Where can I get a copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of the NRA"?

[friendly_iconoclast]

I have noticed posts here at the DU Gungeon claiming that the vast majority of Americans support gun control,
yet are thwarted by NRA via remote control of Congress.

Or anyone opposing a new gun control proposal must have been 'told' to do so by the NRA.


My question is:

Are the people who say these things saying them because they just 'know' this is what is happening, or
is their a "Protocols of the Elders of the NRA" floating around out there somewhere?

If there is, where can I get it?

[mikelgb]

1. Hardy har

[SPedigrees]

2. NRA used to be a moderate sportsmans' assoc.

Then Wayne LaPierre took over the reins. That's when I mailed them my membership card, shredded. I think it was in the 1980s or early 90s. God only knows what warped twisted agenda they follow and prescribe now.

[provis99]

3. there is a simple reason why the gun people get their way

The majority of the American people do indeed favor increased gun control; but it is lower on the priority list for them than other issues. For the gun people, gun ownership is usually their first priority, or often their only priority, so the salience of the issue is more important. Simply put, a politician will gain little support by supporting greater gun control even though it has majority support, since few people will decide their vote based on that issue. But a small number of gun owners will switch their vote based on that one issue, and since elections are often very close between candidates, it makes more sense not to push a gun control agenda, since it will gain you no votes, but will lose you some, even if most people would prefer having gun control.

Get it now?

[friendly_iconoclast]

4. I disagree with your first sentence, however the rest of your analysis is largely correct

Except for the fact that some politicians might actually be voting their beliefs.

The trouble comes when people who believe that *their* political position is held by the majority
(because they ignore or demonize gun owners, and so only talk to those who agree with them) get
blindsided when a law or ruling doesn't go their way.

That's when the "ZOMG, the secret NRA machine quashed the will of the people!" meme
comes into play. The OP was a dig at those who "know" how the NRA really works, and just
how exactly they get their "knowledge".

[Statistical]

22. Correct except the majority NO LONGER support greater gun control. n/t

[villager]

5. The more interesting question is why the gungeon love for this corporate marketing lobby?

About whom many gungeonites keep aplogizing and backpedaling, trying to claim how "misunderstood" these genteel folks really are...

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. An even more interesting question is why anti gun bigots throw up strawmen rather than deal with

the issues head on.

[villager]

8. as you just did? No one here wants to cop to the NRA being the industry lobbying group it is

Nearly everyone here -- there are a couple of notable exceptions -- defends this rightwing, racist paranoia-marketing group with one virtual breath after another...

It's as if their own personal credibility was bound up in the NRA's, and they don't dare argue their own positions separate from the officially-sanctioned ones of the gun mfg. lobby...

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

21. I have only seen a few members here that are also NRA members.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

23. There are formal organizations that lobby for gun and ammo manufacturers, and they are not the NRA

[DonP]

7. "Corporate Marketing Lobby" - That would be the NSSF, not the NRA

The registered lobby for the relatively small ($4 to $5 billion) gun industry is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, not the NRA-ILC. Companies in the gun industry can donate to the NRA-ILC but since most of them are smaller and privately owned firms, they are not big political contributors like other corporations.

But lets ignore fact and reality since it gets in the way of a treasured, but abysmally ignorant, meme about how the NRA is a bunch of corporate giants.

it's just so much fun to pretend they are a huge monolithic bunch that just squash all dissent from the common people, isn't it?

The NRA has clout because it has 4+ million members (times $35 every year minimum) with extended families that vote like clockwork. (We'll ignore those IAM-AFL/CIO members that work there as machinists and also lobby as individuals for gun rights).

I'm sure as soon as you get your own gun control organization up and running it will eclipse the NRA with lawmakers in short order. I understand the Brady gun control franchise is available at a rock bottom price, but their fund raising mailing list sucks, since it has more gun owners on it than gun control advocates.

Be sure to keep us posted when you get something up and running.

[villager]

9. And when the NRA hired corporate spies to keep tabs on grassroots groups

...I'm sure you dashed over to defend them tooth and nail, as you're doing now!

