NRA Youth Day: Totally Not Helping

[Gravekeeper]

NRA Youth Day

Because a 3 year old needs a lifetime NRA membership? >.>

I try to stay objective over the whole gun control thing in the US, but I'm really starting to struggle here. The NRA seems utterly tone deaf lately. I mean, I hear the words on what they say they're doing but it doesn't match what they seem to actually be doing.

( And yeah, the article is certainly a tad hyperbolic with some of the quotes, but still )

[HYHYBT]

The NRA's function seems to be increasing gun sales, period.

[Ginger Tea]

Well with all the current members either darwining themselves out or loosing their firearms as evidence, they need all the new recruits and membership fees they can.

This is the new parental drive, forget enrolling your child as soon as you've found out the sex to then name him or her and enrol them into the most exclusive school.

[Andara Bledin]

I can't even get two paragraphs in. With the hyperbole and the trotting out of the Newton shooting for outrage point just turns my stomach.

It certainly seems to me that if you are a family that has guns in the house, it would be in everybody's best interests that the children understand that guns are not toys and should not be treated as such.

Rather than, you know, the alternative of pretending that they either don't exist or that the kids will never, ever find themselves in the presence of a gun without adult supervision, both of which we know are utterly false and will just lead to more incidents of children's lives being ended or ruined through a combination of ignorance and head-in-the-sand policy making.

[Greenday]

Oh, is teaching kids how to properly use a gun by using air soft guns a terrible thing to do? I wasn't aware of this.

[Kheldarson]

Okay, on the lifetime membership thing, equate it to a grandfather spoiling his child. The membership fee for a lifetime is $1000, and, at events like these, they tend to drop it by 25-50% (my store had a drop of 25% for the NRA weekend we hosted). So grandpa bought his grandchild something he wanted him to have. It's his way of spoiling the child.

As for the rest, well, this is a culture thing. The families who attend this kind of event would be teaching their children this at their own home. These kids probably do have air rifles, BB guns, and possibly actual guns at home.

The older ones have probably already been hunting.

I really didn't like the comparison of "learning how to shoot" = "become the next school shooter". Don't tell me that's just hyperbole; that's being downright nasty. I had a teacher pull similar on me once.

Course, I also don't think it's good advice to keep a gun safe in your kids' bedroom either. Sorry, but that's pretty stupid too. Get the logic, but that's stupid.

[Gravekeeper]

The article is certainly hyperbolic, have to wade through that part.

Oh, is teaching kids how to properly use a gun by using air soft guns a terrible thing to do? I wasn't aware of this.

and so is that >.> You can teach a child to respect firearms in the house without having to teach them how super awesome fun guns are. In much the same way you teach a child to respect everything else in the house that might be dangerous. There's no reason to be teaching a 4-5 year old how to hold and shoot a semi-automatic rifle that's as big as they are.

You don't need to let your child drive your car in order to teach them to look both ways before they cross the street.

To quote one of their instructors

“The problem is children have a fascination with firearms...when they see a firearm they see it on TV and in movies and a lot of times they have toy guns, so when they find a gun they want to see what happens. People tend not to be as cautious as they should be and tragedies happen,” Jon Gutmacher, a gun-law expert, NRA-certified firearms instructor and attorney said following the March 30 shooting of a 4-year-old girl last month.

[Tanasi]

Do you think that NRA just might be trying to teach the kids safe firearms handling and firearms rules???
NRA has the Eddie Eagle program that teaches small kids to bigger kids if they find a gun to not touch it, leave the area and tell an adult. The critics say NRA is just doing this to promote the NRA and sell guns. Nope at no time before, during or after the program is the NRA mentioned they're just trying to teach the kids to be safer. My gun club has sponsored some Eddie Eagle suits that the local LEOs use to put on the program. Generally an LEO in plain dress and another LEO dressed in the Eddie Eagle costume put on the program. It's aimed at pre-k to K aged kids.
Normally I wouldn't have read the article after having read the headline as I wouldn't have expected it to be anything but biased against NRA and I was correct.

[Gravekeeper]

Do you think that NRA just might be trying to teach the kids safe firearms handling and firearms rules???

Given their track record lately? No, actually. They've become a partisan political organization. Their convention there was CPAC 2.0. Yes, the article is biased, but the pictures and quotes speak for themselves. Does Eddie Eagle show a 4 year old how to hold an AR-15 properly? -.-

[Panacea]

Because a 3 year old needs a lifetime NRA membership? >.>

I try to stay objective over the whole gun control thing in the US, but I'm really starting to struggle here. The NRA seems utterly tone deaf lately. I mean, I hear the words on what they say they're doing but it doesn't match what they seem to actually be doing.

