4 ms·

We see the same kind of thing with the National Rifle Association. It seems like many people opposed to them are convinced that it's just a proxy for the small

by wl 11y ago

We see the same kind of thing with the National Rifle Association. It seems like many people opposed to them are convinced that it's just a proxy for the small arms industry (that would be the National Shooting Sports Foundation) and it can't possibly have the grassroots support it does.

zepto 11y ago
Is the NRA transparent about its finances? I personally have no idea who supports it.
- wl 11y ago
  There have been accusations that they inflate their membership numbers, but conservatively, the NRA has over three million dues-paying members and they claim nearly five million. I was looking for EFF membership numbers as a point of comparison, but I couldn't find them. Does anyone know where to find them?
  - zepto 11y ago
    Those numbers seem easily plausible, but that's not really what I asked - do we have any actual transparency into it, and where else does the money come from? There could be 3m members but that still represent a minority of their support.
- DrScump 11y ago
  How much they (NRA-ILA) spend on lobbying is transparent, duly reported like any other interest group. ILA is just one facet of what the NRA does; the rest is generally ignored by major media. (ILA = Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying arm) BTW, I'm not saying that the rest of NRA isn't also financially transparent, I just haven't researched that in years.
aidenn0 11y ago
To me the NRA just seems to have gone off the deep-end in the last decade or so. Perhaps it's just a symptom of the increasing political polarization in the US in general, but recently it seems like their point of view has shifted to "no gun regulation is good gun regulation" which is almost a parody of what they used to stand for.
- artimaeis 11y ago
  It seems to me that the NRA positions itself to the government as a representative of all gun owners. Around 31% of households in America claim to own guns [1] - so maybe this group shouldn't have so much political sway as it does? I recognize that groups with moderate views are few and far between but the collective "we" that the NRA stands for keeps pushing me further away from it. [1]: http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun...
  - pdeuchler 11y ago
    31% of Americans is an enormous political faction, you'd be hard pressed to find another group of citizens with a singular lobbying purpose that reaches that size (AARP and Agriculture lobbies come immediately to mind).
  - DrScump 11y ago
    It seems to me that the NRA positions itself to the government as a representative of all gun owners. Rather, the media position the NRA as the representative of all gun usage. Blaming existing law and the NRA after a highly-reported shooting is common, even when the gun was obtained illegally and the shooter not legally eligible to own one. An analog would be blaming Planned Parenthood when a newborn is abandoned to die.
- wl 11y ago
  The NRA has historically cared more about hunting than guns. If a restriction on guns didn't burden hunting, they didn't care. In the firearms community, people like this are pejoratively referred to as Fudds. Famously, the NRA supported the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (which banned new automatic weapons from going into civilian hands). There was a shift in the organization away from the Fudds in the early 1980s and again in the early 1990s. In recent years, the Fudds have lost much of their influence. Respectfully, I think you should look carefully at the kinds gun regulations that are being proposed today. People are confused as to why the NRA would oppose background checks on all firearms transfers without understanding that all proposals put forth to date would create firearms registries, which have been abused in the past. If you came up to a solution to that (and didn't add a new tax on firearms transfers), you might actually get the NRA's support. Additionally, some state "universal background check" measures have done ridiculous things like make it illegal to lend a firearm to someone at a shooting range.

by wl 11y ago

zepto 11y ago

Is the NRA transparent about its finances? I personally have no idea who supports it.

wl 11y ago
There have been accusations that they inflate their membership numbers, but conservatively, the NRA has over three million dues-paying members and they claim nearly five million. I was looking for EFF membership numbers as a point of comparison, but I couldn't find them. Does anyone know where to find them?
- zepto 11y ago
  Those numbers seem easily plausible, but that's not really what I asked - do we have any actual transparency into it, and where else does the money come from? There could be 3m members but that still represent a minority of their support.
DrScump 11y ago
How much they (NRA-ILA) spend on lobbying is transparent, duly reported like any other interest group. ILA is just one facet of what the NRA does; the rest is generally ignored by major media. (ILA = Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying arm) BTW, I'm not saying that the rest of NRA isn't also financially transparent, I just haven't researched that in years.

aidenn0 11y ago

To me the NRA just seems to have gone off the deep-end in the last decade or so. Perhaps it's just a symptom of the increasing political polarization in the US in general, but recently it seems like their point of view has shifted to "no gun regulation is good gun regulation" which is almost a parody of what they used to stand for.

artimaeis 11y ago
It seems to me that the NRA positions itself to the government as a representative of all gun owners. Around 31% of households in America claim to own guns [1] - so maybe this group shouldn't have so much political sway as it does? I recognize that groups with moderate views are few and far between but the collective "we" that the NRA stands for keeps pushing me further away from it. [1]: http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun...
- pdeuchler 11y ago
  31% of Americans is an enormous political faction, you'd be hard pressed to find another group of citizens with a singular lobbying purpose that reaches that size (AARP and Agriculture lobbies come immediately to mind).
- DrScump 11y ago
  It seems to me that the NRA positions itself to the government as a representative of all gun owners. Rather, the media position the NRA as the representative of all gun usage. Blaming existing law and the NRA after a highly-reported shooting is common, even when the gun was obtained illegally and the shooter not legally eligible to own one. An analog would be blaming Planned Parenthood when a newborn is abandoned to die.
wl 11y ago
The NRA has historically cared more about hunting than guns. If a restriction on guns didn't burden hunting, they didn't care. In the firearms community, people like this are pejoratively referred to as Fudds. Famously, the NRA supported the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (which banned new automatic weapons from going into civilian hands). There was a shift in the organization away from the Fudds in the early 1980s and again in the early 1990s. In recent years, the Fudds have lost much of their influence. Respectfully, I think you should look carefully at the kinds gun regulations that are being proposed today. People are confused as to why the NRA would oppose background checks on all firearms transfers without understanding that all proposals put forth to date would create firearms registries, which have been abused in the past. If you came up to a solution to that (and didn't add a new tax on firearms transfers), you might actually get the NRA's support. Additionally, some state "universal background check" measures have done ridiculous things like make it illegal to lend a firearm to someone at a shooting range.