"Inside the Power of the N.R.A."

[applegrove]

Inside the Power of the N.R.A.

By ROBERT DRAPER at the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/inside-the-power-of-the-nra.html?_r=0

"SNIP............................

To get to Joe Manchin’s private office in the Hart Senate Office Building, you first pass through a lobby where you encounter a small bronze statue of an Old West lawman holding a firearm — an award given to Manchin several years ago by a chapter of the National Rifle Association for his unswerving defense of gun rights. Then you turn down a hallway, past several framed photographs of children who were victims of the massacre a year ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The combination of the bronze rifleman in the lobby and the young faces on the wall suggests a particular viewpoint — I stand with gun lovers; I stand with victims of gun violence — that qualifies, in Washington anyway, as being nuanced, which is to say politically ill advised if not suicidal.

.......................

But no version did pass. Four months after the Newtown shooting, on April 17, the bill failed to win the necessary votes to make it through the Senate. The most fearsome lobbying organization in America prevailed once again. Other victories would soon follow. On the day before I visited Manchin’s office in September, two state senators who spearheaded a recent passage of tough gun-control legislation in Colorado were recalled — another triumph for the N.R.A., despite having been outspent by Bloomberg’s group. (A third Colorado state senator who supported the bill announced her retirement last month in the face of a recall.) Not long after that, a mentally unhinged gunman at the Washington Navy Yard, less than two miles from the Senate office buildings, killed 12 employees. In his eulogy for the victims, the president noted somberly: “Once more our hearts are broken. Once more we ask why.” But few were asking why Joe Manchin or some other senator wasn’t out trying to round up more votes for his bill. If the murder of 20 schoolchildren had proved insufficient motivation to address gun violence in America, this killing was not enough to persuade anyone to take on the N.R.A. again.

“As far as putting on a full-court press, I don’t see that happening,” Manchin told me in his office. “And I don’t hear much conversation about it.” The defeat of the bill has added to the legend of the gun lobby’s brawn. Though the N.R.A.'s opponents still question whether the group is really as indomitable as it is perceived, at a certain point, political mythology engineers its own reality. One recently retired congressman from a conservative district told me, “That was the one group where I said, ‘As long as I’m in office, I’m not bucking the N.R.A.’ ”


...........................SNIP"

[kro32]

1. They aren't the most powerful

The AARP is actually the most fearsome lobbying group in Washington.

[applegrove]

2. Anytime I post anything on guns I get visited by quite a few people trying to

talk me down from my anti NRA stance. It has been that way forever on the DU. They have bots that go around discussion forums and pick up on any negative talk. Then they show up en mass to try to dissuade you from thinking you can think. It must be a rapid response team. That is a pretty powerful in my view. The AARP doesn't do that.

[billh58]

9. Just wake up,

did you?

[Hoyt]

10. If the AARP were as powerful as the NRA, I'd not have to work until 80 years of age.

[applegrove]

3. The GOP always try to co-opt events that stick in people's minds. Look at the way

they screamed bloody murder when Paul Wellstone's funeral had a democratic air to it. Look how they said nice things about Kennedy when his 50th anniversary was about: so as not to alienate their older base who were all deeply affected by Kennedy's assassination when they were young. And now this doing in of the idea of background checks. Blatant co-option of the thing that will stick in people's minds about 2012: Sandy Hook. These memories, which have a when and where you were when you heard component, make up the cornerstones in our lives and give us new direction, with an emotional engine to back it up. Manipulators need to control these if they want to control our narratives...which they do by interrupting the flow of passion. Hasn't worked. The victims and families of are organizing. Still, shame on you NRA. Shame on you.

[libodem]

4. I agree with you

100%.

[applegrove]

5. Thanks.

[Hoyt]

6. When Grover Norquist, etc., walk in reprenting NRA and Tbaggers, Congress folks kiss his rear.

[aikoaiko]

7. Thanks applegrove. That was a good article.

[billh58]

8. The NRA is the

most insidious right-wing organization in the USA. They have been buying corrupt politicians for decades, and their central theme is centered around the big lie: They're (meaning Democrats) coming to take your guns.