4 ms·

This is not in the least true, especially since the gun industry, which is much bigger than the gun manufacturers, have their own very visible lobby, the Nation

by hga 10y ago

This is not in the least true, especially since the gun industry, which is much bigger than the gun manufacturers, have their own very visible lobby, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (http://www.nssf.org/ http://www.nssf.org/). The NRA is politically powerful for one single reason: it has ~ 5 million paid members, and lots of other gun owners take cues from it and will vote on this single issue. It, for example, went all in to re-elect Roy Blunt in Missouri, going so far as to drag the Executive Vice President and the head of it's lobbying arm to Joplin, MO, to talk to 50 people who showed up at the airport event (!!! and I've never heard of such a thing before). Plus of course the usual mailings and other means. And it paid off, he won by about a 3% margin, much narrower than the 14% in 2010 against a Carnahan, a much more storied Missouri political family, and the Republicans very narrowly kept the Senate. As for why we vote so much on the issue of guns, why the NRA has five million members, see my other posting in this subthread on motivating atrocities.

crdoconnor 10y ago
A majority of its near quarter billion income comes from corporate donations - in the form of advertising sales, donations and grants. In addition to this, many NRA members join just so that they can join gun clubs - not necessarily because they agree with the NRA.
- hga 10y ago
  ~75% of it's income comes from membership dues and individual contributions, see e.g. https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Rifle-Association-NRA-come-from https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri... which has links to the 990 forms with the hard numbers. Here's the link to the latest available 2014 one, which evidently was filed/made public after that analysis: http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/530/530116130/530116130_201412_990O.pdf http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/530/5301161... In addition to this, many NRA members join just so that they can join gun clubs - not necessarily because they agree with the NRA. What do you base this claim on? Some do, but membership numbers too closely match the current intensity of the war on our Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) for it to be very many.
  - germinalphrase 10y ago
    The NRA is the traditional certifier of shooting events. That's maybe less true as new shooting sports have grown in popularity, such as IPSC - but if you want to engage in most local or national shooting competitions you must be a member of the NRA. In recent history, many shooting ranges/clubs have started requiring a membership in the NRA as a condition of eligibility to join.
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    >~75% of it's income comes from membership dues and individual contributions ...and the largest individual contributions come from individuals like Larry Potterfield, founder and CEO of retailer of guess what? >What do you base this claim on? The number of gun clubs run by the NRA that demand membership as a prerequisite for joining and the fact that 75% of gun owners support mandatory gun checks but the group ostensibly representing them does not.
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  I know a lot of NRA members (and many, many more gun owners) but I don't know any who joined "just so that they can join gun clubs". Maybe the "access to gun clubs" thing just isn't a factor here, though, since we don't have to go to a "gun club" or shooting range if we want to shoot. I can just step out my back door, for example, and shoot in my back yard if I want to. I have neighbors on either side of me whom I can hear shooting at least once a week or so. The nearest "open to the general public" shooting range that I know of is about an hour's drive away. Being a member of any organization is not a requirement for entrance. There are a couple of other ranges that are closer but one must be a law enforcement officer -- or be accompanied by a law enforcement officer -- to gain access. (Disclosure: Lifetime member of the NRA)
- hga 10y ago
  Wait a second, it just occurred to me that all of you who are dismissing NRA membership numbers due to it being required for an activity are making an error that's entirely relevant to the actual discussion: Oh, yeah, let's say you join the NRA because of that, it was certainly true for the first and penultimate times I joined it. But even if this is a politically neutral decision, and/or the gun owner is relatively neutral on the issue of gun control (rather unlikely for serious target shooters, I'd say, due to the patchwork of flypaper laws that will throw them in prison if they make a mistake while traveling to a match), they'll automatically get their choice of membership magazines (American Rifleman, American Hunter, and there's at least one more). Which will expose them to the government's atrocities, and politicize all but the most callous of them. And then they're also in the net of Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm that also runs their PAC (although PACs are small potatoes, more valuable to signaling than anything else). And they'll get alerts about legislation, scoring of their politicians, sometimes a major campaign for one as I noted WRT to Roy Blunt, and of course at least post-Carter a major effort every Presidential election (Carter was anti-handgun, but he and his southerners were not in a bubble and too smart to mess with gun control (it was discussed and quickly shot down, you might say)). E.g. if I hadn't already read of the atrocities in other gun magazines, joining the NRA as a sophomore on my high school JROTC rifle team would have started me down my RKBA activist path. So, no, "not [joining] necessarily because they agree with the NRA" (I don't and don't belong to it, although I re-joined for a year after Sandy Hook), but by definition these guys and gals are gun owners, and can't ignore politics if they want to continue to be so. Anyway, why don't we put this slagging of the NRA, which is only responsible for a fraction of our success; for example, not Heller and McDonald, nor most of the nationwide sweep of shall issue or better concealed carry regimes, to the side in favor of, you know, trying to apply the lessons learned from the general gun owners' wildly successful efforts to this surveillance problem. E.g. am I wrong about atrocities being committed with it that would play well to the public? On the other hand, the flip side of the "join because you have to"m if you truly believe it's so big, is that that isn't an obvious way to bring people into the fold, I don't see us being in a position to require stuff of normal folks. But that's not so true of FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and company, is it?

