NRA robo calls Newtown

[Panacea]

I support my 2nd Amendment rights. But the NRA makes my teeth ache.

Good lord, is there no depth they won't stoop to? They robo called people in Newtown CT to get them to lobby against new gun control laws there.

Assholes.

http://www.wfsb.com/story/21782952/n...lls?hpt=us_bn7

[HYHYBT]

Tactless... and without even the likelihood of success to provide a veneer of justification.

[s_stabeler]

the NRA: the best recruiters for anti-gun organisations around.

[MadMike]

the NRA: the best recruiters for anti-gun organisations around.

It is starting to sound like they're their own worst enemy. I'm a big supporter of gun rights, and up until recently I had a lot of respect for the NRA. I hate robocalls to begin with. I think they're rude and obnoxious. And to do them in that particular town is in extremely poor taste.

[Hyena Dandy]

For all the issues I have with the NRA, I don't really blame them for this.

I mean, they are the people who do gun rights advocacy. There is a situation where laws are being passed against gun rights. They advocate against that. The fact that they advocate against that somewhere that a horrible shooting happened shouldn't really play into it. This is totally doing their job.

[s_stabeler]

um, Hyena Daddy, there is a line between advocating agianst something, and being utter idiots. This crosses it. I doubt there is a person in Newtown unaffected by the tragedy at Sandy Hook, and it is still fresh in people's minds. The robocalling has likely renewed the grief of the families of the dead, for instance. It's heartless, it's cruel, and beyond the bounds of human decency.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

For all the issues I have with the NRA, I don't really blame them for this.

I do.

Anyone with a lick of any kind of empathy would sit there and go,

"I know that there is some anti-gun legislation going through, and we should advocate against that... but we really shouldn't be targeting a town where there is still a festering, slowly healing wound caused by gun violence."

How often were bad things done where the person stood up and went, "I was just doing my job/ I was just doing what I was told?"

The only time I would accept "I was just doing my job" is when there is no harm caused by the doing of said job. Calling the houses of people who have recently been afflicted by the horrible effects that guns can have, and telling them to stop the anti-gun legislation is definitely doing harm - especially if they hit the homes of the very people who lost family during that attack.

It's callous and unfeeling.

Oh, and then trying to back peddle and go, "We only contact NRA members." Yeah, no. If they only contacted NRA members then there wouldn't be this huge backlash and the complaints from people from Newtown.

[Hyena Dandy]

*Dandy. :P

And does that mean they should just... Not object to gun laws if people are upset?

People everywhere are hurt by gun violence, not only those in mass shootings. There's a lot of bullshit the NRA pulls that I don't like, but this is not one that I can find myself objecting too. But really, if you can think of a way of advocating against gun laws in Newtown that you wouldn't find crossing the line, I'd be happy to hear an alternative.

I don't like the NRA, but this doesn't seem that bad to me. There are things that the pro-gun lobby does that I DO find pretty reprehensible, but this really isn't one of them.

[HYHYBT]

For all the issues I have with the NRA, I don't really blame them for this.

I mean, they are the people who do gun rights advocacy. There is a situation where laws are being passed against gun rights. They advocate against that. The fact that they advocate against that somewhere that a horrible shooting happened shouldn't really play into it. This is totally doing their job.

You speak as if context is irrelevant. This reminds me a lot of something Grandma told me about. Grandaddy died right before what would have been their 50th anniversary. A few days later, a representative from the hearing aid company called absolutely insisting on speaking to him about replacement batteries. Grandma basically said he couldn't come to the phone because he'd just died, and wouldn't be needing any more batteries in the future for the same reason. Instead of saying something like "I'm sorry for your loss" and ending the call, his response was along the lines of "Oh, well in that case, how about some for yourself?"

You may say his job was to sell hearing aid batteries, and that the poor timing and the fact that she didn't even use a hearing aid was irrelevant, he was just doing his job.... but that doesn't change that it was, on the human side, a totally tactless approach, and on the business side, off-putting enough that even if she'd needed a hearing aid later she'd have been far less likely to choose one of theirs after that encounter than before.

[MadMike]

And that's just a whole other rant about telemarketers in general. They don't give a rat's ass if they're upsetting people, as long as they can get a sale, or in this case, get people to join their cause.