The gun problem is very simple. There is no organization to counter the NRA.

[RBInMaine]

In his angry remarks in response to the filibuster of the background check law, the President said the most important thing that needed to be said: Americans need to ORGANIZE if they want to end what reallly caused the filibuster which was the NRA lobbying and propaganda effort which he essentially said did not have a counter organization to match them. He said if Americans want change, they must ORGANIZE for it.

So if anyone out there is interested in real change, then ORGANIZE. The NRA rolls over the members of Congress because they are HIGHLY ORGANIZED with a large membership, highly paid lobbyists, organized communication, and motivated members who SHOW UP, call their members of Congress, and threaten to get them thrown out of office. They are also well-financed.

The other side MUST organize and beat them at their own game if they want to defeat them and get the bill passed. THAT is what Bloomberg and the other MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS and the families of these victims need to do. They need to start a well-financed counter organization to the NRA. Maybe something like "AMERICANS FOR SENSIBLE GUN SAFETY" which will do all the things the NRA does: lobby, communicate, and organize for political action.

As long as the NRA is organized and no one else is, then they will continue to WIN even when the majority of the nation does not agree with them. THAT is the reality.

ORGANIZE ! And STAY ORGANIZED.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. The NRA is not only well-organized, it is extremely well-funded.

And to make matters worse, it thrives on fear. It purports to represent "ordinary" gun owners, but in fact its main client is the gun manufacturers, whose profits depend on people buying lots of guns, preferably expensive ones. And what motivates gun-buying? Not a sudden urge to go pheasant hunting or take up skeet shooting. Nope, it's fear. Fear of criminals and fear of the government. And the NRA is expert at stoking fear. It makes people feel like they are in grave danger if they don't have an arsenal in their homes for protection against - them.

So to defeat the NRA we will need more than mere organization; we will need a buttload of money and a way to counteract all that fear. It won't be easy.

[RBInMaine]

18. Absolutely. They are a lobbying arm for big gun companies. I do say big $ is needed.

[Cleita]

2. Maybe we need to rev up MADD again but this time make it Mothers Against

Gun Violence instead of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. They were pretty effective in putting in some really tough drunk driving laws. I think this is even more important. No one sets out to kill a kid while driving drunk, but the Columbine and Sandy Hook shooters et al had.

[RBInMaine]

19. Or "AMERICANS AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE". It needs to be VERY inclusive.

[Cleita]

30. That would work too. n/t

[Sunlei]

33. great idea! Very inclusive & a narrow common sense focus, where the majority agree

For example, This Org. is for a criminal background check for every gun purchase, including used gun transfers.

Then give contact info for targeted politicans over the main social medias. Contact doesn't cost anything except a little time. Washingtondc does count the calls and contacts.

[Sunlei]

37. adding, I think a positive name rather than using the word 'against' would be best

take a lesson from all the RW political groups' names, most all have positive names.

[BlueStreak]

3. I have been thinking exactly the same thing.

Last edited Sun Apr 21, 2013, 12:38 AM - Edit history (3)

We know that the majority of NRA members are responsible gun owners and most of them do not share many of LaPierre's views. There have been various alternative organizations formed to compete with the NRA, but what has been lacking is a real push.

While I appreciate what Bloomberg is trying to do, his approach will only be successful in a few urban places -- never enough to make the difference nationally. He should consider helping support a new organization that would represent gun owners instead of gun manufacturers.

The platform of the organization could be something like this.

"We exist to support and speak for responsible gun owners. We believe the Constitution includes a right for responsible gun owners to own and use reasonable firearms for the purposes of hunting, sport, and personal protection. But we do not believe that any right is unlimited, and support laws that ensure the rights of non-gun owners to safety and the pursuit of happiness are also protected. With every right comes responsibilities. We understand that the biggest threat to gun ownership is irresponsible or criminal gun ownership. We therefore support all reasonable laws that increase personal accountability and responsibility, so long as they do not present an undue hardship on the responsible gun owners that make up our organization."

