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Who are they shilling/lackeys for...gun manufacturers? How so? Has it ever caused them to become at odds with defending the 2nd?
On the other hand, the ACLU which also shills and is a lackey for their varied masters has not been devout to the cause of civil liberties, when faced with pressure from its handlers.
Gun-grabbers hate them, …
Who are they shilling/lackeys for...gun manufacturers? How so? Has it ever caused them to become at odds with defending the 2nd?
On the other hand, the ACLU which also shills and is a lackey for their varied masters has not been devout to the cause of civil liberties, when faced with pressure from its handlers.
Gun-grabbers hate them, and will tell you why for all kinds of reasons (except defending the 2nd), some in this thread, but they have not equivocated...as has ACLU.
Although their interests usually intersect, the NRA does not represent or advocate for the gun manufacturers. They have a separate organization. The NRA advocates for gun owners. But they do a lot more than legislative advocacy and litigation. They have a number of programs involving safety education, competitions, etc. That said, I have let my membership lapse for a reason that is, strangely, related to an issue addressed in Glenn's essay. Without going through the details, the NRA's finances, and spending by Wayne LaPiere, has caused me to withhold my dues.
Great points, I also left during Mr. LaPiere's tenure.
If the gun-grabbing whackjobs would allow it, there would be plenty more people educated about gun safety and responsibility. Those whackjobs simply assure that the general culture doesn't evolve to a mature perspective. But the reality is that those that want to be educated and responsible largely find their way and are safe, responsible owners/users/opt-outers.
Clearly for gun manufacturers and the defense industry. The same people "Senior Administration officials" were shilling for when they had Ollie's boss ship arms to Iran around a congressional ban that they didn't have the votes to overturn legally.
Those people would be Bush/Cheney/Weinberger etc the entire rogues gallery of shitlords who were in Reagan's cabinet and administration.
Reagan Derangement Syndrome.
Now to M. neill_here's excellent points, which you ignore. The NRA has never lost it's singular purpose of protecting the 2nd, despite its internal financial shenanigans and "shilling." How else to explain its continued support? The ACLU is the opposite in essence. It most certainly does NOT protect civil rights; it now ONLY supports the rights of authoritarians.
The NRA did not defend legal cannabis patients from having to give up their firearms whilst "recreational" users of the exact same product and Hunter Biden are allowed to get firearms despite conceptually identical restrictions.
That is just one recent example of them not standing up for gun rights, much in the way Glenn shows examples of the ACLU not standing up for free speech. I linked above cases where the ACLU stood up for civil rights, see National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie (you know those pesky socialists also known as Nazi's).
No. the NRA does not deny the State legitimate reason to restrict the rights of an individual FOR CAUSE and in individual cases. "Recreational users" are a class, not an individual. Obviously, Biden should have been denied the right, but I didn't notice the NRA affecting/commenting on this individual's case.
The NRA does not advocate universal gov't provided gun ownership. Is that another case of "not standing up for gun rights"?
I know the NRA supported gun control when black people started buying them.
https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-support-mulford-act
Does being black fall under restricting rights "for cause" with the NRA?
Listen to what Stokely Carmichael says about gun control and people of color.
It is identical to what right wing pro-gun individuals like myself say.
So 50 years ago, Blacks exercised their 2nd Amendment rights, and in so doing schooled the NRA. Good for them.
They also used terrorism as a tactic. They also used their guns to scare members of another race into over-reaction, thus imperiling gun rights with their irresponsible behavior. It seems the NRA learned its lesson. Did Blacks? No. Racist Blacks continue to engage in threatening behavior, but whites today treat them with kid gloves because being falsely accused of being racist is apparently a worse fate than anything.
Btw, pretty good article (and the book is even better), but don't those trespassers look a hell-of-a-lot more like an insurrection than those Jan 6ers, with all those guns taking over a State capitol? And BOTH groups causing the essentially SAME over-reaction from the State, and giving the State cover to grow its illegitimate power.
Hmm...a Black group and a white (mostly) group, 53 years apart, trespassing on gov't property, eliciting the SAME reaction. Guess we're not a racist nation anymore, eh?
But that ultimate rhetorical!! It sounds like you are living decades and decades ago.
I'm not sure where you are coming from on this. The 2nd amendment is state agnostic as it is part of the Bill of Rights for all US citizens.
The NRA's pussying out because of CA laws was because they lacked the funding as we recently saw, due to financial mismanagement.
The moment that states started allow medical marijuana the NRA should have been all over the loophole the allowed the ATF to confiscate firearms for medical patients.
Why the fuck would an opiod-prescribed patient be able to get a gun but not a cannabis-prescribed patient? Perhaps it is because of the massive criminal justice job web that lays on top of the drug war and creates jobs on both sides and freedom on none of them.
I concede the medical/recreational CA marijuana issue.
Agreed on the financial mismanagement having a negative effect on protecting gun rights.
Medical marijuana is a joke and a red herring. (But I will offer that the underlying medical condition, if real, that led to the prescription is the rationale, if honest, of denying the right, not the marijuana part. Anyway soon marijuana will be over-the-counter everywhere, as it should be, and REAL medical patients can join their recreational fellows in "self-medicating" freely.)
But this is golden!:
"Perhaps it is because of the massive criminal justice job web that lays on top of the drug war and creates jobs on both sides and freedom on none of them."
Reagan derangement syndrome lol....a dimwitted buffoon actor who was a dementia-addled puppet by the end of his second term.
Maybe you forgot that he was governor when they gassed the entire city of Berkeley because of peaceful protesters. Yeah Reagan woo hoo a real man of the people. NOT.
Did you use to call him Ray-gun?
No.
Do you support a governor having a plane drop tear gas on an entire city to disrupt a protest?
No. And I believe Mr. Reagan would cop to the mistake today. Reagan did many other actions with which I disagreed, at the time or from subsequent change of mind. But you talk about him like he was Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter. And to call him dimwitted is ridiculous.