Trump moves on bump stocks.

[Great-Kazoo]

It should go to the ILA part of the NRA. You know the ones who don't send you 2 doz letters a week

[Gman]

The True Source of the N.R.A.’s Clout: Mobilization, Not Donations

WASHINGTON — Few places have seen the National Rifle Association wield its might more effectively than Florida, where it has advanced a sweeping agenda that has made it easier to carry concealed weapons, given gun owners greater leeway to shoot in self-defense and even briefly barred doctors from asking patients about their firearms.

To many of its opponents, that decades-long string of victories is proof that the N.R.A. has bought its political support. But the numbers tell a more complicated story: The organization’s political action committee over the last decade has not made a single direct contribution to any current member of the Florida House or Senate, according to campaign finance records.

In Florida and other states across the country, as well as on Capitol Hill, the N.R.A. derives its political influence instead from a muscular electioneering machine, fueled by tens of millions of dollars’ worth of campaign ads and voter-guide mailings, that scrutinizes candidates for their views on guns and propels members to the polls.

“It’s really not the contributions,” said Cleta Mitchell, a former N.R.A. board member. “It’s the ability of the N.R.A. to tell its members: Here’s who’s good on the Second Amendment.”

Far more than any check the N.R.A. could write, it is this mobilization operation that has made the organization such a challenging adversary for Democrats and gun control advocates — one that, after the massacre at a school in Parkland, Fla., is struggling to confront an emotional student-led push for new restrictions.

The N.R.A.’s impact comes, in large part, from the simplicity of the incentives it presents to political candidates: letter grades, based on their record on the Second Amendment, that guide the N.R.A.’s involvement in elections. Lawmakers who earn an “A” rating can count on the group not to oppose them when they run for re-election or higher office.

For candidates who earn lower grades, the group deploys a range of blunt-force methods against them. The N.R.A. mails the voter guides to its five million members, displaying images of favored candidates on the front, and some state chapters bombard supporters with emails about coming elections.

The organization’s calculation is that its money is better spent on maintaining a motivated base of gun rights supporters than on bankrolling candidates directly.

“Everyone wants a simplistic answer, which is they buy votes,” said Harry L. Wilson, a political scientist at Roanoke College and the author of “Guns, Gun Control, and Elections.” “But it is largely incorrect. The N.R.A.’s power is more complex than people think.”

Compared with the towering sums of money donated to House and Senate candidates in the last cycle — $1.7 billion — the N.R.A.’s direct contributions were almost a rounding error.

The N.R.A. directly donated a total of just $1.1 million to candidates for federal office in 2016, with 99 percent of that money going to Republicans, while giving a total of only $309,000 in direct contributions to state legislative candidates in 2016 and 2017, according to tallies by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks federal donations, and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which tracks state-level donations.

Those amounts are dwarfed by the largess of other major contributors. Comcast, through its political action committee and its employees, directly donated $12.7 million in the 2016 campaign cycle to federal candidates or political parties, and the committee for Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, and its employees directly donated nearly $3 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics tallies.

Those numbers are tied to campaign finance reports filed by individual lawmakers. The N.R.A.’s spending on messages like its voter guides does not need to be disclosed, because it falls into the category of a membership-based group communicating with its members.

When candidates waver in their support for sweeping gun rights, the group does not hesitate to turn on them. After Ted Strickland, a Democrat who earned the N.R.A.’s endorsement as a candidate for governor of Ohio, backed a ban on assault weapons, the organization spent more than $1.5 million in so-called independent expenditures, like TV ads, to defeat him in a 2016 bid for the Senate.

Ms. Mitchell, a Republican election lawyer who sat on the group’s board for nearly a decade, said its record of loyalty to those who stand by it was a cornerstone of its influence. “They know that it’s not easy, sometimes, to stick with the N.R.A.,” she said of the group’s leadership. “At times like this, it’s very easy to get stampeded by the media and the left.”

While the N.R.A. cuts relatively few checks to individual lawmakers — a fact that has been noted by The Tampa Bay Times, among others — it does devote tens of millions of dollars to ads backing its preferred candidates or criticizing its opponents, often with vividly alarmist messages about crime and self-defense.