:rofl:

http://bit.ly/KEqEw

[SteveM]

11. Ah, still sleeping in the poppy fields of Oz (nt)

[villager]

12. ah, still unable to respond directly to the link!

n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

16. Since you claim the NRA supposedly runs Congress...

...and provides scripts for every post here you don't like, let's see your evidence.

Something more than a Mother Jones article about a one-woman industrial espionage operation.
Are you seriously claiming *she's* the Feliks Dzerzhinsky of the NRA?

But you don't have anything else, do you?

All you have is shouting, handwaving and more straw men than an L. Frank Baum convention.

[villager]

17. wait a minute, O NRA Defender -- you're saying the NRA wasn't in cahoots with the other corporations

in sending spies to grassroots groups?

You are on record here -- shouting, waving, deflecting -- as saying, conclusively, it didn't happen?

[friendly_iconoclast]

18. Of course they did. There's a leap from that to "They're controlling Congress..."

...and the anti-gun control movement"

One is undeniable, just read the article. The rest is conspiracy theory.

Apparently the woman in the MoJo article has powers that would shame Sauron and the Emperor Palpatine...

[villager]

19. I think "They're Controlling Congress" is actually your phrase

I do however think they have an unwarranted amount of suasion with that easily terrified bunch of lawmakers.

And I also think it's telling they're willing to throw in with large corporations to send spies about authentic grassroots groups. Kinda tells you what side of the fence they're on.

Which makes it peculiar that gun-toting DUers love to defend the NRA so much. It's one thing to disagree with folks like me about gun policy.

But always going that extra step to defend the NRA, in particular, is mystifying.

[friendly_iconoclast]

25. Gun control organizations seem to be terminally disorganized...

...And badly run. For one person to get all that information tells me that the mindset with these groups
(as in too many nonprofits) is: "Our strength is as the strength of ten, for our hearts are pure"

The NRA operative did not seem to do anything different than various PETA and ALF infiltrators have done
over the years.

Sauce for the (factory-farmed) goose is sauce for the gander.

Why did none of her targets think this could happen to them?

I have beefs with the NRA, and the membership I had I let lapse years ago. But the point remains:

There are only four million NRA members. If there is such a vast throng supporting more gun control, where
are they? Why aren't they better organized?

Here's a challenge for those who support gun control. It would take major $, but you claim to want to save
lives.- Start donating serious money to the NRA. They are so money grubbing, if you aren't a known
activist they will throw open the gates for you. Find out what you can and blow the whistle on them

[villager]

26. by the way, for what it's worth, your OP was fairly offensive, citing the "Protocols"

which were used, of course, by the Czar's police to deliberately whip up fear and hatred against the Jews (which was manifested in various pogroms).

Somehow, you seem to be comparing the poor, misunderstood "just folks" NRA to the Jews of Czarist Russia, and intimating that those of us weary of gun violence in our communities are analogous to the anti-semites in Russia, Nazi Germany, and other places that have used the Protocols has a basis to foment such hatred.

And the fact you would overreach like that seems to speak to the innate paranoia and hysteria that all too often marks the pro-gun folk: "My God! My God! They're coming for my guns!," and viewing everything through that prism.

For those who have actually suffered because of the real "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," your OP remains a glib and facile use of that particular document for no particularly worthy point: The NRA is being picked on too much?


Kudos to you, however, for letting your membership lapse.

[friendly_iconoclast]

27. I used "TPoTEoZ" deliberately as an example of political dirty trickery

The "NRA as boogeyman" meme serves the same purpose: Divert the gullible away from the real cause of their
problems. For example:

Your city has got a high murder rate, the economy is in shambles, poverty is rampant, and the municipal government is corrupt. Easy solution:
Blame the NRA for not leting you pass that one teensy 'common-sense'
gun law that will get guns out of the hands of criminals, solve the high murder and robbery rate, and
end the drug wars.


The "The NRA wants no gun control whatsoever, runs the political system, and would like to give every child
an AK-47" schtick is of the same nature as the "Protocols". Whether it is spread from malice or intellectual laziness, it is harmful as well.
Search around the DU Guns forum and you can find plenty of examples of it.

