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We had submissions from three Soylentils with different takes on the NRA (National Rifle Association) and the public response in the wake of an attack at a Parkland, Florida high school.
Public Outcry Convinces National Companies to Cut Ties with NRA
Common Dreams reports:
In the latest sign that the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida tragedy may be playing out differently than the fallout from other mass shootings, several national companies have cut ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA).
[Car rental companies] Alamo, Enterprise, and National--all owned by Enterprise Holdings--announced late on [February 22] that they would end discounts for the NRA's five million members. Symantec, the security software giant that owns Lifelock and Norton, ended its discount program on Friday as well.
The First National Bank of Omaha also said it would stop issuing its NRA-branded Visa credit cards, emblazoned with the group's logo and called "the Official Credit Card of the NRA". The institution is the largest privately-held bank in the U.S., with locations in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and South Dakota.
Additional coverage on TheHill, MarketWatch, Independent and Politico.
The NRA Just Awarded FCC Chair Ajit Pai With a Gun for His 'Courage'
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai joined the pack at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday alongside fellow Republican commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr—the architects of the recent order repealing net neutrality protections passed in the Obama era.
Upon taking the stage, it was announced that Pai was receiving an award from the National Rifle Association: a handmade Kentucky long gun and plaque known as the "Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award."
https://gizmodo.com/the-nra-just-awarded-fcc-chair-ajit-pai-with-a-gun-for-1823273450
These Companies are Sticking by the NRA
Fallout continues from the mass murder in Florida. The National Rifle Association is taking it up the wazoo. A national boycott is emerging. If you are old enough, you will remember that this is what brought down Apartheid in South Africa.
From the Huffington Post:
In what may be a pivotal moment for American gun law reform, the National Rifle Association has become the object of intense pushback from anti-gun activists and survivors of last week's mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 dead.
All the attention prompted the gun-rights group to break from its usual strategy of keeping quiet after mass gun deaths. NRA officials have gone on the attack to rail against the "politicization" of a tragedy, and going so far as to suggest that members of the media "love mass shootings" because of the ratings they supposedly bring.
The uproar has once again presented companies affiliated with the NRA, and its powerful pro-gun lobby, with a question: to cut ties, or to continue a relationship with a large but controversial group?
The NRA partners with dozens of businesses to spread its pro-gun message and provide discounts to its members, who number 5 million, according to the group. But this week, some companies have begun to jump ship.
Facing pressure from consumers, the First National Bank of Omaha said Thursday it would stop issuing NRA-branded Visa credit cards after its contract with the group expires. Enterprise Holdings, which operates the rental car brands Enterprise, National and Alamo, says it will end its discount program for NRA members next month, along with Avis and Budget. Hertz is out, too.
(Score: 4, Troll) by SpockLogic on Sunday February 25 2018, @02:18PM (19 children)
Fuck them. The NRA is the propaganda arm of the small arms manufacturing industry. The NRA should be designated a terrorist organization . Their policies are directly responsible for the death of thousands of Americans every year. The NRA should be eliminated on public health grounds as they spread The American Disease™ almost unfettered access to weapons of war that kill with brutal efficiency. I'm sick of seeing their members wring their blood stained hands in faux concern as they considers a few dead children acceptable collateral damage in their war against any form of gun safety. Fuck them and the horse they rode up on.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @04:28PM (13 children)
Apparently you aren't familiar with "weapons of war". The AR-15 that is available at your local gun store is not such a weapon. There is no "automatic" selector on it. The damned gun is marketed at the same people who buy "tactical" flashlights, "extreme" sporting supplies, and other retarded nonsense. That AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle, little different from any number of semi-automatic rifles designed to take deer, rabbit, squirrel, moose, or grizzly bear. You CAN purchase some options that make the AR-15 somewhat more impressive, but the stock rifle is just another damned hunting rifle. But, none of those readily available options turns the rifle into a "weapon of war". My single shot .22 rifle can be just as deadly as an AR-15 in the hands of a skilled marksman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:22PM (6 children)
What a line of crap. A skilled marksman is the whole point. Any moron can fire an AK and kill a lot of people with a round that has a muzzle velocity 3 times a standard 22. (Ask an emergency room doctor what the difference is.) Add a few simple mods and the firing rate is quite a bit faster than the 22 I fired at scout camp. It's hard to find any data on how fast a bump stock can actually fire. Even the manufacturers don't publish. A hundred or so rounds in a minute seems pretty likely. This is also not much like my 22.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:49PM (5 children)
The mechanics inside the ar15 are still limited by physics, and when not limited by physics you have to deal with 100rd pain in the ass to change drums that jam. You could have a bunch of 20rd mags but need to train at not fumbling them.
