The National Rifle Association is made up of men and women with children and grandchildren. We mourn the death of the children in Newtown as much as anyone else. Joe Mehrekens’ comment “Above all, the NRA agenda kills — just as if they pulled the trigger themselves” is a lie that is evil and filled with hatred.
Why was the psycho who did the shooting on the streets? Our intelligence organizations can hunt down terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan so why aren’t they identifying these psychos and either getting help for them or taking them off the street? Where is our protection? Why do we feed our kids with violence through video games? Why are movies, filled with violence, so popular in the theaters and on television? Why do millions of people tune in to boxing and watch as each beats the other until one is so badly hurt that he can no longer defend himself? This is what our society has become.
The two young men who committed the murders at the Columbine High School had been bulled relentlessly. We see news stories where others have been bullied to the point where they felt no one cared about them and they felt so helpless that they took their own life. Where were the schools and the police when these kids needed help? What kind of parents let their kids do this bullying?
I have a life time membership in the NRA. I joined because there are organizations that want to take my guns away and to stop me from hunting. They blame guns for the failings of our society. Mehrekens makes the statement, “Moreover, the NRA type doctrine implicitly assumes that 20 children and 6 adults tragically lost is a terrible but acceptable tradeoff in a dangerous world…” The NRA has never thought this way and never will. There are millions of us who are law abiding and enjoy the shooting sports and hunting. We also believe that our founding fathers were not idiots. They wrote the second amendment for a good reason. We have a right to defend our homes and families and they wrote that protection into our constitution. Every time a horrendous tragedy like occurs, the anti gun anti hunting people make use of it to push their own agenda. That is disrespectful of the families who lose loved ones.
Gary Miller
Juneau
Comments (11)
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Gary asks: "Our intelligence organizations can hunt down terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan so why aren’t they..."
Well, when it comes to guns, our government agencies have been purposely blinded due to the NRA. Specific laws have been passed in Congress, sponsored by republican representatives, backed by the NRA, which prevent agencies from gathering basic information on gun purchases and gun violence. Why would that be? Please explain why a law-abiding gun owner would want our agencies to have to operate in the blind, with one hand tied behind their back?
Here's just one example off of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action website (the NRA-ILA is the NRA's lobbying arm) where they're touting the bill they backed which would prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms from collecting information on multiple-sales of rifles. Congressman Rehberg, the sponsor of the provision, has received $35,000 from the NRA over the past decade.
"It comes as no surprise that the Obama Administration put out a Statement of Administration Policy saying that President Obama’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto H.R. 5326 (FY2013 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill). To see the statement, please click here.
Apparently, one of the reasons the President would veto H.R. 5326 is because of a NRA-backed general provision preventing funding for the new and unauthorized multiple sales reporting and registration plan proposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE). On Thursday, April 26, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations approved this general provision offered by Congressman Rehberg (R-Mont.), by a vote of 30-19.
Without this funding restriction, the BATFE could continue to circumvent the will of Congress by collecting information on multiple-sales of long guns by Executive Branch mandate and then, centralizing records of thousands of Americans’ gun purchases, without any legal authority.
Please contact your member of Congress and tell them to leave this important provision in the bill. You can contact your member of Congress at (202) 225-3121"
I have no doubt Mr. Miller is a law-abiding citizen and gun owner that want's what's best for our country. But I don't believe limiting the effectiveness of our law enforcement agencies when it comes to guns is what Mr. Miller intended. So why is the organization that he's defending doing it?
Ignorance and intolerance leading causes
And this letter is perpetuating that. Repeated use of the term psycho is a prime example. So is blaming the media for perpetuating violence but not seeing that the need to own those weapons seen on tv and in films as a factor in that equation as well.
I defended the NRA the other day, thinking their silence meant they were actually thinking over what happened. And drafting a stance and statement that was not a regurgitation of their usual club good, bigger club better, followed by chest thump.
What kind of parents allow their children to bully? The same ones who have glorified gun ownership and made shooting a hobby. Don't even pretend that it is sport. Marksmanship is a sport, you don't see an Olympic athlete using a semi. The parents that teach their child to respond to violence with bigger violence.
School yards should not look like prison yards. Ask a mom on the Gaza strip, in Ireland or Columbia. Do guns make them feel safer? I doubt it. I bet they don't care much for those "good guys" with guns any more than the bad ones.
This horrific event happened for several reasons, likely many if not all completely preventable. At the top of the preventable list, irresponsible gun ownership. Legal ownership but irresponsible.
NRA Kills Kids,Cops,Firemen,Movie Goers,Shoppers
I belonged for 20 years and quit right after President George H. Bush quit the NRA. They are nothing but a lobby arm of the gun manufacturers.
Travon Martin
I noticed the NRA did not push for teenage carry laws after Travon was shot. All black teens need a gun to be safe is what Wayne should have said to be in line that we need more not fewer guns.
Latitude
The reason gun owners don't want government records of who owns guns is that governments routinely murder thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of their citizens. And typically those government first round up all the firearms before the mass murders. Over the decades I have spoken with hundreds of WWII veterans and every one of them knew that Hitler first rounded up guns before he rounded up Jews, Catholics, gypsies, suspected homosexuals, political dissidents, and their relatives - including young children of course.