They're tone deaf on purpose. The last thing they want to do is compromise on gun control . . . . which really should be framed as gun safety because the issue isn't to restrict availability of guns in general, but more about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill . . . using the NRA's own ideas.

The NRA's function seems to be increasing gun sales, period.

Bingo! The NRA is really a lobbying organization for the gun manufacturers. It ceased to be a shooters organization decades ago.

[Tanasi]

Given their track record lately? No, actually. They've become a partisan political organization. Their convention there was CPAC 2.0. Yes, the article is biased, but the pictures and quotes speak for themselves. Does Eddie Eagle show a 4 year old how to hold an AR-15 properly? -.-

What other organizations can you name that teaches firearm safety to people of all ages??? You won't find Bloomberg's group doing that nor will you find Josh Sugarman's group. But to directly answer you question no the Eddie Eagle program doesn't bring a firearm or a likeness into it. They just impress upon the kids: Do not touch, get away and tell an adult.
Also yes NRA is partisan do you expect them to propose laws to ban firearms from their membership and other honest firearms owners and users??? The mostly back republican candidates but they also back democrats. They gave money to Harry Reid during his last run, he had an A+ rating btw. Now with what he's done I doubt he'll get any more money from them and his rating has been downgraded. NRA also gave money to Bill Clinton when he was running for Arkansas gov, the also gave to Algore. They did until Bill and Algore decided to run for president and turned their backs on the Constitution (or parts of it.)
NRA gives money to almost all politicians that back their cause, do you expect them to back those that work against them???
NRA is partly a lobbying group but it is also other things. NRA is just damned good at lobbying and they can bring voters to the poles. In the grand scheme of things NRA doesn't have a lot of money, sure they have a few wealthy benefactors but most of their money come from dues and solicitations of the membership. They don't have have billionaires backing them such as Bloomberg and Soros. In case you didn't know Bloomberg's group is spending 12 million of his dollars to target democrat senators that didn't vote like he thought they should. Is that partisan???

[Tanasi]

They're tone deaf on purpose. The last thing they want to do is compromise on gun control . . . . which really should be framed as gun safety because the issue isn't to restrict availability of guns in general, but more about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill . . . using the NRA's own ideas.



Bingo! The NRA is really a lobbying organization for the gun manufacturers. It ceased to be a shooters organization decades ago.

NRA can't afford to give very much on gun control. They backed the BGCs 94, then when the records of those BGCs were being kept for "auditing purposes" they had to jump on that with both feet to stop it. You and I both know you can't trust any politicians or bureaucrats no further than you can throw them and that's why we have bills that are 100's of pages long to specially state the mission and scope of the bill and what can and can't be done.
The proposed BGC wouldn't have solved the problem because it didn't address the problem. The loonies and wack-jobs have to be identified before they can be flagged but then the advocates for the loonies and wack-jobs jump and say you can't ID them as such they're just sick and shouldn't be labeled. Until there is a method to get the mentally ill into the NICS system then the whole thing is pointless, but that's mostly the point. The bill isn't about saving lives it's about control. Just another faceless drone that decides who can and can't buy a firearm.
NRA lobbies for the firearms industry as a whole. Yes they get some money from the various manufacturers but not that much. Contrary to popular belief the firearms industry isn't dripping with profits. Their work force is highly skilled and highly paid and yes in the big shops the workers are unionized.
The ISSF is the main lobby for manufacturers of firearms and accessories. They pulled out of their own show/convention when the company they hired to put it on banned "modern" sporting rifles from being displayed. In the end the show was canceled and I'd bet ISSF has already found someone else to put it on next year and someone else to run the Shot Show in 14.

[s_stabeler]

Tanasi, if the NRA was arguing for loonies and wack jobs to be included in NICS, then more people would agree with them. They don't, they argue against any changes to gun control laws, implying thye want them to stay as thye are, even though they need reform.

[Gravekeeper]

Tanasi, if the NRA was arguing for loonies and wack jobs to be included in NICS, then more people would agree with them. They don't, they argue against any changes to gun control laws, implying thye want them to stay as thye are, even though they need reform.

^ Exactly. They've lost all legitimacy. They let Glenn Beck give their keynote speech at this years convention. He promptly portrayed Bloomberg as Hitler. Now he's demanding an apology from the main stream media for being offended that he portrayed Bloomberg as Hitler. Also speaking, wastes of oxygen Sarah Palin and Rick Perry.

Nevermind their CEO exploiting the Boston bombing.

[Panacea]

On top of that, polls have consistently shown that 90% of the American public and 74% of NRA members support the changes to the background checks, to make them uniform, consistent, and to close loopholes in gun shows and private sales, and clamp down on straw buyers.

The NRA is really only supporting the gun lobby on that one: more and better background checks means fewer guns sold, and that hits the bottom line.