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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: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @09:32PM (14 children)
That's not surprising at all, it's a trivial secondary effect from a hidden variable.
Gun free zones are erected where extra protections from violence are deemed neccessary for the weak protectees.
Large numbers of weak people that lots of other people are emotionally attached to make a perfect target for attention seekers. E.g. mass shooters.
It's not the gun-free-ness that causes the shootings. If you select any large herd of weak victims, chances are very high that you will also have selected a gun-free zone, without having actually planned it. Gun-free-ness is not a predictor for shootings, it's a predictor for weakness which is in turn a prime target for shooters.
In short: mass shooters want to feel and/or display power.
Actual target selection revolves around the cause for the (real or imagined) powerlessness firstly, and around the availability of weak (easy) targets secondly. This explains pretty much every shooting I heard about, across several countries and cultures. The second part usually involves some apparent randomness due to personal/local/time circumstances of the shooter, but is clearly identifiable in retrospect (i.e.: with good knowledge of the shooters personal perspective).
There are two solutions:
1. Don't have weak targets. Keep weak targets (kids?) well-separated and protect them strongly (private schools?)
This is the paranoid way. It works against mass shootings, but destroys the working-together-magic that defines the term "civilized society". It's easy, and can be bought with money.
2. Don't have severely disenfranchised people
This is the kind way. It's very expensive, very difficult, long-term only, and involves actual caring over me-first strategies. Therefore, it is usually associated with religions and indigenous societies. It is not the True American Way (tm).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @12:45AM (13 children)
[...]
Not my argument. My point is that gun free zones made those vulnerable areas even more vulnerable. For example, in the most recent shooting if the police officer on the scene had engaged the shooter, that would have stopped his rampage and maybe saved some lives. Anyone else with a firearm could have done the same, even a 70 year old granny. Instead, this rule created the situation where there were two people with firearms on the school campus - the shooter and a police officer who refused to do his job.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 26 2018, @02:24AM
Crooked Hillary said that I want guns brought into the school classroom. WRONG! I don’t want to have guns in classrooms. Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms. I’m not advocating guns in classrooms. In some cases -- and a lot of people have made this case -- teachers should be able to have guns, trained teachers should be able to have guns in classrooms. So many of our teachers, people don't know this, but out of your teaching population -- out of your teaching population, you have 10 percent, 20 percent of VERY GUN-ADEPT people. Military people, law enforcement people, they teach. They teach. So many are well-trained, gun-adept teachers and coaches and people that work in those buildings. People that were in the Marines for 20 years and retired. People in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard. People that are adept, ADEPT with weaponry and with guns. Good guys with guns. And ladies, let's not forget the ladies, and I never forget (hello, ladies). It's not all of them. But it's a lot. They teach. I mean, I don’t want to have 100 guards standing with rifles all over the school. You do a concealed carry permit. And the beauty is, it’s concealed. Nobody would ever see it unless they needed it. It’s concealed. So this crazy man who walked in wouldn’t even know who it is that has it. Nobody would know. It's a MAJOR DETERRENT. Because it's concealed!
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday February 26 2018, @02:40AM (5 children)
"My point is that gun free zones made those vulnerable areas even more vulnerable."
More vulnerable to mass shooting incidents like this, yes, i think you are correct.
But because its a gun free zone, the only way a gun gets onsite is pre-meditated intent to commit a crime with a gun. That eliminates a lot crime of passion and accidental gun related injuries.
So its more vulnerable to a pre-medicated attack, and a lot less vulnerable to a bunch of other things. Does the net cost of the former exceed the net gain of the latter?
"if the police officer on the scene had engaged the shooter, that would have stopped his rampage and maybe saved some lives."
Funny you say that. If there'd been no police officer at all, people would be saying "if only there had been an armed police on the premises. That would have stopped his rampage'.
But there was. And he didn't.
So now its 'if only the police officer had engaged...then that would have stopped the rampage' And what if he had engaged?? We don't know that it would have stopped the rampage as you claim... maybe he'd have missed and shot a student, or maybe he'd have gotten shot himself.
In any case 'One good guy with a gun' wasn't enough because he decided to wait for backup instead of playing rambo, I guess what we really needed was even more guns!!
