiscation and eventual elimination of private gun ownership. Then our government will be the only one with guns. Ha! Ha! All your guns will belong to us! Then we’ll do as we please with you, and your country too. Ha! Ha!”