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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 25 2018, @01:11PM   Printer-friendly
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

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.


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

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:38PM (5 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:38PM (#643508) Journal

    Ahhhh - you've done well. Quite well, actually. Now, the numbers are comparable. Not good, but comparable. Take an entire continent, with it's population, and compare it to another continent with it's population, and the numbers begin to look similar. Again - they don't look good for the US, but they look similar enough to work with. You simply cannot compare spanner wrenches to pillows, now can you?

    Now, allow me to point out that methodology messes things up as well. There are huge differences in the way numbers are arrived at, in each country. The UN uses the numbers given to it by each country, without making much attempt to correlate them. Allow me to compare just two countries, to give you an idea. In the US, the FBI (whose numbers are cited most widely) tends to take a reported crime, and add it straight into the tally of crimes investigated. No arrest or conviction is really necessary for the FBI to increase the crime count by one. The UK, on the other hand, tends to "lose" crimes at several stages. A crime is reported to the police, but the police may or may not record that crime as a crime at all. The police do an investigation, and either confirm that there has been a crime commited - or not. If not, that crime is subtracted from the tally. If the police take a crime to court, the court may or may not convict - and if dismissed, then of course, there was no crime. Now - EVEN IF a UK court actually convicts and sentences a perpetrator to prison - time is on the UK's side. If I'm arrested in June of this year, and convicted in Jan of next year, guess what? I'm off of the police station's blotter, and no crime was committed, so far as statistics go. I've fallen through the cracks.

    My terminolgy regarding UK justice may seem off - that is just my interpretation of the facts that I've read. You may read the report from the Home Office, if you like. It has more exact figures, and the proper UK terminology, which should make you more comfortable. The direct link to the Home Office report is in my journal entry - https://soylentnews.org/~Runaway1956/journal/1674 [soylentnews.org]

    Bottom line, the "real" numbers of dead bodies left in the streets and alleys on both continents are far more comparable than you will like. I hope that you can accept that we are all lied to, routinely, by our governments.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:33PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:33PM (#643533)

    Ahhh, so now all of a sudden Europe and the US are roughly the same? Didn't you, just a single post ago, *staunchly* assert that Europe was far worse off than the US?

    The study you are referring to has no bearing whatsoever on our discussion. "Your" study is about the reporting of gun-involvement. My above-quoted numbers are for "intentional homicide", no matter the tool, and intention as declared by a court. This standard should be reasonably comparable across nations, methinks. The UN study I quoted is aware of the number skewing you mentioned and went to great lengths to avoid it, not least by defining and stating their exact criteria.

    For your newest assertion (of EU/US being on par), please provide actual numbers from a somewhat reputable study. Not for Great Britain alone, but for all of Europe. Otherwise I'll have to throw your own argument at you: please don't compare the US average to Great Britain. If you compare, you must compare to the whole of Europe.

    Or were you really saying that "the numbers are not comparable anyway, so it's impossible to prove wrong my assertion of equality" ?
    If that were the cause, I'd suppose you had indeed been proven wrong and were now looking for a face-saving way out; pathetically so.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 25 2018, @07:59PM (#643544) Journal

      First - I don't think that I stated that the EU was worse than the US. I have repeatedly stated that the EU is worse than the EU admits, but I think that you have confused me with someone else. The EU is worse than the US in one respect - and that is their utter carelessness in admitting outsiders into their lands. The great-however-many-great grandfathers of those same Muslims went a long way toward enslaving your people years ago. They controlled eastern and southern Europe, and your own grandfathers finally kicked them out, at great cost. And here you are, allowing them in, to try again. Same people, same religion, same justifications.

      As for the study not being relevant - yes it is. It is more than enough to demonstrate that the governments aren't honest, or consistent, in their reporting.

      And, finally - your "intentional death" may be defined more narrowly than I would like. How many people have died in Ukraine, recently? We don't have anything like Ukraine happening in the US. We manage to police ourselves well enough that groups of people don't start shooting at each other at the drop of a hat. The EU isn't able to do that, are they? All deaths, all causes - which is the more dangerous continent to live on?

      You, and others, hate it that I won't be corraled into discussing your narrowly defined ideas, in your own terms. Violent crime is probably as much a problem in Europe as it is in the US, but so many of you pretend that you have nothing to worry about. You live in Utopia, and we are savages, in a savage land. Phhht. Keep pretending. Again - give it a few more years, and those crazy Muslims are going to make the US look like Utopia, compared to the shithole you are creating today.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:03PM (#643572)

        That's exactly what I suspected, nah, counted on: as soon as your opinions (they are just that, without backing facts, of which you provided none in your last post despite my request) are challenged, you change the scope of the argument to better fit your unsubstantiated narratives. It's an impossibility for you to stay on a specific topic.

        How intellectually cheap, yet how effective. If you just keep at it long enough, you can wear anybody out since *your* part does not involve lots of time consuming research, instead just pulling opinions out of your ass.

        Anyway, my community service today (i.e.: calling out your deficient argumentation schemes) has been fulfilled, so I'm going back to the jungle for more actual fun.

        Keep trolling, little racist despot-wannabe, well-known around these parts as you are.

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 26 2018, @01:27AM

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday February 26 2018, @01:27AM (#643672) Homepage Journal

        The immigration situation in Europe is a DISASTER. As everyone knows. But we're having a terrible, terrible time here. So many bad hombres crossing our VERY WEAK Border. And some terrific people. But a lot of criminals. We need to Build the Wall. Because without a Wall, we don't have a Border. And without a Border, we don't have a Country. Kate Steinle, very brutal murder, disgraceful verdict on that one. MS-13 gang members are being removed by our Great ICE and Border Patrol Agents by the thousands, but these killers come back in from El Salvador, and through Mexico, like water. El Salvador just takes our money, and Mexico must help MORE with this problem. We need The Wall! I promised you a big, beautiful Wall. But I didn't count on OBSTRUCTIONIST Dems in Congress. Congress needs to pay for The Wall. Dems say, no Wall until we do DACA. All along I've said, let's do DACA, let's take care of our wonderful Dreamers. I'm the one that's pushing DACA and the Democrats are nowhere to be found. And time is running out. Believe me, it's running out very soon. Very soon.

  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 26 2018, @09:26AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday February 26 2018, @09:26AM (#643848) Journal

    The UK, on the other hand, tends to "lose" crimes at several stages. A crime is reported to the police, but the police may or may not record that crime as a crime at all.

    This is true for small-scale crimes against property and very true for online crimes (where, for strange historical reasons, they fall under the jurisdiction of the City of London police and so sometimes fail to end up in either the reported or responsible force's statistics), but it is not true for any crimes involving loss of life. There is a huge paper trail for those and it is basically impossible for them to be omitted from the statistics.

    --
    sudo mod me up