cos | A Theory about the National Rifle Association

Pieced together from parts of several articles I read recently...

Over the years, the percentage of the NRA's money that comes from members and membership activities has decreased, while the percentage that comes from gun-selling corporations has increased. As that happens, the NRA morphs gradually from a grassroots organization to a PR arm of the gun industry. Effects of this include:

1. The NRA's interest has shifted from an individual's supposed right to own a gun, to corporations' interest in opportunities to make money by selling guns. For example, I think most NRA members do not personally want to own semi-automatics and high capacity magazines, but the NRA has been uncompromising in opposing restrictions on such things because gun companies can make more money if they're allowed to sell a wider range of products.

More interesting, though,

2. Acting as a marketing wing of the gun industry, one of the NRA's new roles is promoting gun sales, which they do by spreading paranoia that your ability to buy guns is about to be restricted. Especially any time a new Democratic president or Congress is elected. More fear = more people rushing to buy guns while they still can.

And even more interesting,

3. Like Super PACs and similar outside groups run "negative" political ads so that the candidate they support doesn't have to take the backlash, the NRA as the gun industry's Super PAC has another role: take the heat off the corporations. Be the lightning rod for criticism, so people don't protest or pressure corporations directly. Seen in this light, saying stupid and offensive and "out of touch" things fits into the NRA's role well.

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I truly think the NRA spoke from good intentions the other day. I think more police and/or 'special armed guards' in schools is a bad idea, but probably not for the reasons you do. I also take some slight umbrage at your statement, "For example, I think most NRA members do not personally want to own semi-automatics or high capacity magazines...".

Firstly, I think you may have meant "automatics" or "full-automatics" instead of "semi-automatic". Semi-automatic is the single most popular style of firearm in this country, if not the world. Secondly, I think you'll find that most (I'm speaking from personal experience here) gun owners find restrictions on high-capacity magazines (thank you, btw, for not calling them 'clips') annoying at best and intellectually dishonest at worst. Rather than fill up your comment section, I'm going to refer you to one of the more reasonably-written counterpoints to a lot of these firearm restrictions being proffered by our politicans. I know your time is limited, but I hope you read at least some of it. There's a lot of reasoned fact-talking, and not a whole lot of right-wing, chest-thumping derp that can be so common in discussions like this:
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/

Hope this helps shed some non-derpy light on 'the other side of the fence'.

I didn't actually mean "automatics", but there's no perfect term for what I did mean. For example, I didn't mean semi-automatic handguns, even though I know there are plenty of those. What I really meant was "those kinds of guns that legislators propose restrictions on, that people talk about when we talk about restricting 'semi-automatics'". It's kind of like talking about whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. There's a technical context in which a tomato is a fruit (and in that context, "vegetable" doesn't have a meaning), and another common-use context in which it's a vegetable and also *not* a fruit. So it's correct to say that a tomato is a fruit, and correct to say that it's not a fruit, and correct to say that it's a vegetable (though it's incorrect to say that it's not a vegetable, since it is in the only context in which that word applies).

Similarly, I think a lot of gun advocates like to play this semantic gotcha game with the multiple meanings of semi-automatic, because for some it gives them a comforting sense that their opponents just don't know enough about guns to talk about the issue, and for others it's just a way of rhetorically attacking reasonable proposals by pretending they're broader and less reasonable.

However, all that aside, I'm not sure you're right even when using the technical meaning of the term. Can you find some statistics to back it up? If semi-automatics are "popular" that could support my point rather than oppose it, since "popular" may simply mean "a lot of them get sold" but not necessarily "most of the sort of people the NRA says it represents own them". Maybe they're popular because gun runners who buy batches in stores and take them to re-sell in Mexico like semi-automatics. Maybe they're popular because urban criminals and organized crime prefer them. I've tried to get stats on American gun ownership by type of gun and it's hard, but the few tantalizing hints of stats I've found all seem to show that only a fairly small minority of legal owners of guns in the US own semi-automatics. Maybe that's wrong; if so, please provide some data, because I'd love to see it.

By my intended meaning, though, I think it's very clear that most legal gun owners don't have those kinds of guns.

Now I hope you'll see that I am *not* making an argument for or against any particular legislative proposal in this post, or even any general kind of proposal, or even a general argument for or against gun ownership, regulation, or interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. So, I'm not going to get into that here. My post is specifically about a theory about what the NRA is and does. The "fence" that you're on "the other side of" is not a relevant fence in this context.

Similarly, I think a lot of gun advocates like to play this semantic gotcha game with the multiple meanings of semi-automatic, because for some it gives them a comforting sense that their opponents just don't know enough about guns to talk about the issue, and for others it's just a way of rhetorically attacking reasonable proposals by pretending they're broader and less reasonable.

Completely agreed. It's the gun debate equivalent of a computer geek shutting off their brain when someone inadvertently uses the term "memory" to refer to hard drive space.

This is borne out in my personal experience as well. A lot of my shooting friends stopped giving the NRA money years ago because their positions were too damned ridiculous. The only folks I know who are still members are the firearms instructors who are mandatory lifetime members.

It may be a self-reinforcing cycle, if the NRA's progress down this path drives members away, and they make up for it with corporate support, which prods them further down the path that drives members away.

This. All of this. With "this" sauce. I've been lamenting recently that I really wish the NRA would get back its original purpose of promoting gun education, gun safety, and sane gun control regulations (since I'd really like the folks who write or at least heavily influence gun regulations to be people who own guns, use guns, and know shit about guns). Sadly, the above means this will never happen. I think we need a new advocacy groups for gun owners that's actually membership based. No idea how to bring this about though. Especially as someone who is not a gun owner.

A few years ago, someone tried to create such a group: The American Hunters and Shooters Association. Unfortunately, it seems to have failed.

Fascinating, and this seems so true. And also sad and horrible. But true.

+1

Particularly the 'sad and horrible' part.

Q: How many NRA officials does it take to change a light bulb?

A: MORE GUNS!

A Theory about the National Rifle Association

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