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NRA Gives Award to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai while Facing Public Outcry after Parkland, Florida Attack

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 25 2018, @01:11PM   
from the vox-populi dept.

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

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

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'

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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

aristarchus writes:

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.

---

Original Submissions: #1, #2, and #3.

• Re:Very disappointing. Re:Very disappointing. (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:11PM (4 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:11PM (#643500)

  The NRA has been doing this for a while now, sticking their noses into things that have nothing at all to do with guns. In many ways, they are just another propaganda group working for the Republicans. Sadly their membership seems to just eat it right up.

  I'm for gun rights, but the NRA does not represent me. Part of that is because I support reasonable restrictions on guns, especially non-long guns. But mostly I simply find the NRA to be despicable.

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• ''NRA does not represent me'' ''NRA does not represent me'' (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @11:58PM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @11:58PM (#643645)

  Yeah. There's a lot of that going around.

  Poll: 67 percent of gun owners say NRA "overtaken by lobbyists" [politico.com]

  88 percent of gun owners polled said they support requiring a permit for individuals to carry a concealed gun in public, and 80 percent said they support mandating a background check for all gun purchases, including those online and at gun shows. [86] percent of respondents support a ban on gun purchases for anyone convicted of domestic violence or stalking, and 85 percent support a similar ban for those on the federal terror watch list or no-fly list.

  Have you found another organization that can better represent you?

  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

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  • Re:''NRA does not represent me'' Re:''NRA does not represent me'' (Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday February 26 2018, @05:05AM (2 children)

    by Reziac (2489) on Monday February 26 2018, @05:05AM (#643774) Homepage

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Owners_of_America [wikipedia.org]

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.

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    • ''Gun Owners of America'' ''Gun Owners of America'' (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @07:22AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @07:22AM (#643809)

      Purpose - To preserve, protect, and defend the second amendment rights of gun owners

      So, more of the same nonsense.

      No, The Founding Fathers Didn't Give You a Right to Bear Arms [commondreams.org]

      For most of US history, all the way through to the end of the 20th Century, the introductory phrase "a well-regulated militia" was seen by courts to constrain the clause "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". In short, that individual "right" was contingent on the need to keep a well-regulated militia, and hence it protected the States' interests in having a militia, not an individuals' right to have and carrying a gun.
      [...]
      A Reagan appointee rewrites history

      In 2001, in the United States v. Emerson, in which Timothy [Emerson] challenged a restraining order which barred him from purchasing a firearm, Judge William Garwood--a conservative appointed by Ronald Reagan--of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals included a lengthy digression on the Second Amendment in his majority opinion stating that even though Emerson shouldn't be allowed to have a gun, the amendment did protect an individual's right to own one. Garwood's Second Amendment digression was not binding--in his concurrence in Emerson, Judge Robert Parker discounted Garwood's rant as "84 pages of dicta" and criticized Garwood for grandstanding. Thus, there was nothing precedential about Garwood's digression, and it was irrelevant to the Court's decision. Nevertheless, the language was picked up by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in a memo which sought to reverse the government's long-held position that the Second Amendment protections applied primarily to State militias, not individuals.

      In 2008 the Supreme Court officially endorsed the notion that the clause addressing an individual's right was the defining clause, when [Antonin] Scalia, writing the majority opinion for District of Columbia v Heller, maintained that the introductory clause merely announced a purpose, and imposed no constraint on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts joined Scalia in overturning some 200 years of jurisprudence. Talk about activist judges!

      Linguists dismissed Scalia's interpretation as nonsense, and legal scholars pointed out that the opinion Scalia wrote was the opposite of what an Originalist--which Scalia claimed to be--would conclude.

      To reiterate a recurring theme: Reagan really fucked up this country.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      Parent

      • Re:''Gun Owners of America'' (Score: 1, Interesting) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @09:40AM

        by khallow (3766) on Monday February 26 2018, @09:40AM (#643858) Journal

        No, The Founding Fathers Didn't Give You a Right to Bear Arms

        The obvious rebuttal is that the Second Amendment does just that. Let us recall that every single other time in the Constitution when it discussed rights assigned to "the People", these rights were individual rights not collective rights. Further, the grammar of the Second Amendment clearly indicates that the "militia" clause is merely an explanation (though used to specify what sort of firearms are covered by the Second Amendment) not a requirement. And yet, here we are with yet another bit of historical revisionism.
        
        All your link shows is that even basic grammar can be made subservient to the desires of the reader.

        in overturning some 200 years of jurisprudence.

        What 200 years of jurisprudence? I glanced through Wikipedia's summary [wikipedia.org] of Second Amendment court cases. And it turns out that court rulings were all over the place with favoring a more collective right and some less. This caught my eye:

        In 1905, the Kansas Supreme Court, in Salina v. Blaksley, became the first court to interpret the right to keep and bear arms as being only a collective right.

        So it was actually slightly over a century since anyone did that in a court. And if you look at actual US Supreme Court cases listed, you'll see a remarkable lack of any support for the collective right interpretation or support for restricting access to firearms to militia. Instead we have such things as:

        Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886) - This second post-Civil War era case related to the meaning of the Second Amendment rights relating to militias and individuals. The court ruled the Second Amendment right was a right of individuals, not militias, and was not a right to form or belong to a militia, but related to an individual right to bear arms for the good of the United States, who could serve as members of a militia upon being called up by the Government in time of collective need.

        United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) - The Court stated in part:

        "In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense. Aymette v. State, 2 Humphreys (Tenn.) 154, 158. The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. 'A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.' And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time."'

        I think what we should take away from this is that wishful thinking is no basis for law. Once we get into interpreting language and history as we would like, then anything is just as lawful as anything else. For rule of law to exist, we must decide on a meaning that reflects what is actually written in the law.

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