Eddie Eagle Gets a Makeover

The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It, by Tom Diaz

Truthout

The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It, by Tom Diaz, The New Press, 336 pages, $18.95 paperback, Release date: January 1, 2015.

"Diaz points out that the gun Hassan used, the FN Five-seveN, was a "typical example of military-style weapons that define the market today. There is no mystery in this militarization," he writes. "It is simply a business strategy aimed at survival: Boosting sales and improving the bottom line in a desperate and fading line of commerce. The hard commercial fact is that military-style weapons sell in an increasingly focused civilian gun market. The sporting guns do not."

*******************

"The toll of ordinary Americans killed and injured by guns every single day would remain staggering, a bloodletting inconceivable in any other developed country in the world," he writes. "Firearms are the second leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and are the second most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 24. Since 1960, more than 1.3 million Americans have died in firearm suicides, homicides and from unintentional injuries."

What's more, Diaz points out that 90 percent of US households own a car while fewer than one in three own a gun. Still, firearm deaths have come to exceed motor vehicle fatalities, something that should certainly give us pause.

***********************

The upshot, Diaz writes, is that in today's USA, "guns are most likely to be owned by white men who live in a rural area, those who are middle aged or older, with middle to higher income, who grew up with guns in the home and who live in the southern or Midwestern regions of the country. Moreover, fewer and fewer people are owning more and more guns." To wit: Diaz notes that the average gun owner now has an average of 6.9 guns compared with a still-high 4.1 per person 20 years ago.

The NRA is short sighted, foolish, and evil - AGAINSTILL

Cross-posted from penigma; by way of explanation, the annual 'Penny' (good penny or bad penny, our 2 cents worth) is an annual acknowledgement/ blog award.

WW I pennies with bullet holes in them considered 'trench art'

The NRA consistently demonstrates their failed level of limited thinking and lack of moral values in their political and policy positions. They ONLY value guns, to the exclusion of all else, including people, and actual safety - in this case, global safety. They have taken a pro-terrorist position.

In the video, below from the Daily Show, this is evident in the pro-ivory importation/ pro-terrorist position.

Where is the connection? Elephant ivory taken by terrorist poachers is funding anti-American and other terrorist acts, including attacks like the one on the shopping mall in Kenya. As noted by Think Progress:

NRA Campaigns Against The Plan To Save The World’s Elephants ...While many people would make the mistake of assuming that this was about helping save endangered elephants, the NRA understands what the real motivation is. “This is another attempt by this anti-gun Administration to ban firearms based on cosmetics and would render many collections/firearms valueless,” the NRA said in its call to arms. “Any firearm, firearm accessory, or knife that contains ivory, no matter how big or small, would not be able to be sold in the United States, unless it is more than 100 years old. This means if your shotgun has an ivory bead or inlay, your revolver or pistol has ivory grips, your knife has an ivory handle, or if your firearm accessories, such as cleaning tools that contain any ivory, the item would be illegal to sell.” For that reason, the NRA implores its members to flood the White House and Congress with phone calls and emails to “let them know you oppose the ban on commercial sale and trade of legally owned firearms with ivory components.” That desire to resell old — but not antique — weaponry clearly is more important to the NRA than preventing the looming extinction of the species — which is linked closely to the skyrocketing demand for ivory. “In 2013 alone an estimated 30,000 African elephants were killed for their ivory, more than 80 animals per day,” Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week. The commercial ivory ban is only part of a new National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking announced at the same time as the embargo, which prioritizes “strengthening domestic and global enforcement; reducing demand for illegally traded wildlife at home and abroad; and strengthening partnerships with international partners, local communities, NGOs, private industry, and others to combat illegal wildlife poaching and trade.” In that vein, the United States has been leading the charge in persuading countries around the world to destroy their stockpiles of intercepted ivory, annihilating six tons of it last November. Since then, Togo, China, and France have also followed suit and destroyed seized contraband of their own. Aside from the conservation concerns, which the NRA doesn’t seem moved by, poaching is increasingly being viewed as a national security issue for the United States. In an interview last year, Robert Hormats, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, said ivory had become a “conflict resource.” An Enough Project report from last year also found that Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army has begun poaching ivory from elephant tusks to fund the group’s activities, which include abducting children and forcing them into sex slavery.

Conservative values, pro-gun values, are failed values; conservative and pro-gun thinking is failed thinking. Neither the values, nor the abbreviated and short-sighted selfish positions make anyone more safe, or in a better world.

And the NRA are making sure the thugs are well armed...