With enough advertising and an active campaign, we could ruin the NRA brand -- making it synonymous with criminality, militia-types, and irresponsible gun ownership.

With enough brand-building, Congressmen and Senators would covet an A+ rating from this new organization, and to hell with the NRA.

[RBInMaine]

20. Exactly along the lines of what I have been thinking. Thanks.

[rightsideout]

4. I thought the anti-NRA was the Brady Campaign

But I guess something newer would be better

[RBInMaine]

21. That was good for awhile but has faded out. The NRA has STAYING POWER, and that is what our side

needs.

[BlueStreak]

35. Brady OPPOSED the NRA. The OP proposes something completely different.

The NRA represents gun manufacturers. They have a relatively small membership -- about 1/10 the size of the AARP, for example. And lately, many of the NRA members do not agree with where the NRA is headed. But they also fear big government "taking away their guns" and they don't perceive any alternative to henging with the NRA.

We need to give responsible gun owners an alternative. Our issue is not with responsible gun ownership. We should work together with responsible gun owners and responsible gun dealers.

By forming an organization that represents gun owners instead of gun manufacturers, there should be a real opportunity to, over the course of 5-10 years, siphon off several million current NRA members. Moreover, a well publicized organization could recruit many millions more who are not members of the NRA. If there were a real push to form such an organization, I would join myself, even though I don't own any guns and have no plans to in the future.

For shorthand, let's call this the RGA (Responsible Gun-owners of America). Look ahead 5 years. It is not out of the question that a well-funded, well-promoted organization could have 8 million members while the NRA shrinks to 2 million. If that were to happen, this would give a lot of spineless legislators cover to do the right thing. If they had an A+ rating from the RGA, then it wouldn't matter very much what rating they got from the NRA.

This is the way to solve the NRA problem. And the time is right now while there is such a big disconnect between NRA leadership and membership.

Even the very act of creating such an organization would force the NRA to become much more moderate -- if they saw the RGA as a real threat to their franchise.

[spin]

5. The main problem is not the 4.5 million NRA members and their leadership. ...

It's the fact that 80,000,000 Americans are gun owners. Add to the the fact that many voting age members of the gun owners' families enjoy shooting and you end up with a LARGE voting block.

Not all gun owners oppose an AWB but a significant percentage feel that measures such as the AWB are merely the first steps to banning all semi-automatic firearms and all handguns. They feel rightly or wrongly that the final goal of the gun control movement is to impose gun control as exists in the UK and many other nations.

While they are as distressed over the recent massacres as non gun owners, they do not personally feel that they bear responsibility for the actions of the few with severe mental issues or for the actions of violent criminals who misuse firearms.

If you were able to wave a magic wand and make the NRA disappear you would not change the views of many gun owners.

The best tactic to use is to present logical and factual arguments to support gun control. Emotional arguments are powerful but obviously not all that effective.

The overwhelming majority gun owners wish to see gun violence decrease just as you do. However they support effective legislation that would not interfere with their "right" to own firearms and use them for sport and self defense. An assault weapons ban may appeal to those who support gun control but is seen as merely a "feel good" law to many gun owners. Gun owners also want to see better enforcement of existing laws and stronger punishment for those who break them. Catching a person illegally carrying a firearms and giving him a slap on the wrist does little to stop his carrying a firearm and murdering someone in the future.

The NRA is indeed a powerful voice and lobbying group but to believe that it is the biggest obstruction to passing strong gun control is false. Four point five million voters spread across fifty states is not what politicians fear. The bottom line is that supporting gun control can cost a politician his career as gun owners will show up at the poll to vote for his pro-gun opponent. This may not be as true or important in states like California, New York or Illinois but is a major factor in Montana, Alaska, Texas and Louisiana.