I don't care if the people spreading it claim to have the best interests of society at heart.

So did:

LBJ, with the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Richard Nixon, with the "Canuck letter" that sank Edmund Muskie's Presidential campaign
(because Tricky Dick correctly realized that Muskie was a far bigger threat to him than George McGovern)

The Bush/Cheney/PNAC cabal, with their "Niger yellowcake" documents. We are *still* being harmed by that one.

So spare me your newly minted concern for the victims of the Okhrana

[villager]

28. Not so "Friendly," eh?

Or even, really, "iconoclastic," given your NRA apologias, your offensive analogies, and your abject refusal to listen to anyone else...

'salright.

Bye!

[friendly_iconoclast]

29. No. Not when I see the same fraud promulgated over and over again...

...deliberately, or by people who couldn't be arsed to find out the truth for themselves.

And especially not "friendly" when history, even very recent history, gives us examples of similar
frauds. All accompanied by pious proclamations of how said frauds require action for the public good...

As for my supposed "apologias"- All I can do is quote "The Princess Bride":



"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"

An apologia is an justification. I'm not justifying the NRA, I'm *rebutting* your argument
because they have not done what you (and others) have accused them of doing.

Claro?

[X_Digger]

14. And you bitch over questionable sources..

'earth first'? Really?

If you read the motherjones story itself, looks like the company provided protective services for the NRA, not some espionage.

[villager]

20. Certainly I prefer environmentalists to NRA types. Here's a CBS link for you, though:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/06/national/main4324066.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._4324066

[DonP]

15. Ahhhgh, you got us! Yup, one lone woman working as a freelance secret agent ...

... was able to totally neuter the entire gun control movement in the United States.

She's the only reason that support for a new AWB keeps dropping and 48 states now have concealed carry laws, not because the citizens wanted it and their legislators (D and R) voted for it but because of her. Hell, she probably bribed SCOTUS on the Heller decision too and convinced that Rethuglican Ginsburg, Souter and the rest of her far right wing posse to agree that the 2nd protected an individual right. That scum!!! Thank heaven she's in prison now, right? Oh wait ...

They were never even able to connect her with anyone at the NRA outside of the Brady press office. But you keep believing all those press releases the Republican run Brady VPC folks puts out. It's good to believe in something, no matter how stupid and illogical it sounds when you say it out loud.

Or do you have other examples of "spies" out there at the grassroots level?

Or are you talking about folks like us that hear about a gun control "debate" and attend to disagree with the crap they spew? I've done that, two weeks ago at a so called gun control "debate" in Wheaton where no one but the gun control people were allowed to talk. When we asked for a chance to speak they asked the police to remove us from the room. The police refused since it was a public space and open forum and we weren't being rude or acting up in any way. So they walked out rather than discuss anything.

There were about 8 gun control people and about 45 Illinois state rifle association members attending. Nice grass roots movement you have there.

So does that make all of us "spies" too?

As my drill sergeant Degesualdo might say; "Your gun control shit is weak and getting weaker by the day".

[SteveM]

10. Actually, the gun-controllers bring up the NRA most often. Like sex organs. (nt)

[benEzra]

13. That must be the same document that says the NRA opposes

restrictions on machineguns and armor-piercing handgun ammunition, wants to repeal background checks for purchase, and supports gun ownership by criminals.

I don't always agree with the NRA (and I have had it up to here with the term "sportsman"), but it is pretty funny the stuff that they get credited with.

There's also the egregious fallacy of crediting the collective influence of 80+ million gun owners (including 20 million "assault weapon" owners and 40-50 million handgun owners) as solely due to the NRA's 4 million members. There are over 76 million gun owners out here who DON'T belong to the NRA, and most of thsoe want to keep their gun rights, too.

[jeepnstein]

24. Send them a check for a hundred bucks.

You'll get more stuff from them than you ever imagined. It will literally clog your mailbox with knowledge until you are ready to spontaneously combust. I had a "friend" sign me up once and it was misery.