Reply #1: *shrug* I'm not sure about desperation [View All]

[Recursion]

The only real gun issues nationwide right now are Parker v. Fenty in DC and HR 1022. They seem to be winning the former, and will use the latter to slap us around some because, really, it's hard to say that bill isn't an outright gun-grab.

I'd imagine they got your partner's info from the standard list-broker methods; depending on your jurisdiction, weapons permits may be public info, and they'll get a lot more results for their money hitting up known gun-owners than the population as a whole.

And before we all scream about how evil they are, let's remind everyone that NRA endorsements of Democrats were pretty important in 2006 and probably are going to be important in the state elections next month too (my current quick tally showed about 1/3 of their '07 endorsements were democrats). Our best hope would be that Parker v. Fenty ends up taking gun control off the national legislative stage so that they'll have less to flog us with next fall.

I have real mixed feelings about the NRA. On the one hand, no organization has so consistently stood up for the right to keep and bear arms. On the other hand, they've let some social conservatives take over their message department, though they'll still endorse very liberal Democrats as long as they have good gun rights records. They did work with Rob Williams back in the day to arm the African American community to defend themselves against the Klan (how many people know that?), and for all their social conservative posturing -- which does bug the hell out of me -- they do stick with their real issue when it comes down to it; for example, they do work with Pink Pistols even though that probably drives a lot of their membership up the wall. They did help write some of the legislation that seems to have had good effects (background checks, etc.), but they use divisive no-compromise language even when they are precisely compromising to reach a solution everybody can go forward with.

How the DLC sold gun control to the left of my party is still a mystery to me. It's done nothing but give the House and Senate to the Republicans for a decade. But honestly, blaming the NRA for voters' anger about badly-crafted gun control legislation is making the tail wag the dog. It's like that marketing joke: "why did the New Coke marketing campaign fail?" "Because New Coke tasted horrible." The NRA is about as grassroots as a lobbying organization gets, and they get richer every time we write bad laws that target gun owners as part of a culture war rather than addressing actual gun crime (the obsession with what rifles civilians can and can't own is a perfect example: rifles are almost never used in crimes, yet they're the focus of most gun control laws -- why is that? what are we accomplishing other than pissing off people who otherwise would probably support our platform?)