Remember also that each state gets only two Senators regardless of its population. A majority of people in the nation can support passing a law but it can be blocked by Senators from less populated states. Some will argue that all Senators should use their conscience and vote for gun laws for the good of the nation. Still these Senators may honestly oppose strong gun control and they are elected to vote for the views that the citizens in their states hold.

Strong gun control may become reality sometime in the future but is unlikely anytime soon. At this time it may be better to focus on better enforcement and some minor improvements to our current laws. This will still be a major challenge because the push for a new Assault Weapons Ban has poisoned the water. The media and many who support strong gun control have been unwilling to listen to any ideas that gun owners have to help reduce gun violence and have often thrown unnecessary insults at gun owners. It's not surprising that many gun owners have decided to oppose any and all legislation proposed by the gun control movement.

[Hoyt]

11. You need to envision life without a gun in your pants on city streets.

[spin]

12. Thanks for your concern. (n/t)

[Hoyt]

15. My concern is not for those who thumb their guns against society.

[spin]

16. If so you should be concerned with criminals and the truly mentally insane...

who misuse firearms. While it does happen, it is extremely rare for a person with a carry permit to use his weapon to commit a crime or to run amok. In fact statistics show that they are far more law abiding and commit far fewer crimes of any type than the average citizen who does not have a carry permit.

In case you doubt me you can review comprehensive statistics on crime by those with carry permits in the state of Texas at: http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/rsd/chl/reports/convrates.htm

[Hoyt]

32. Those who do not carry guns in public, are far less likely to shoot/intimidate someone than CCWers.

That's what your statistics fail to reflect. Nor will someone without a weapon, have one stolen and used in a crime, or sell one to someone who causes a crime, or have a young child shoot themselves.

Thus, you as a member of gun culture are far more likely to commit a gun crime, or aid a gun crime or tragedy than the majority of our society who do not need guns to live.

I think those who choose not to join the gun cultists and arm up, are less likely to commit a crime, cause a gun tragedy, have a gun stolen, become a bad influence on others with respect to guns, etc.

[spin]

42. Obviously a person who does not own a gun is unlikely to have it stolen ...

or to use it to commit a crime. Duh.

Perhaps the solution is to totally disarm all citizens.

Unfortunately that could lead to an increase in violent crime as criminals would no longer fear facing an armed victim.

I thought from your previous posts that you had no problem with a person owning a firearm as long as he kept it at home. You appeared to be mainly concerned with those who legally carry a firearm.

If you were able to ban concealed carry, you might see an increase in street crime. The fact that a street thug can't really determine if his victim is armed could be a deterrent to a mugger or rapist.

Perhaps the fact that gun ownership and concealed carry is common in many states is a good part of the reason that violent crime has dropped to levels last seen in the late 1960s. Admittedly there are far too many factors in the violent crime equation to state that more guns = less crime but considering that firearm sales have skyrocketed in recent years and "shall issue" concealed carry has spread across our nation, it should be obvious that more guns and allowing honest citizens to carry firearms has not increased violent crime.

Crime rates have varied over time in the United States. American crime rates generally rose after World War II, and peaked between the 1970s and early 1990s. Since the early 1990s, crime has declined in the United States,[5] and current crime rates are approximately the same as those of the 1960s.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

[Hoyt]

43. Your having a gun has done nothing to reduce crime rates. If anything

innocent people are more likely to be shot because folks like you walk around armed.

[Niceguy1]

13. most firearms

Aren't carried thatway. The needs of 80 million Americans shouldn't be discounted.

[Hoyt]

14. Fortunately that many don't see need to carry, 96+% routinely venture out without a gun

strapped to their body.

[premium]

34. Spin gives a well thought out comment

and this is the best you can come up with?
No wonder gun control is going nowhere, and it's because of people just like you who only ridicule and insult honest gun owners.
You are so blinded by your bigotry towards gun owners that you honestly can't see that you do more harm than good for honest and frank debate.

