American Gun Lobby is Full of Contradictions

[SecularMotion]

NRA president David Keene and Gun Owners of America executive director Larry Pratt did their rounds on last Sunday's talk shows as part of an ongoing, high-intensity effort by the broader American "gun lobby" to stifle recent moves towards passing gun control legislation in Washington.

It is to be expected that over the next few weeks Keene, Pratt, and their allies will continue to make sure the immense resources at their disposal are felt by congressmen and the American public alike.

Few interest groups in American politics manage to match the gun lobby in the manufacture of plainly spurious arguments. The lobby’s gift – its ability to mass-produce slogans – is also its curse.

It is true that bloated special interest groups have loud voices. Yet, as these massive networks of think tanks, lobbyists, and their admirers thoughtlessly churn out argument upon argument – paying more attention to the quantity of arguments presented than to the quality of those arguments – their game of psuedo-intellectual Jenga is, perhaps, bound to eventually come crashing down.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/23101/gun-control-debate-american-gun-lobby-is-full-of-contradictions

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

1. Agree, "bloated special interest groups have loud voices"

Yes, loud.

National Rifle Association and the Brady group are loud.

So are GOA and VPC.

Gun-owner groups and gun-control groups are all represented on the Sunday talk shows.

Talk. It's what they do.

[Lizzie Poppet]

2. Some poor arguments in that article, too.

While I'm not defending some of the tortured logic that's come from groups like teh NRA and GOA, that article wasn't exactly a pillar of sound argument itself. One example:

"Yet, Iraqis under Saddam Hussein, along with Libyans under Muammar Gaddafi, were fairly well armed. On the other hand, Egyptians and Tunisians, both of whom overthrew dictatorships in 2011, were hardly well armed at all."

That leaves aside one little fact: the former countries' dictators were not widely opposed by their citizens. Saddam and Gaddafi had their opposition, and were even hated in regions of their own countries, but they were supported by the majority. It doesn't matter if those citizens are well-armed or not if they have no interest in revolting.

[rrneck]

3. It's tragically funny.

We root for the celebrity special interest that tells us what we want to hear and jeer the one that doesn't.

It's all very entertaining.