The irony here is that the NRA is responsible for making sure thugs and terrorists are well armed, which is probably why the thug has a knife rather than an AR-15 clone.

Although, NRA policies have made sure that the weapons you believe will protect you are firmly in this thug's hands.

He doesn't need a knife--he has your gun.

Why else do they fight the laws that they not only once supported, but even proposed?

Pigeon Shoot Bill Got Buried by Frightened PA Legislators

Local news

More than two decades of activism over Pennsylvania's barbaric tradition of pigeon shoots did not end with a victory dance last Monday.

It ended with House Bill 1750, which last week won 36-12 approval in the state Senate, safely buried in the House Rules Committee, where it will expire without a vote. Until at least the Legislature's next session, it will be legal to raise dogs and cats for human consumption, to "hunt" tethered animals and to blast pigeons fired into the air for the shooting enjoyment of fat-bottomed Elmer Fudds.

The House's timidity represents a victory for the National Rifle Association, which for years has been advancing the preposterous notion that banning the practice of shooting captive animals in rings or tied to hay bales is the first step on a slippery slope toward banning all hunting.

Change in US attitude toward Guns and the NRA

It used to be that the NRA was considered a political force not to be crossed, yet that opinion seems to be changing with politicians openly talking about regulating firearms.



It is a welcome change.

The NRA demonstrates bad judgement (once again)

Katherine Parker

If you had an open criminal case, would you run for political office?

Maybe that is the question the political advisors for Monica Wehby who is running for US Senate from Oregon should have asked before hitting the hustings, but they obviously didn't.

It seems there is a medical child abuse case out there which she is a party to in Multnomah County.  As far as I know this case has not been decided.

But here is the short form:

Wehby’s practice has been controversial within the small circle of pediatric neurosurgeons, in part because she is willing to perform tethered cord surgery when other surgeons would not, such as when a radiologist tells her the MRI results don’t appear to support it. She says that’s because MRI technology is limited, and she can usually tell when a child suffers tethered cord through other means, including the description of symptoms.

Jim Moore, a Pacific University government and elections professor, said the timing of the Parker case could be a problem for Wehby.

"It raises questions about her judgment, and for the last 25 years voters have said judgment is very important," Moore said. "And remember, she's not very well known in this state. She's staking her whole campaign on her expertise in health care and her

competence. So this is going to raise questions about the center of who she says she is.

Of course, running with an open case is one act of bad judgement, but the NRA decided to endorse her candidacy.

Personally, I think that this is a great way to dodge the elephant in the room.  I have to admit that I am curious as to how the campaign will handle the issue of the pending criminal case. As far as I can tell, this case is still pending.

Or if the NRA will do anything in light of that case.

Of course, the NRA backs some real winners.

For more information about Dr. Wehny's connection to this case See also:

• The Truth About KP MOM OF 7,8,9 | Hoping to bring justice to Kate Parker's kids.

The NRA's self-satire.

I'm seriously wondering whether the NRA really takes itself seriously, finally coming up with some seriously laughable pieces of self-satire which the Daily Beast calls Despicable.

Not really, despicable if you can read between the lines to see self-parody gone wild.  These are the funniest thing the NRA has come up with to date.

They talk about Media Dishonesty, yet they support a media which uses discredited pundit John Lott regurgitating the material which has been disproven.  I'm sure they see Fox News as "honest media" given how they dislike "Public" Media, which is only slightly less honest in that it is actually commercial media.

Anyway, here is Charlie Brooker's Daily Mail Island for what watching too much right wing media can do to your mind.

The NRA's attempt at a hip new image.

They have little Billy with his sensitive attempt to be intelligent while showing what an ignorant asshole he really is.  And if he isn't a total fuckwit, he's seen the numbers I've posted which show he is full of shit.

But, Gawker really hit the nail on the head with:

The NRA's Hot New Web Show For Youngs Is Hilariously Bad Poser Garbage

They sum it up really well with:

Also, how trustworthy is this Colion Noir? Put another way: Who in good conscience can wear a Yankees hat... and a Phillies hat? A fucking poser, that's who.

Will Colion Noir show us how in touch he is with real urban, black culture by actually getting shot, or is that too much to ask for?

Is the NRA really pro-hunter?

OK, I am politically green.  In other words, if I go for a single issue:  it's the environment.  I have been active in environmentalism since I was a kid.  I love the outdoors, but does the NRA really love the outdoors as much as they claim?