The N.R.A. spent $20 million in the 2016 election cycle on ads and other campaign tactics intended to persuade voters to reject Hillary Clinton and another $11 million to support Donald J. Trump — money that is not marked down as a direct contribution to Mr. Trump, because the N.R.A. spent the cash on its own.

At the state level, the N.R.A. also spends much more on these independent expenditures than on direct contributions to candidates.

Expenditures like these are the area of real growth for the N.R.A.: At the federal and state levels, overall independent spending by the group jumped from $9.3 million in the 2009 election cycle to at least $55 million in 2016, according to an analysis by the National Institute on Money in State Politics that was published on Friday.

“Its most precious resource is perhaps the passion and political engagement of its members and its fans,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

This type of spending also comes with risks, particularly when the group ventures into so-called purpler parts of the country, where the two parties have similar levels of support. The N.R.A.’s presence can draw in an increasingly well-funded collection of groups that support gun control, and can sometimes unnerve moderate voters.

Last fall in Virginia, where the N.R.A. is headquartered and once held commanding clout over the state government, Democrats swept all of the state’s major offices after campaigning loudly against the organization. The state’s attorney general, Mark Herring, a Democrat whom the N.R.A. had targeted for defeat, said the group had insisted on defending a platform that was “becoming more and more untenable” with voters in the political middle.

“There were parts of the state where they wouldn’t run their ads because they knew it would drive voters to supporting me,” Mr. Herring said, adding of the N.R.A.’s campaign spending: “It did elevate the conversation, the issue, but it was also one that I wanted to talk about.”

Still, in more rural areas where voters fiercely support gun rights, Democrats have routinely paid a price in recent years for crossing the N.R.A.

In Colorado, where a Democratic-held state government passed new gun regulations after the 2012 massacre at a movie theater in Aurora, the N.R.A. helped bankroll successful recall campaigns against two Democratic lawmakers, including the powerful president of the State Senate.

The former Senate leader, John P. Morse, who lost his seat in 2013 by a margin of 319 votes, said the N.R.A. had played a decisive role in motivating Second Amendment voters in a low-turnout race. After that, Mr. Morse said, Democrats have “run like scalded rats from the issue.”

“They turn out people that already agree with them,” Mr. Morse said of the N.R.A. “The reason why gun policy is where it is in this country, at this point, is that the rest of us are too lackadaisical.”

The organization has focused heavily in recent years on high-profile Senate elections in conservative-leaning states that are key to the balance of power in Congress, amassing an imposing record of victories, including that of Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

But it has had major losses, too, including in the Senate special election in Alabama late last year, in which it spent money to try to defeat Doug Jones, a Democrat who challenged Roy S. Moore.

Over all, the success rate of the N.R.A. ebbs and flows with political trends. With Mr. Trump on the ballot, candidates it supported directly at the federal level in 2016 won 73 percent of the time, while its preferred candidates won only 44 percent of the time in 2008, when Barack Obama was first elected president.

In almost all forms of spending — direct campaign contributions, independent expenditures and lobbying — gun rights groups have far outspent gun control groups in recent decades, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. However, spending that advocates gun control has picked up in recent years, fueled by groups backed by former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who was wounded in a 2011 shooting, and by Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York.

There have been hints in recent days, with the protests after the Parkland shooting and a string of businesses cutting ties with the N.R.A. — as well as a fiery and defensive speech delivered by its leader at a conservative conference — that the group is losing ground. Even some of its key political supporters, like Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, a Republican, and top lawmakers in the state, have proposed measures like raising the age limit for gun purchases to 21.

John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by Mr. Bloomberg, said he saw signs that the N.R.A.’s influence was in decline, despite a surge in 2017 in federal lobbying spending by the organization. He pointed to its inability last year to get legislation through the Republican Congress that would give legal gun owners the right to carry concealed weapons outside their home states.

“What we are seeing right now is a reversal of fortune,” Mr. Feinblatt said. “The truth is, they are making bad bets. And they are out of sync. Their power is diminishing by the day.”

[KevDen2005]

There still in stock on couple sites for under $150

[Gman]

Wasn't sure which thread to put this in, or if I should start a new one. Several of the other forums I'm on are talking about "money bombing" the NRA on 3/24, which is the same day that "March for our lives" ralley is taking place, the idea being the NRA gets such a large sum of money the same day as the ralley, that folks see an opposition from our side. Either way, I plan on at least $20 that day.