And here is an example of what government and the media do with gun ownership information:
The "News Journal" a paper in Westchester NY has published the names and addresses of all handgun permit holders in the area, along with a detailed map of homes in the region. It supposedly gained the names from local court documents.
Sauce for the goose or, home address and phone number of Journal-News publisher
Janet Hasson, publisher, Journal News
Janet Hasson, 3 Gate House Lane, Mamaroneck, NY 10534.
Phone number: (248) 594-2197; you might also try (914) 525-1923, but the area code is just a guess on the assumption that this number is a land line.
jhasson@lohud.com
Janet Hasson herself is married with one child
UPDATE: From reader RJS: Gannett’s CEO-
Gracia C Martore, 728 Springvale Rd, Great Falls, VA 22066, (703) 759-5954
The reporter on the story is
Dwight R Worley, 23006 139 Ave, Springfield Gardens, NY 11413, (718) 527-0832
TWITTER ACCOUNT: https://twitter.com/dwightworley
dworley@lohud.com
NRA
Despite misinformation spread by the media and by some elected officials, the NRA is the only honest broker in this debate. The NRA is actually looking for ways to prevent these mass shootings perpetrated by crazy people. Rather than using this crisis as an opportunity to take guns away from law-abiding people the NRA wants to find a solution. Firearms alone make us citizens instead of subjects.
Ah yes
Playing the Hitler card.
Next!
NRA Stooges
For every firearm that is in the hands of someone who is legally forbidden from owning firearms, there is an American legal firearm owner that was willing to give or sell said firearm without conducting a background check on the buyer. For every legal gun owner that sells firearms at gun shows without conducting background checks on the buyers...you share blame and you are culpable for the deaths of kids, cops, teachers, firemen...
The "bad" guys can't get the weapons unless the "good" guys that are NRA stooges sell them.
BS Tiarht Ammendment Kills Kids Cops Teachers Firemen
Tiahrt amendments -- named for Tod d Tiahrt, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, and first attached as riders to appropriations bills in 2003 and 2004 -- limited the ATF's ability to share tracing information on firearms linked to crimes with local and state law enforcement agencies and with
under the most recent Tiahrt amendment, adopted in 2010, the ATF still cannot release anything but aggregate data to the public. The amendment still prohibits the bureau from using tracing data in some legal proceedings to suspend or revoke a dealer's license, and it requires that records of background checks of gun buyers be destroyed within 24 hours of approval.
this makes it harder to identify dealers who falsify records or buyers who make "straw" purchases of firearms for others.
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/12/25/2734504/legislative-handcuffs-limit-atfs.h...
@gdogs...
you state "...governments routinely murder thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of their citizens."
rou·tine
noun
1.
a customary or regular course of procedure.
2.
commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity: the routine of an office.
3.
regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.
4.
an unvarying and constantly repeated formula, as of speech or action; convenient or predictable response: Don't give me that brotherly-love routine!
How many gun deaths per year in this country? How many US Citizens killed by the US Government?
A drone fired hellfire missile don't give one turd if you have a gun or not.
aynrand
Will you look at that! Todd Tiahrt has accepted over $77,000 from the NRA over the past 8 years.
A coincidence, no doubt.
NRA for Hunters
Currently the NRA is in a jam. Most reasonable gun enthusiasts understand that we have an epidemic of gun violence (NRA states homicide rates are down, true, while gun violence has dramatically risen) As the NRA is currently configured, by default if you support the NRA you are part of the problem. I propose a reasonable solution for the NRA. Split the NRA in two.
One branch of the NRA would support hunting rights, gun safety, sport shooting, reasonable Second Amendment rights etc. We’ll call this branch NRA-S (sporting).
The other branch of the NRA would support assault weapons, high capacity magazines, body armor piercing bullets, no background checks, no waiting period, no permits for concealed weapons, and every conceivable weapon falls under the Second Amendment etc. The later branch we’ll call NRA-K (killing).
An NRA supporter can decide which branch of the NRA represents their interests. Do you support NRA sporting or NRA killing? As an aside I have been trained by several federal agencies to carry a weapon for work.
No Guns No Profit
Wayne LaPierre’s, Energizer bunny shill for the weapons and ammunition industry. Wayne now tells us that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.”
Wayne’s creative solution to the Sandy Hook killings is to put armed guards in all our schools. Wayne. Wayne, the guy who says he worries about the government taking our guns. Wayne now wants government agents in our schools searching our kids for weapons.
Surely Wayne knows that his industry benefactors are the first to benefit from Sandy Hook, and Columbine, and all the other mass murder shootings. Each one creates a new outpouring of weapons sales. Why would his dear industry benefactors want to do anything to reduce their profits? Why would Wayne?
Wayne has yet to think of a bad guy without a gun. You just can’t make a profit on that.
A good girl with a gun.....
A GOOD GIRL WITH A GUN
On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It’s like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant!
Now aren't you wondering why this isn't a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting?
There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, THE MEDIA IS TREATING IT LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED.
Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week.