[Hoyt]

38. I'm sure it is well thought out, mirroring NRA position and that of gun supporters like yourself.

[premium]

39. You never fail to disappoint.

I now rest my case.
Now all I'm waiting for is your usual "Enjoy your guns" comment.

[Hoyt]

40. It's Sunday, try not to play with your guns today.

[premium]

41. Ah, something different this time.

I haven't shot my 2 firearms in about 10 years, as I told you time and time again, at this point, you only disservice your credibility by your attempt to insult fellow members.

[RBInMaine]

22. You make some good points, however, as a gun owner myself, I would say the following:

The law that was just defeated is OVERWHELMINGLY supported by the American people, INCLUDING gun owners, and was proposed as a compromise measure by a conservative Democrat and a conservative Republican with A-Ratings from the NRA, and yet STILL failed. It is a measure the NRA once said they APPROVED. So gun owners' interests were certainly considered.

How could this happen? It happened because the NRA mobilized its core of folks who lobbied hard against it along with its chief paid lobbyists, and, just as the President said, they LIED to gin up that core base and make them think it would lead to a national registry. They LIE to make their most vocal folks oppose ANY, I say again, ANY new gun control legislation. As the President pointed out, people understand that the background checks law was NOT a threat to law abiding gun owners' to own guns, hunt, etc. In fact, the current gun control movement CONSTANTLY says that. Many in it are gun owners themselves, including Gabby Giffords. So the current movement is a huge shift away from being "anti gun" to one of "let's improve current laws and practices and make them more effective while respecting the rights of safe and law abiding gun owners".

The NRA is a longstanding, highly financed lobby with a very long experience with their propaganda and political lobbying. They know what buttons to push with their base, and they know how to intimidate ANYONE who tries to counter them. They have a very vocal and politically active core, and they will run viscious attack ads against politicians who oppose them. This is a highly financed, highly experienced, longstanding and powerful lobby, and THAT is what scares the politicians. They are NOT intimidated by those who are NOT organized. Political weight is thrown through ORGANIZATION. And believe me that if there was a counter organization just as powerful as the NRA, that extremely popular bill would most likely have passed.

[applegrove]

6. I'm hoping the Gabby Giffords/Mark Kelly organization will get disaffected NRA members who

want some sort of reasonable gun laws.

[hack89]

27. Not if they are talking about gun bans.

focusing on common ground like background checks, cracking down on illegal gun sales, and mental health is where they should start. Find common ground with gun owners and build trust.

[krispos42]

7. Gun owners will get politically involved to keep owning guns...

...without undue harassment.


People that don't own guns have to do literally nothing to keep on not owning guns. If you don't own a gun, the government will not bother you one whit. You don't have to organize or anything to continue not owning a gun.




Part of the problem is that some of the laws proposed were stupid and ineffective, more about showing how hard politicians took on the NRA than anything of real value besides an issue to disguise their utter failure to fix the last 12 years of government misadventures.

I mean, really... does anybody beside me wish that Democrats went after Wall Street in 2009 as hard as they went after the NRA in 2013?


The proposals after the Newtown slaughter were the same things that have been the Holy Trinity of the gun control movement... defining and banning "assault weapons", a magazine-capacity limit of 10 rounds, and universal background checks. None of those things would have saved a single life in Newtown, and only one of them would have any noticeable effect on the national murder rate.

[dsc]

8. actually one of them might well have

7 kids escaped when the killer ran out of bullets from his 30 round clip. IF he had run out of bullets more often, more kids may have escaped.

[krispos42]

9. He killed 4 kids and one adult per minute, for five minutes.

I don't see smaller magazines changing that rate, or the outcome. Or at least not very much. 18 kids and 5 adults is still a horrific massacre.

Probably different kids would have died. Almost certainly he would have been less wasteful with his ammunition; he fired an average of 6 shots per person.


Each shot would have turned those poor little kids into hamburger, especially at point-blank range.

Dammit, the sick fuck shot one kid ELEVEN times. Who DOES that???