Looked up some vids, if it doesnt jam you can do 100rd in 15 seconds but accuracy is shot after that due to barrel heat. You can fumble to find the awkward sized drum and pull and load a second. Assuming the guy is superman and takes zero time to change drums he can achieve 400/minute, more likely he can achieve somewhere between 200 and 300.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:01PM (3 children)
In fairness - accuracy isn't really the issue. It is very well known among hunters that the first shot kills. If you hear some guy on the other side of the ridge fire three, six, twelve times - you know he didn't get the deer. When you hear a single shot, you can figure that the shooter likely got his deer. The human factor really sucks after that first shot. People who want to put a hundred rounds through the tube in very short order aren't interested in accuracy, so much as they are interested in fire power.
If you can stomach watching the videos again, neither the Las Vegas shooter, or the Florida shooter were interested in accuracy. They went to where people were herded together, then laid down the fire power. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. The body count is high, because no accuracy was required.
So - assuming that I can push 100 rounds out the barrel before the barrel warps, all I need for a high body count is to find some place where people are packed so densely that I can't miss.
I can't say that I would mind a ban on high capacity magazines. Seven or ten rounds is adequate for any reasonable use of firearms - except, of course, the purpose intended by the second amendment. That purpose, of course, is to keep congress in line. The second amendment had nothing to do with hunting and sports - it was all about keeping government in check.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:08PM (1 child)
Given his vantage point, I wonder how many people Whitman would have killed in the same situation.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:33PM
For the curious:
University of Texas tower shooting (1966) [wikipedia.org]
16 dead in a 13-1/2 hour span
31 non-fatal injuries
ranked as the eighth-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @10:14PM
Most places, if your magazine holds more than 5 rounds, [google.com] the game warden will confiscate your gun and arrest you.
If you hear some guy on the other side of the ridge fire three, six, twelve times - you know
...that what he has is a weapon of war.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @04:19AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by number11 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:09PM (4 children)
It's true that the civilian AR-15 would not meet modern military standards, and in some respects is just "a scary looking rifle". However, a hunting rifle doesn't have to do more than a few shots. If you can't hit your target in 5 shots, you probably shouldn't be out wandering around with a loaded weapon. And by amazing coincidence, most hunting rifles don't hold more than 5 or so cartridges.
As to "weapon of war", apparently you think that World War II was fought by soldiers wielding nerf bats? Most soldiers' rifles didn't hold much more (American Garand, 8 rounds; British Lee-Enfield, 10 rounds; Soviet Mosin–Nagant, 5 rounds; German K-98, 5 rounds; Japanese Arisaka, 5 rounds). And none of those shot full auto (indeed, all except the Garand used manual bolt-action to ready the next shot).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:16PM
Point taken. Fact is, when I was growing up, an M-1 was a fine hunting rifle. Today, no one carries an M-1. Those who still own them keep them at home. I really can't understand why a hunter wants a semi-auto - that second shot doesn't take the deer down. Nor the third, or the thirty-third. It is almost ALWAYS the first shot.
On the other hand, the second amendment isn't about hunting. You don't have to be hunter to justify owning a gun.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
And then the operations research guys found that the number of enemy soldiers killed correlated far better with fire rate than with marksmanship proficiency. Now we have automatics.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:51PM (1 child)
But that doesn't mean that the rifles used by all sides in WWII weren't military weapons, even though today they are considered obsolete. Even today, the weapons used by snipers aren't full auto. And frankly, if you've got a shooter vs. a bunch of people who can't shoot back, full auto is a waste of ammo.
Lest anyone take that as an argument for arming the bunch of people, if they're armed it's likely to become a melee, because people will mistake good guys for bad guys and pretty soon everybody will be shooting at everybody else. It won't be like in the movies, where the bad guy is the only one wearing a black hat. Witness that recent SWAT occasion where the cops shot the victim instead of the perp. That seems to happen all too often, and the shooters are supposedly highly trained individuals.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Thursday March 01 2018, @03:08AM
I agree that they're weapons of war. The thing about operations research is just something I find interesting. I took a course on it in college and really enjoy the subject, but I find some of its applications troubling.