by hga 10y ago

crdoconnor 10y ago

A majority of its near quarter billion income comes from corporate donations - in the form of advertising sales, donations and grants. In addition to this, many NRA members join just so that they can join gun clubs - not necessarily because they agree with the NRA.

hga 10y ago
~75% of it's income comes from membership dues and individual contributions, see e.g. https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Rifle-Association-NRA-come-from https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri... which has links to the 990 forms with the hard numbers. Here's the link to the latest available 2014 one, which evidently was filed/made public after that analysis: http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/530/530116130/530116130_201412_990O.pdf http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/530/5301161... In addition to this, many NRA members join just so that they can join gun clubs - not necessarily because they agree with the NRA. What do you base this claim on? Some do, but membership numbers too closely match the current intensity of the war on our Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) for it to be very many.
- germinalphrase 10y ago
  The NRA is the traditional certifier of shooting events. That's maybe less true as new shooting sports have grown in popularity, such as IPSC - but if you want to engage in most local or national shooting competitions you must be a member of the NRA. In recent history, many shooting ranges/clubs have started requiring a membership in the NRA as a condition of eligibility to join.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >~75% of it's income comes from membership dues and individual contributions ...and the largest individual contributions come from individuals like Larry Potterfield, founder and CEO of retailer of guess what? >What do you base this claim on? The number of gun clubs run by the NRA that demand membership as a prerequisite for joining and the fact that 75% of gun owners support mandatory gun checks but the group ostensibly representing them does not.
jlgaddis 10y ago
I know a lot of NRA members (and many, many more gun owners) but I don't know any who joined "just so that they can join gun clubs". Maybe the "access to gun clubs" thing just isn't a factor here, though, since we don't have to go to a "gun club" or shooting range if we want to shoot. I can just step out my back door, for example, and shoot in my back yard if I want to. I have neighbors on either side of me whom I can hear shooting at least once a week or so. The nearest "open to the general public" shooting range that I know of is about an hour's drive away. Being a member of any organization is not a requirement for entrance. There are a couple of other ranges that are closer but one must be a law enforcement officer -- or be accompanied by a law enforcement officer -- to gain access. (Disclosure: Lifetime member of the NRA)
hga 10y ago
Wait a second, it just occurred to me that all of you who are dismissing NRA membership numbers due to it being required for an activity are making an error that's entirely relevant to the actual discussion: Oh, yeah, let's say you join the NRA because of that, it was certainly true for the first and penultimate times I joined it. But even if this is a politically neutral decision, and/or the gun owner is relatively neutral on the issue of gun control (rather unlikely for serious target shooters, I'd say, due to the patchwork of flypaper laws that will throw them in prison if they make a mistake while traveling to a match), they'll automatically get their choice of membership magazines (American Rifleman, American Hunter, and there's at least one more). Which will expose them to the government's atrocities, and politicize all but the most callous of them. And then they're also in the net of Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm that also runs their PAC (although PACs are small potatoes, more valuable to signaling than anything else). And they'll get alerts about legislation, scoring of their politicians, sometimes a major campaign for one as I noted WRT to Roy Blunt, and of course at least post-Carter a major effort every Presidential election (Carter was anti-handgun, but he and his southerners were not in a bubble and too smart to mess with gun control (it was discussed and quickly shot down, you might say)). E.g. if I hadn't already read of the atrocities in other gun magazines, joining the NRA as a sophomore on my high school JROTC rifle team would have started me down my RKBA activist path. So, no, "not [joining] necessarily because they agree with the NRA" (I don't and don't belong to it, although I re-joined for a year after Sandy Hook), but by definition these guys and gals are gun owners, and can't ignore politics if they want to continue to be so. Anyway, why don't we put this slagging of the NRA, which is only responsible for a fraction of our success; for example, not Heller and McDonald, nor most of the nationwide sweep of shall issue or better concealed carry regimes, to the side in favor of, you know, trying to apply the lessons learned from the general gun owners' wildly successful efforts to this surveillance problem. E.g. am I wrong about atrocities being committed with it that would play well to the public? On the other hand, the flip side of the "join because you have to"m if you truly believe it's so big, is that that isn't an obvious way to bring people into the fold, I don't see us being in a position to require stuff of normal folks. But that's not so true of FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and company, is it?