But we can't ignore the situation: helpless victims, unable to hide or escape or fight back, in a closed environment, with no protection. The guy was a psychopath filled with rage; he might as well have been a Terminator at that point.

[Skittles]

10. who DOES that?

sick fucks with easy access to weapons, THAT'S WHO

[RBInMaine]

24. Guns don't kill people, but they make it EASIER. I own guns myself, but believe we need to have some

reasonable controls and do all we can to keep people safe as well and guns out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them. We CAN do more while respecting the protecting the rights of safe and legal gun owners.

[spin]

17. I definitely agree with you about Wall Street. (n/t)

[RBInMaine]

23. With every respect, it seems you have bought into the "Do nothing." crowd's argument.

Last edited Sun Apr 21, 2013, 05:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Do drunk driving laws stop all drunk driving and the many deaths due to drunk driving? No.
Should we then not have the drunk driving laws? Of course not.

These laws would HELP. Can they wipe out all gun violence? No. Of course not. But can they help? Absolutely. A 10-shot clip requires more re-loading and time to maybe stop the shooter or escape. Enhanced background checks could certainly prevent at least some people from not buying guns who shouldn't have them. Do other things like mental health laws and practices need to be improved too? Certainly. Tougher enforcement on gun related crime? Certainly. It needs to be comprehensive. But it seems you are buying into the sad old "Nothing will help, so why bother doing anything" line, and it is a poor line of reasoning, with all respect.
We need to try. You would certainly agree if it was your child that had been senselessly slaughtered, and I think you know that.

[krispos42]

28. Not really "do nothing" as the "do effective".

The vast, vast majority of murders in this country have 1 victim (95%) or 2 victims (about 3-4%).

It takes, as we've seen, an enormous amount of political capital to pass a bill containing a definition of "assault weapon", then banning them. But taking protruding pistol grips and quick-adjustable stocks off of semi-automatic rifles will not save a single life. And remember that all rifles of all sorts are only used in 5% of homicides.

So, we have a high expenditure of political capital, a high rate of political mobilization and involvement of the political opposition (the Repubes) in the process and in future elections (2014 midterms come to mind), and in the end people are still buying AR-15s and AK-47s and Mini-14s and FALs and other semiautomatic rifles that feed from detachable magazines, only now they don't have pistol grips. So we have zero usefulness achieved at high political cost.

And even if "assault weapon" was expanded to cover ALL semiautomatic rifles and shotguns (the only loophole-proof way to ban all AR-15s and AK-47s and the like), the industry would respond with pump-action and lever-action tactical rifles that use AR-15 and AK-47 accessories, such as magazines and barrels and receivers and such. Remington has one, called the Model 7615, which is a tactically-orientated pump-action rifle that shoots .223 Rem ammo from an AR-15 magazine. Google it.

Drunk driving and assault-weapon bans are addressing somewhat different issues as well. If a person drives drunk, they almost certainly do it on a regular basis. Taking one of them off the street means you remove dozens or hundreds of future drunk drives.

People that commit shootings, however, generally don't do it on a regular basis, and they can still do so with different hardware. You're not taking THEM off the street, you're limiting hardware types.


Similarly with magazine capacities... with 98 or 99% of murders being singles or doubles, magazine-capacity bans will only help in a tiny fraction of shooting. You're banking on a lot happening when a spree shooter is changing magazines. It's faint hope, I think. And again, we've had no debate on the number that should be allowable, but because we had 10 rounds before, we've all just decided to go with ten rounds now. Apparently because we have 10 fingers.

We could at least debate the number, rather than assuming automatically it's 10 rounds.



I don't think there's really anything we can do to stop spree shooters. There are far too many targets... 133,000 schools, hundreds of thousands of churches and sporting events and clearance sales and movie theaters and lunch rushes and such. Even marathons.