The National Rifle Association has long claimed to represent America’s hunters and shooters in the fight to protect one of America’s oldest traditions as the self-proclaimed "largest pro-hunting organization in the world"  The NRA’s bylaws even include an article setting a core goal "to promote and defend hunting…as a viable and necessary method of fostering the propagation, growth and conservation…of our renewable wildlife resources". But it turns out that its by-laws are just empty rhetoric.

A report by the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA) showed that  the NRA gave much more money to and gave much higher ratings to politicians who:

• In 2001, opposed the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which was defeated even though it would have protected millions of acres of our best hunting land.
• In 2005, tried to sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public land to “corporate interests at prices far below market value,” as stated in the report. “While conservation groups across America came out against the (sale of public land), the NRA stayed silent.”
• In 2007, opposed the so-called “Katrina Amendment” proposed to prevent future catastrophic flooding and protect wetlands and wildlife habitat threatened by climate change.

An annual survey conducted by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is the best source we have to judge the NRA's political leanings   It was the primarily source used by ASHA to come to its conclusions. On the front page of the report, in fact, AHSA states that the NRA gave campaign contributions to 52 of the 53 members of Congress who received a zero rating from LCV for their conservation voting records. 

Two new reports published from the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Gun Truth Project and Corporate Accountability International, show that the NRA following contributions from oil and gas companies, the NRA lent its support to legislation that would open up more federal public lands to fossil-fuel extraction, compromising the wilderness that many hunters value.

In 2012, six oil and gas companies contributed a total of between $1.3 million and $5.6 million to the NRA, according to CAP. (The companies are Clayton Williams Energy, J.L. Davis Gas Consulting, Kamps Propane, Barrett Brothers Oil and Gas, Saulsbury Energy Services, and KS Industries.)

The NRA's heftiest energy contributor by far is Clayton Williams Energy. CWE is the NRA's largest corporate donor outside of the firearm industry, and one of its six largest overall donors. The publicly owned Texas energy company has donated no less than $2 million to the NRA in the past four years: at least $1 million in 2010, according to an SEC filing, and at least $1 million in 2012, according to the NRA. In 2010, CEO, president, director, and board chairman Clayton Williams Jr. told a meeting of oil drillers that he'd given more than $3 million to the NRA. In 2013, Williams and his wife Modesta were inducted into the NRA's Golden Ring of Freedom, a small circle of major donors. The couple was celebrated in a 10-page feature story in a 2011 issue of the NRA's Ring of Freedom magazine.

The reality is that the NRA is out of line with America’s dedicated conservation organizations.  The nation’s biggest gun lobby gave $4,085,277 to support the 193 members of Congress who received poor conservation ratings from the LCV and only $390,897, 10 times less, to the 245 members of Congress who have received high conservation ratings.

Additionally,  the NRA's lobbying on bills detrimental to the environment contradicts the express commitment of of its lobbying arm to "be involved in any issue that directly or indirectly affects firearms ownership and use. These involve such topics as hunting and access to hunting lands [and] wilderness and wildlife conservation." CAP's report also cites several polls showing that preservation of wildlife is important to most sportsmen: A 2012 poll found that two-thirds of sportsmen want to maintain current conservation levels and oppose "allowing private companies to develop public lands when it would limit the public's enjoyment of—or access to—these lands."

Additionally, a 2013 survey of hunters and anglers, nearly 75 percent of respondents opposed selling public lands to help reduce the deficit.  On the other hand, there is a big push to sell public lands from the Libertarian segment of the republican party.

It would seem that the NRA is working against the interest of hunters and sportsmens despite its by-laws to the contrary.   In fact, I would say that the NRA works against the interests of responsible gun owners--if there are still very many left.

Actually, I haven't seen the NRA point to any actual legislation they have supported which would give any credence to their claim of being "pro-conservation".   In fact, I have seen more destruction of the US countryside in the past 40 odd years.  It seems to me that if the NRA were as "pro-environment" as it is "pro-gun" that there wouldn't be a problem with development and the US would not have decaying cities in the same way that guns have become an epidemic health crisis.

Sources:

• The Anti-Conservation Mission of the NRA
• Oil and Gas Industry Influence in the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International 
• Is Oil Money Turning the NRA Against Hunters?
• NRA Leadership Still Selling Hunters Down the River: New NRA Grades Show They Support Members Who Support a Radical Anti-Conservation Agenda

Democrats at the NRA Convention are Rare

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (R) holds a gun given to him by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 6, 2014. McConnell is one of many Republicans planning to address the National Rifle Association at its annual meeting on Friday.

NBC News

The lone Democrat slated to address the organization is Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. of Milwaukee County. Clarke has won headlines for ads that have called guns a “great equalizer” and suggested that “simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option.”