Semi auto with a large clip is close enough to an automatic from the perspective of killing efficiency, as we have seen many times.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:22PM
The ignorance of firearms and hunting on this site is appalling! Anyone who takes on Griz with a round tame enough to put into a semi-auto action deserves the inevitable meal they will become. And, BTW, who eats squirrel? Oh, Arkansas? Huckabee? Well, if you are using a semi-auto to hunt squirrel, you probably will go hungry. Real hunters "chip" squirrels by shooting the branch below their head, so no penetration at all, just a fatal concussion. But that takes marksmanship, something the NRA used to encourage, before they went all "spray and pray" with the right to mass killing.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by khallow on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:50PM (2 children)
First, this doesn't have anything to do with firearm safety. The shooter didn't accidentally kill 17 people. He would have bypassed any safety devices intended to prevent accidental discharge of the weapon. We are no longer speaking of safety, but rather of removing dangerous weapons from the hands of people who are likely to be a risk to society. The problem here is that you aren't speaking of firearm safety, but rather of removing a lawful right from many tens of millions of people "for the children". That deception is the heart of the NRA's (and others') resistance to all this bullshit.
Let's also note here that there were mechanisms in place to prevent the shooter from acquiring firearms and seize his existing firearms. He had been reported to local and national law enforcement somewhere around two dozen times. He had a blog and YouTube videos where he apparently publicly fantasized about shooting up this particular school, according to Wikipedia, these threats were even reported to the police twice in the past year.
But do we hear national level gun control ("gun law reform") advocates speak of this failure of law enforcement? For example, that isn't mentioned in the least in the Huffington Post story which instead focuses on the tribulations of the NRA, exulting in a loss of revenue generating power. Before we "reform" such law with more onerous regulation, we should make sure we have someone who will enforce it. Else it is just an empty gesture with the potential to create tens of millions of law breakers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @05:12AM (1 child)
Ummm, I can't be bothered to look it up again but in the past the NRA has been opposed to restrictions on the 2A rights of mentally ill people. Since you seem to be stepping up to defend 2A rights, are you now advocating that guns be taken away from mentally ill people? If so, I think that could be a significant step forward, assuming that the majority of other 2A advocates feel similarly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @06:35AM
Mentally ill is not good enough. For starters, mental illness doesn't mean that one is incapable of responsibly handling firearms. It varies in severity from mild cases that are basically self-treated and temporary to people who yes, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near firearms. The general category affects too many people [newsweek.com] (the article cites estimates ranging from 20-30% of the US population). I don't see a good reason to block roughly 80 or so million people just because one feels uncomfortable about mental illness.
It's too easy to game, which is probably the source of the NRA's opposition. If authorities want to harass someone who owns firearms, declaring them to be mentally ill is a natural tactic, ripe for abuse. And who knows? Maybe the stress and humiliation of having to defend oneself from such tireless bureaucratic mendacity would be enough to trigger or worsen mental illness (since that's not good for mental health), turning these games too often into self-fulfilling prophecies.
Finally, being able to suspend rights for generic mental illness is a terrible precedent. What would be next? Free speech? Your right to vote? Just look at the research efforts to cast various sorts of political disagreement as mental illnesses or deviant behavior today (recent example [soylentnews.org]).
I do see times when firearms should be removed, such as someone who is found to be mentally incompetent, someone posting their sincere massacre fantasies on blogs, or someone acting in a grossly or criminally negligent way with firearms. But sorry, I don't buy that we have to interfere with the rights of tens of millions of law-abiding owners of firearms just because there are a few bad people out there.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @01:09AM
Gun free zones are the locations for 98% of mass shootings in the US. It is approximately 3% of our population causing 50% of our murders. It is not gun safety or gun access at the root of our problem here. The NRA are the opposite of terrorists here!
They work to defend an essential right, and make it possible for people to defend themselves in those and other situations. You don't disarm your population, treat them like children and expect to retain and of your other freedoms for long. Unfortunately there are so many left-wing fascists who believe their own propaganda who try to take those rights away from us. You can keep trying, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @02:01AM
Regardless of your feelings about gun control, what you propose is just insanity. I doubt you were completely serious, but whatever.
No, that's indirect. If they were directly responsible, then they would be the murderers themselves (i.e. the people who shot other people with the guns).
Furthermore, this idea that you can be held directly responsible for other people's actions merely because you support a policy which may or may not have allowed said people to carry out evil actions is extremely draconian. Using that logic, anyone who doesn't support a policy (say, mass surveillance) that could potentially have stopped some attack would be 'directly responsible' for any deaths. Some people care more about freedom than security, but that doesn't make them directly responsible for the deaths.
The government has no constitutional authority to eliminate organizations for such a reason.
Collateral damage can be tolerable in the name of freedom. I would not support mass surveillance even if it were extremely effective at stopping terrorism, just like I won't support gun control under any circumstances.