And I don't think waging a war on hardware accessories will do much to help either, and especially not for the political cost. If we want to lower the overall homicide rate, we need to continue with our liberal ideals. We need to pursue the goal of the strong single-income middle class, we need better education, cheap or free higher education, universal single-payer health care (physical and mental), clean air and water, and labor union revitalization (I'm a son of a union man). We need to get out of the WTO and NAFTA so we can have sensible foreign trade policy again, we need to break up and separate the big banks, we need to tax the rich way the fuck more to prevent them from distorting the real-estate market, the food and mineral commodities market, and the energy market.

And mandatory background checks for all purposes. I think this will help. But it will have to be done in a way that does not make it effectively registration. I'm kinda pissed that the background-check bill didn't pass.


But given the choice between banning rifles with pistol grips and real regulation of the banks, I'll take regulating the banks because THAT will not only save more lives, but it will also improve the quality of life for tens of millions of people.

[RBInMaine]

25. People will get involved to keep children from dying. I have faith in Americans.

[krispos42]

31. Except that these laws will not prevent people that snap from going on killing sprees.

None of the parents of the Newtown victims are thinking "oh, if only he didn't have a protruding pistol grip on his rifle, my kid would be alive".

There is an awful lot of political capital being spend on trying to stop or reduce what is a very rare, unpredictable, and effectively unstoppable event, and those efforts will not stop the background, or normal, homicide rate of a couple of dozen per day being killed just in the course of interpersonal relationships.

The sharp drop in homicides in the 90's was a direct result of our "liberal agenda"... namely, clean air (vehicle catalytic converters can't process leaded gasoline, so leaded gasoline stops being sold and kids stop breathing brain-damaging poison) and abortion & birth control rights (women can control when they have kids, therefore having fewer kids born into situations where they are likely to become career violent criminals).

The 1968 and 1993 gun-control acts didn't do a thing.

If we want to have a homicide rate like Sweden's, we need to have an economic and educational system like Sweden's.

[RBInMaine]

26. Google "Here's Why The NRA Won And Gabby Giffords And Mike Bloomberg Lost" by Mother Jones.

This article says it all.

[Big Tent]

29. "Background Checks"

I think what the Democratic Party is doing with Background checks is not only bad policy but bad politics.

First of all gun dealers already make you fill out paperwork according to law to purchase a gun. Secondly why should a grandpa have to fill out paperwork to give a gun to his grandson? People borrow guns to take out to target practice or a hunt all the time, but no sale or rent of the gun is intended.

The politics is bad for democrats because our lawmakers are saying that the background checks are just a minor inconvenience that is viewed by a significant number of gun owners to be at the level of republicans saying that trans-vaginal ultrasounds are a minor inconvenience to get an abortion. Basically the democrats hurting themselves in picking up the house of representatives where gun owners who are with democrats on ever other issue will end up voting republican because democrats at a national level do not understand gun ownership. The polls democrats are touting are fools gold.

[BlueStreak]

36. By that reasoning, it shouldn't be illegal for Grandpa to share a bottle of Scotch

with his 15-year-old granddaughter. After all, they're kin.

[cyberswede]

45. 30,000 gun deaths per year is appalling

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they are purposely misleading to rile the emotions of the ignorant. We don’t trust anti-gunners because they say more than 30,000 people are killed each year by guns — a fact that is technically true, but the key piece of information withheld is that only a minor fraction of that number is murder; the majority is suicides and accidents. We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know accidents and suicides don’t count in the crime rate, but they’re held against us as if they do.

I suspect that "anti-gunners" are just as concerned with decreasing the number of gun deaths caused by accidents and suicides as they are about decreasing the number of gun murders. What a bullshit article.

[niyad]

47. that one did not last long

[cyberswede]

48. One of the jurors said "I vote to tread on him"

[niyad]

49. yes, I thought that was great. wonder which sock this was?

probably related to the ones who have been annoying me the past couple of weeks.

[niyad]

46. awwww, your screen name is so cute--nobody would ever get it. enjoy what will, no doubt,

be a very brief stay