"Anyone else with a firearm could have done the same, even a 70 year old granny. "
Let's suppose it worked, and the rampage was cut short, that would be offset by all the stories in the news about people getting shot/killed with guns stolen from 70 year old granny teachers at school. Or perhaps even shot by some unhinged teacher.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 26 2018, @03:57AM (2 children)
If you think pre-medicated attacks are worse, wait until you see how a post-medicated attack looks like.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by vux984 on Monday February 26 2018, @06:19AM (1 child)
That's got to be one of my better typos :)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 26 2018, @02:50PM
One can only strive for better (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @07:55AM (1 child)
Neither which is particularly common either. The vast majority of those happen at home. Nor do I advocate that everyone should be armed.
What was the point of that paragraph? Why do we need to have perfect knowledge of alternate histories in order to be allowed to reason about this subject? Instead, I'll point to several professional sources [newsday.com] such as the Sheriff of the county and a police training profession who support my claim:
[...]
Moving on:
So I can't be allowed to have an opinion on what-could-have-been, but you'll just make shit up? We already have two sources of such firearms, legally from police officers and illegally from students and whatnot who bring them onto the campus. They don't get into the national news, until they're fairly large mass shootings.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @09:57AM
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 26 2018, @06:47AM (5 children)
> and a police officer who refused to do his job.
I haven't spent enough time reading all the details of the character assassination that the NRA will sponsor on that guy.
How dare he defy the "good guy with a gun" narrative so bluntly?
Good guy with a gun didn't like his chances against unknown number of assailants with semi-auto rifles designed for mass culling. Troubling fact for the NRA and friends. he must be "a coward", because No True Scotsman would ever refuse to rush towards an unknown situation where they're clearly overpowered!
I guess we need two, maybe three .. make that four good guys with guns in each school ? 130k schools in the US, half a million True Scotsmen needed, automatic weapons provided.
Don't they need an APC, or better a tank, to make sure they survive a first-strike surprise assault? That will be 130k APCs, please!
In the end, whoever doesn't have 4 guys in an APC is just a Soft Target... think of the children!
A bunch of good teachers with guns. That's now what we need. Because US no-tolerance schools are not scary enough.
Absolute madness.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @08:00AM (4 children)
Too fucking bad. That's his job. And a bunch of people probably died as a result.
Why let those teachers near students, if you don't trust them?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 26 2018, @09:31AM (1 child)
If the job of the police is to rush towards armed people in entrenched positions, then I think you'll find it difficult to hire any police officers that are not already suicidal. In most of the civilised world, the police are expected to behave rationally and act to minimise loss of life, not get themselves killed on futile gestures. As some of the first world war survivors how well rushing towards an enemy with an automatic weapon works some time.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @09:50AM
What entrenched position? That would be great actually, because a shooter who is fixed in such a position has less people to shoot at. And it's like you're not even reading the professional criticisms I quoted. This was their job. This is what they're trained to do. Sure, it's risky, but it's not suicide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @11:28AM (1 child)
Read what some veterans [businessinsider.nl] have to say about it. Apparently even highly trained military sometimes freeze in combat. It's a natural reaction that is so strong that it seems that no amount of training can fully suppress it. Your macho "that's his job" attitude is a denial of human nature. You're not being realistic.
By the way, people dying at that school were primarily the result of someone shooting at them with an assault weapon, not of a guy with a handgun not shooting back. It's quite likely he would not have hit the killer but be killed himself, had he tried.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @06:10PM
We aren't told how long this officer was unable to "fully suppress" his "freeze" reaction, but it apparently was considerably longer than just those critical four minutes. He was reported as not having entered the building when a team finally went in. The members of that team arrived after the shooting had stopped.
I didn't say otherwise. The problem here is that when you're the sole person on a school campus with the power to intervene in a mass shooting, you have responsibilities that can't be excused by human nature. This is something that could have been mitigated or even prevented by arming teachers (and it doesn't have to be all teachers and they don't even have to carry those firearms in order to be armed). The shooter may well have decided not to take that course of action at all, if he knew he would be going into a situation where people could shoot back.
Then it wouldn't have been such a big deal that this officer froze. Somebody would have responded.
Further, avoid use of the nonsense term, "Assault weapon". Use "rifle" to be accurate. "Assault weapon" [wikipedia.org] is an empty phrase that just means it cosmetically is in the style of most modern military weapons (painted black, bayonet attachment points, flash suppressors, etc).