I like that idea of kicking some money to the NRA-ILA on 3/24.

[Skip]

I like that idea of kicking some money to the NRA-ILA on 3/24.

NRA Blasts 'Cowardice' Of Corporate Partners Turning Away From Gun Group

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nra-blast...004815772.html

The law-abiding members of the NRA had nothing at all to do with the failure of that school’s security preparedness, the failure of America’s mental health system, the failure of the National Instant Check System or the cruel failures of both federal and local law enforcement.

Ignore the headline, read the NRA statement. Sounds like they have reached down and found them.

If they can further articulate a strategy that protects 2A, I might join you. I think a lot of people are waiting for a concrete position. Like I said the locked thread, they have the same problem (advantage?) as Trump; the opposition has taken the middle ground nullifying any advantage of compromise.

[Joe_K]

Ironic the NRA calling their former corporate partners cowards, seeing as the NRA is an anti gun organization.


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[Joe_K]

Ironic the NRA calling their former corporate partners cowards, seeing as the NRA is an anti gun organization.


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“The 1930s crime spree of the Prohibition era, which still summons images of outlaws outfitted with machine guns, prompted President Franklin Roosevelt to make gun control a feature of the New Deal. The NRA assisted Roosevelt in drafting the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Gun Control Act, the first federal gun control laws. These laws placed heavy taxes and regulation requirements on firearms that were associated with crime, such as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers. Gun sellers and owners were required to register with the federal government and felons were banned from owning weapons. Not only was the legislation unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1939, but Karl T. Frederick, the president of the NRA, testified before Congress stating, “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

For the next 30 years, the NRA continued to support gun control.”

Taken from here: http://time.com/4431356/nra-gun-control-history/




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[Joe_K]

Or how about the time the NRA supported the GCA of 1968?

For three decades, the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) has formed the legal core of national gun policy in the United States. The congressional deliberations leading to the passage of the GCA and companion legislation extended over five years and involved the Departments of Justice and Treasury, the White House, firearms interest groups, and both houses of Congress. At no time before or since has Congress addressed gun control policy with as much breadth or depth.[1] Although the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 imposed strict federal regulation on machine guns and other "gangster" firearms [2] using taxation legislation, the 1938 Federal Firearms Act (FFA) had proven ineffectual in asserting even minimal federal controls over interstate commerce in ordinary handguns, shotguns and rifles.[3] The structure of the GCA emerged largely from observed weaknesses in the existing FFA.[4]

“The Dodd Hearings
In early 1958, Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts introduced legislation to control the importation of surplus military firearms.[5] Clearly protectionist, the legislation targeted the increase in imported firearms, the great majority of which were military surplus.[6] Congress acted only to ban the importation of previously exported U.S. military firearms.[7] The flood of imports continued, fueled by surplus World War II firearms and inexpensive pistols and revolvers.[8] [Page 80]
Upon assuming the chairmanship of the Juvenile Justice Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1961, Senator Thomas Dodd (D-CT) directed the staff to conduct a study of mail order sales of firearms.[9] After two years of staff study, Senator Dodd introduced his first gun bill, Senate Bill 1975 and opened hearings to generate public interest in the gun issue.[10] The bill required mail-order purchasers of handguns to provide the seller a notarized affidavit stating they were over eighteen years of age and legally entitled to purchase the firearm and restricted the importation of surplus military firearms.[11] The bill had input from the Treasury Department and received support from both the firearms industry and the NRA.”

Taken from here: http://jpfo.org/articles-assd02/gca68-nra4.htm


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[Joe_K]

Or when they supported the 1986 Machine Gun Ban?

“When President Obama laid out his proposals Wednesday to reduce gun violence, he included a call for Congress to ban "military-style assault weapons."

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have tried banning certain guns before. Nearly two decades ago, they barred the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons, only to let that law lapse 10 years later. But one gun ban has stayed on the books: a measure Congress passed a quarter-century ago making it illegal for civilians to buy or sell any machine gun made from that date forward. That legislation passed with the blessing of the National Rifle Association, which now opposes gun control measures.”

Taken from here: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallp...l-on-the-books


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[Joe_K]

And now the NRA is seeking to support the National Rate Increasing Device Ban Of 2018.


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