While the slate of speakers at NRA events has always dominated by conservatives – many seeking the group's support for a bid for higher office – it hasn’t always been free of Democrats elected to federal office.

In 2011, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin spoke to the NRA’s “Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum,” even plugging the famed political ad depicting him shooting a cap-and-trade bill with a rifle. (Manchin later earned the ire of the organization for working on background check legislation.)

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson submitted a video for presentation at an annual meeting in 2007, during his failed presidential run. The same year, powerful Democrat Rep. John Dingell was praised as a “longtime visionary statesman” as he was introduced to the crowd. Now-retired Oklahoma Democrat Rep. Dan Boren was also regular presence at annual NRA events.

The dwindling of Democratic speakers is reflected in the powerful gun lobby’s political giving as well, which has fluctuated over the last two decades.

So far this cycle, the organization has donated funds to just nine House Democrats and no Senate Democrats (a total of $12,000) compared to contributions totaling almost $240,000 to 151 Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s just four percent to the president’s party.

Born in the USA

I often think of Ambrose Bierce's definition of Patriotism from the Devil's Dictionary when ever I see someone who "wraps himself in the flag":

“Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.”

There are a few reasons I would mention this, but this comes from the NRA's using the song at their national convention not realising the actual significance of the song.

It is one of the most misinterpreted songs ever. Most people think it is a patriotic song about American pride, when it actually cast a shameful eye on how America treated its Vietnam veterans. Springsteen considers it one of his best songs, but it bothers him that it is so widely misinterpreted. With the rollicking rhythm, enthusiastic chorus, and patriotic album cover, it is easy to think this has more to do with American pride than Vietnam shame.

Springsteen talked about this in a 2005 interview with National Public Radio. Said Bruce: "This was when the Republicans first mastered the art of co-opting anything and everything that seemed fundamentally American, and if you were on the other side, you were somehow unpatriotic. I make American music, and I write about the place I live and who I am in my lifetime. Those are the things I'm going to struggle for and fight for."
 
Speaking of how the song was misinterpreted, he added: "In my songs, the spiritual part, the hope part is in the choruses. The blues, and your daily realities are in the details of the verses. The spiritual comes out in the choruses, which I got from Gospel music and the church."

Of course, if one listens the words, one finds that this is hardly the patriotic standard the right would like to present it as being.  Once again, I wonder if the irony is lost on those who would like to portray this as being "patriotic" while they talk about acts of insurrection which are clearly unconstitutional and illegal.

The thing is that the Right sees the gun control issue as a means to divert workers from voting according to their economic interests and that of their families. The Right sees it as a particularly clever way to prevent workers from following the candidate endorsements of their union, which are made based on economic interests of the members. Neal Knox, a former head of the National Rife Association (NRA), said as much:

"[The gun issue] is the one thing that will spin the blue-collar union member away from his union."

The NRA conducted a massive get-out-the-vote effort on behalf of George W. Bush. Chuck Cunningham, a former director of voter education for the Christian Coalition, led that effort for the NRA. Before working for the Christian Coalition, Cunningham was executive director of the anti-union New England Citizens for Right-to-Work.

Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA, supported the National Right-to-Work Committee in 1994 when it lobbied Congress to defeat S.55 / H.R.5 Anti-Strikebreaker Bill. This would have prohibited employers from permanently replacing striking workers (an act which is illegal in other industrialized countries). Heston appealed to union members to "put freedom first" and support NRA-endorsed candidates, and yet the right to strike is a most basic and essential freedom. Heston personally appealed to members of Congress to defeat pro-worker legislation that would prohibit strikebreakers and produced a video on behalf of the National Right-to-Work Committee, which called him their "world famous ally."

In 1996, Charlton Heston championed the most serious threat to the very existence of labor unions. He assisted the National Right-to-Work Committee in a $260,000 ad campaign to lobby Congress to pass a National Right-to-Work Bill which had been introduced. Right-to-Work legislation would prohibit unions from negotiating any union security clause in their contracts. Union membership would be totally voluntary, though all workers must receive the wages and benefits negotiated in the union contract and they must be legally represented in any grievances. It has nothing to do with a right to work, but is part of a larger corporate strategy to financially weaken and eventually eliminate unions. Now deceased, Heston was a very effective spokesman for the NRA in distracting workers from the Right’s real agenda.

Of course, one thing that propaganda does is short-circuit the reason.  Take things out of context and use them to stir up people who cannot think for themselves all the while calling those who do examine and question "sheeple".

