NRA memberships

[Isabel1130]

Actually Richard, I think it's a terrible article, or more correctly propaganda screed. I am certainly no fan of the NRA, and I could make a long list of things I dislike about it. But this piece of propaganda is full of distortions, exaggerations, inflammatory rhetoric and outright lies. I don't have the time to detail all of the problems, but two basic ones jump out at me.

First the whole thrust of the piece is that the NRA has been taken over by big business. But $11.7 billion for the whole firearms industry - if that figure is even correct, which I doubt - is a very small total for an entire industry, and a tiny portion of the whole US economy. Furthermore, the buyers for much of that industrial output are governments, including the US federal, state, and local governments, and foreign governments. This is not a case of a massive industry creating a lobbying arm the way the banking and petroleum industries have done.

Second, the author tries throughout to indict the NRA for supporting US firearm manufacturers, as though this was in opposition to defending the 2nd Amendment. But without the viability of US manufacturers, the 2nd Amendment is meaningless. That's because the executive branch can control the importation of firearms basically at whim, and has done so repeatedly, but cannot control domestic manufacture. No US firearm manufacture could, at the whim of a President, mean no US firearms. That's in effect what the Bloomberg lawsuits were meant to do, and what the Tiahrt amendment has been preventing (Bloomberg's lawyers misusing data obtained from gun sales records).

I guess my biggest criticism of the NRA at this point would be that it does such a terrible job of explaining (selling to the public) those necessary things that it does.

FredB

I wish the NRA had the money to launch a full PR campaign but when you don't have unlimited funds, choices have to be made. The good things is, the more the NRA is attacked in the press, the more people step up and join, and donate.

[Richard H]

Fred thats why I said if you remove the editorializing. I don't see it as a big deal that the NRA gets money from the firearms industry, they paint it as something sinister, well Big Pharma funds pharmaceutical lobbyist, as does the insurance industry, and the petro chemical industry and farming the list goes on, and most of them make the NRA's money look like chump change.

As an NRA member one of the things I expect from them is advocacy for firearm ownership. If that meets the shared needs of the firearm industry well than good we can work together and pool our resources. It's not sinister. The Brady Campaign, the Brady Centre, Million Mothers all collect money and lobby too for that side of the issue.

Yes the article is written as a hatchet job but anyone who knows the truth and how things works knows there's nothing there that is sinister.

Like I also said they started off with errors in the title "Military grade weapons" for the millionth time an AR is not a military grade weapon nor is it an assault weapon. It's like saying all womens blouses with epaulettes are military uniforms.




They were showing what it would cost industry if these bans are enacted, 1000's of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars. So I don't think they are going to sit on the side lines this time around and hope it blows over. I really do hope the follow Ronnie Barret's lead tell the states to go pound salt and refuse to service and sell to them if they ban anything. They should do that right now to New York and nip it in the bud.

[BenEnglishTX]

The money from the political and non political arm have to be kept separate or within the guide lines set by the IRS. The NRA has had to give up some of their office space to the IRS thanks to the Clinton Administration to keep in eagle eye on the organization....This alone has cost the NRA two million dollars to do this.

This particular point is completely pointless. All large corps in the US, when audited, provide office space for the IRS Revenue Agents in residence. This results in a few RAs on a team taking up space for years with a few specialists who rotate in when their expertise is needed. Audits are conducted in this way to minimize the impact on day-to-day operations of the organization. Unfortunately, it also means that "low impact" translates to "long term". Big audits take years.

Other nations use other methods. Japan, for example, will audit the biggest of their corps in just six weeks. They come in with an army of people, completely disrupt operations, virtually take over everything, but usually finish the audit in 6 weeks or a bit less. Then they're gone.

In the USA, we audit via the "minor, long-term irritation" method. In Japan, they use the "rip off the bandage and let's see what's under there" method.

I can't say which is better but I can say that pointing out that the IRS is in residence at the NRA serves no purpose. The same can be said of any large organization that gets audited.