NRA convention underscores anti-gun camp's irrelevancy

[virginia mountainman]

Great piece in the Charlotte Observer!!!...Let me repeat that, a GREAT piece!!

A tid-bit..

Adhering to a pattern of behavior that has developed over the years, a tiny contingent of gun prohibitionists paraded outside of the Charlotte Convention Center while the National Rifle Association was hosting its record-breaking members' meeting, but they remained only long enough to get some camera time with local news crews.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, came to Charlotte to grab some face time and get his name in the local media. Where the NRA can pull more than 70,000 members, the Brady bunch could barely muster two dozen protesters to parade around for perhaps an hour, then leave satisfied that the 5 o'clock news would carry their images.

For several years, right up to the devastating 1994 mid-term elections that turned dozens of Congressional anti-gunners out of office, the Brady Campaign and other gun control groups enjoyed media and public support. But when gun rights organizations began fighting back with facts and developed a strategy of education through legal journals, their influence began to wane. That influence continued to erode as time tested their rhetoric and found it not simply wanting, but totally preposterous.

One dig on Obama, being the most anti-gun president in history....So far, that is not true, He has signed more pro-gun legislation than Bush did..

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/05/20/1446041/nra-convention-underscores-anti.html

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. I wouldn't want to mess with the guy with Gottlieb.

Noooooo way. That is one big dude.

[damntexdem]

2. We have a lot of work to do to make the NRA irrelevant.

But it's one of those necessary things if we are to have a decent society.

[katandmoon]

3. +1

[spin]

6. Since the NRA helped pass "shall issue" concealed carry ...

in many states the violent crime rate has dropped significantly.

[freebrew]

10. Should read 'Right to CONCEALED Carry'

Missouri has been 'Right to OPEN Carry' for as long as I've been alive. A LONG time.

Otherwise, great map.

[virginia mountainman]

14. Hey Spin!

Great post, here is a link to an updated CCW map, yours only goes to '06

We have made some more gains since then...Here is the current map!!

[proteus_lives]

8. You want to make the NRA irrelevant?

Then stop trying to strip your fellow citizens of their rights.

Then the NRA will blow away with the wind.

[DissedByBush]

16. The NRA would still stay around

But then it would shed the politics and stick with what it was founded for: gun education and marksmanship promotion.

[proteus_lives]

19. Good point.

[friendly_iconoclast]

11. You could start by going apostate on gun control. Abandon the faith.

Give up on the delusion that making it harder for the non-criminal to buy and keep guns affects the criminal use of guns.

I'm sick of seeing issues like health care, financial reform, and environmental policy given to the Republicans because
some Democrats still insist that gun control be welded to those issues.

Dump the illusion, and the NRA will go back to its training-and-safety roots where it began (and always did well, BTW)

[jazzhound]

13. Yeah.......let's go after the NRA while we ignore the root causes of crime.

That strategy has worked so well thus far! :eyes:

[spin]

4. I thought this comment from the article was extremely accurate...

If it weren't for the fact that pro-gun rights groups are so active, the Brady bunch would not even have events to attend. In short, gun prohibitionists have become irrelevant, and in their desperation for attention, they appear to be in a state of denial, reaching out to a shrinking audience that still believes in public safety through demagoguery and surrender to the criminal element.

Just like some politicians, Helmke and the Brady Campaign do not know when it is time to retire.

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/05/20/1446041/nra-convention-underscores-anti.html#ixzz0oUXIANAB

:toast:

[frebrd]

5. K&R! Thanks. eom

[gorfle]

7. I'd like to go one day.

I'd like to go to one of these conventions one day but I damn sure would not want to listed to the likes of Sarah Palin giving keynote speeches.

[PavePusher]

9. Agreed. Pretty awful set of speakers this year. Sigh. n/t

[one-eyed fat man]

12. There's a lot to see and do

I didn't go to the Louisville covention to hear John McCain bump his gums in 2008. Besides the exhibits there's are seminars on a variety of subjects, ranging from historical facts of interest to collectors, training for law enforcement, hunters, target shooters, young and old. It'd be nice if there were more pro-gun Democrats for them to endorse, it's tough always being the bastard step-child. There it was how can you be for guns and a Democrat while here is how can you call yourself a Democrat and be for guns?

[GreenStormCloud]

15. Sorry, the facts are against you.

Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms act in 2005 which was a specific pro-guns act. Obama voted against that act. That was a major act that stopped Daley and Bloomberg from bankrupting the gun manufactuers by drowning them in legal fees.

Obama signed a credit card reform act that had a pro-gun measure as a rider.

Bush also signed an act banning the confiscation of guns during disasters.

So Bush signed two specific pro-gun acts that I can remember, while Obama signed one minor rider.

[virginia mountainman]

17. I had forgot about those, and your correct! eom

[X_Digger]

18. Dubya's daddy was worse for gun rights than any dem president since..

http://www.davekopel.com/2a/mags/george-bush-and-the-nra.htm

The aptly titled drug “czar” William Bennett—on his first day in office—convinced the Treasury Department to outlaw the import of several models of so-called “assault weapons.” The NRA, attempting to preserve a relationship with the White House, praised the “temporary” import moratorium as providing a cooling-off period for a rational discussion of the “assault weapon” issue.

But a few weeks later, President Bush dramatically expanded the import ban to cover many dozens of additional firearms models. Bush Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater added that President Bush wished that he had the additional authority to simply outlaw the domestic manufacture of so-called “assault weapons.”

<snip>

In May of 1989, President Bush made the import ban permanent, and proposed a ban on all magazines holding more than 15 rounds, but he backed away from active support for a ban on any additional guns. Under the Bush proposal, all large-capacity “ammunition feeding devices” currently in private hands would have to be registered with the federal government, under terms similar to the current registration of machine guns.

<snip>

The White House offered to sign the Brady Bill and a more comprehensive ban on semiautomatics (including a retroactive registration requirement) if the gun control laws were included in a crime bill that the White House wanted.

Something else that struck me as prescient (this article was from 1996)- Dubya must've learned at his daddy's knee..

All the while, President Bush accelerated the trend begun in the late Reagan administration towards militarizing federal law enforcement and freeing it from Constitutional constraints. “No-knock” break-ins became the routine method of serving search warrants. Wiretapping rates set new records year after year. The use of informants grew rapidly. Law enforcement agencies acquired huge stocks of military equipment. The military became increasingly involved in domestic law enforcement, often under specious pretexts designed to avoid statutory restrictions on use of the military against the American people.

The Bush administration pushed hard for even greater restrictions on freedom. The centerpiece of the Bush crime bill would have allowed courtroom use of illegally seized evidence, if the evidence happened to be a gun. If the police broke into your home for no reason, and, literally, tortured you until you told them where your unregistered gun was hidden, the gun could be used against you in court. Other elements of the Bush crime bill (now included in President Clinton’s proposed Terrorism Bill) included trials with secret evidence for certain legal resident aliens, and destruction of the right of habeas corpus, by which federal courts review whether state or federal prisoners are being illegally held in prison.