Remove the right to keep an bear arms from the stated purpose of a well-regulated militia (and the actual constitutional framework that fits into) and something which makes sense suddenly becomes a black and white issue.  Those who are opposed to the fictional concept of gun rights are somehow "unAmerican" and against the Constitution, while those who believe in it and would wage war against the United States despite what Article III, Section iii says are "patriots".  What could be more nonsensical?

 But, what really sums this up is what Critic Greil Marcus wrote about the Song "Born in the USA": "Clearly the key to the enormous explosion of Bruce's popularity is the misunderstanding… He is a tribute to the fact that people hear what they want to hear." 

Tell 'em what they want to hear and fuck the truth.

BTW, thanks to the Wisconsin AFL-CIO and their book "The Right Wing" for the bit about the NRA and workers' issues.

La Pierre is Out - Spika is In

N. Stephanie Spika, an avid sportswomen, hunter and gun-rights activist.

Guns dot com

In a move that has the gun community buzzing, the National Rifle Association announced today that Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre has stepped down as the head of the nation’s gun lobby for undisclosed reasons.

Replacing LaPierre will be N. Stephanie Spika, the organization’s standout social media manager.

Both LaPierre and Spika declined Guns.com’s request for comment. However, sources close to Spika said that she’s elated by the new opportunity to head up what is arguably the most powerful lobbying group in Washington, D.C.

“With her bright eyes, radiant smile, impossibly strong work ethic and ‘anything’s possible’ mentality, Ms. Spika is the perfect woman for the job,” said an NRA insider to Guns.com.

Letter: Prospective Gun Safety Thwarted by NRA

Letter to the editor of the Topeka Capitol-Journal

Equipping autos with technology that makes them safer to use has greatly reduced the number of Americans killed in automobile accidents. Yet, if gun owners want to take similar precautions with their firearms, they might find themselves thwarted by some gun rights advocates.

Such was the case recently when Oak Tree Gun Club in Santa Clarita, Calif., dropped its plans to sell a .22 caliber pistol with smart gun technology because of the opposition of gun rights advocates. A “smart gun” is one that cannot be fired by anyone other than the gun owner. (One criticism is that the technology is unreliable “because anything mechanical can fail.”)

It’s regrettable enough that, although 74 percent of the National Rifle Association’s members support requiring universal background checks prior to purchasing firearms (John Hopkins poll, January 2013), the NRA leadership opposes background checks and lobbies against such safeguards.

But if gun owners want to protect young family members from accidents in the home by electing to avail themselves of such technology, they should have the right to do so. I hope gun retailers in Topeka won’t be intimidated by those whose politics and policies are out of step with the majority of Americans.

NRA Opposition May Sink Obama's Surgeon General Nominee

Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy said at February’s hearing on his nomination for surgeon general that he didn’t plan to use the position as a bully pulpit for gun control. (Charles Dharapak / Associated Press / March 16, 2014)

LA Times

Intense opposition from the National Rifle Assn. has all but doomed prospects for President Obama's nominee for surgeon general, officials said Saturday as pro-gun Senate Democrats peeled away from the White House on a volatile issue in an election year.

Facing a potential high-profile setback for the president, the White House is not pushing for a vote to confirm Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, a Harvard- and Yale-educated internist and former emergency room doctor who has advocated for stricter gun control laws, the officials said.

Democratic leaders in the Senate have begun surveying senators to determine whether there is enough support to save the troubled nomination. Few Republicans are expected to back Murthy, and as many as eight Democrats also could be opposed.

"We don't expect a vote to happen," a Senate aide said.

The divide between the White House and the president's party has widened in recent weeks as Obama's low poll numbers leave Democrats increasingly concerned about their chances in the November midterm election and whether they could lose their majority in the Senate.

Playground: We are the NRA

A song about the United States, where life is cheap.

What is the value of life in the US?
The cost of a bullet!

NRA racism in black and white

From General Sherman's March to the Sea>

Even though Collin Idehens, Jr. has a law degree, not how he does the "urban youth" thing?

1998 NRA Annual Meetings - Charlton Heston

Fact of the day

From the same group that one proposed gun control laws and had a president who said “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons...I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

In 1975, the NRA published a Fact Book on Firearms Control that endorsed “reasonable regulation” such as a “waiting period between purchase and delivery,” recordkeeping requirements for “manufacturers, importers, dealers and pawnbrokers,” laws that “control all machine guns and destructive devices,” and the enforcement of “reasonable conditions” for those “wishing to carry a concealed firearm.”

See Also:

• White Men and Their Guns 
• The NRA once supported gun control

The NRA - Then and Now