NRA Gun Control Crusade Reflects Firearms Industry Financial Ties

[TomCADem]

Source: Huffington Post

The NRA’s deep ties to the gun industry dismays some lawmakers who have introduced gun control bills responding to the mass shootings.

“The NRA is basically helping to make sure the gun industry can increase sales,” Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat and longtime gun control advocate, told The Huffington Post. McCarthy last week proposed a bill that would ban new sales of new large ammunition clips that increase the lethality of weapons like those used in mass shootings in Connecticut, Colorado and Wisconsin.

“No one is challenging NRA members' right to own guns,” McCarthy said. "We’ve had large mass shootings which have [involved] large mass assault weapons clips. These clips aren’t used for hunting.”

McCarthy’s husband and five other people were shot dead in a brutal assault in 1993 on a New York commuter train by a man wielding a gun with a large-capacity ammunition clip.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/nra-gun-control-firearms-industry-ties_n_2434142.html

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Great investigative article that documents the deep ties between the NRA and the gun industry and how the NRA's inflammatory rhetoric and scare tactics about Obama taking away your guns has often lead to increased gun sales.

[pipoman]

1. Yes rep McCarthy, we know that you know

the second amendment doesn't have anything to do with hunting..

[reteachinwi]

2. Counter marketing

Make gun culture "uncool." The marketing by the NRA has been very effective and damages its victims. Make semi-automatic guns with high capacity clips as undesirable as President Mitt Romney. We Americans may not make things the way we used to but we still know how to sell stuff. Or unsell stuff.

[loudsue]

3. Corporations, industries, and churches have been running this country

for way too long with little or no regulation. It has to stop.

[Archae]

4. I keep saying this.

[Skyline]

5. sadly

I tend to ignore everything coming out of NY with their recent bills that have been passed like, limiting the amount of soda someone can drink, forcing women to breastfeed in the hospital, and now working on controlling how doctors prescribe medicine. They are a great example of how things should be done /sarcasm

[Agschmid]

6. You mean "NYC"... it's a big state.

It's not all like that.

[ileus]

7. Still going with the ole you don't hunt with it argument.

[onehandle]

8. Gun owners are nothing but sheep to them. What a scam. nt

[appal_jack]

9. ZOMG! People who sell things want to keep doing so!

ZOMG! People who sell things want to keep doing so!

Why, exactly, should the gun industry not support the NRA &/or other 2nd Amendment organizations? As a Democrat, I hate how the NRA has climbed into bed with the right wing fringe (and therefore I am not a member of the NRA myself). I would rather that there be some pro-rights groups that welcome all supporters of the full Bill of Rights powerful enough to speak on the national stage. But there isn't at present. Too many Democrats are trashing the 2nd Amendment right now, so of course industry forces are standing up via the NRA, and thus aligning themselves with Repubs. Hopefully, we pro-BoR & pro-RKBA Democrats can develop a voice and organizational framework of our own over time, so that this sentiment is no longer monopolized by the right.

-app

[samsingh]

10. that nra is only interested in increasing gun sales

they are a sales/marketing channel for the gun manufacturers.

[farminator3000]

11. here's a washington post article

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believers-converted-a-marksmanship-group-into-a-mighty-gun-lobby/2013/01/12/51c62288-59b9-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_story_4.html

***

from OP article
According to a 2012 poll conducted by GOP pollster Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 74 percent of NRA members support mandatory background checks for all gun purchases, a position that the NRA has stridently opposed. “There’s a big difference between the NRA’s rank and file and the NRA’s Washington lobbyists, who live and breathe for a different purpose,” Mark Glaze, the executive director of the gun control group, said.

-skip-


“Your fight has become our fight,” then-NRA president Charlton Heston declared before a crowd of gun company executives at the annual SHOT Show, the industry's biggest trade show. “Your legal threat has become our constitutional threat," he said.

Following the passage of the shield law that dismembered those lawsuits, the NRA launched a new fundraising drive targeting firearms companies the organization had just helped in a big way. That effort, dubbed "Ring of Freedom," paid off handsomely. Since 2005, the NRA drive has pulled in $14.7 million to $38.9 million from dozens of gun industry giants, including Beretta USA, Glock and Sturm, Ruger, according to a 2011 study by the Violence Policy Center, a group that favors gun control.

The Violence Policy Center study cited an NRA promotional brochure about the corporate partnership drive, noting that LaPierre promised that “this program is geared towards your company’s corporate interests.”

Despite the millions of dollars it has collected from the gun industry, the NRA’s website says “it is not affiliated with any firearm or ammunition manufacturers or with any businesses that deal in guns and ammunition.”