12.04.2015 07:24 AM

The NRA are terrorists

And I’ve long felt they should be prosecuted as such. I’m not alone, apparently. 

  

28 Comments

  1. DougM says:

    Explain, in detail please. Despite news coverage that would lead one to believe otherwise, gun accidents are down decade over decade and the NRA is largely responsible. They provide more safety training and educational material than all other groups combined.

    And again despite media coverage, firearms related homicide is at its lowest in decades in the US and has been falling for decades despite there being more legally owned firearms in the US now than ever before.

    So I ask you, just what is the NRA doing that makes them terrorists? The ones hindering any kind of meaningful progress in reducing violence are Obama, Clinton and Bloomberg. They are putting the focus on a weapon as opposed to the reason for violence.

    I put it to you that if a magic wand was waved and guns in the US disappeared but nothing else was changed we’d still see the same violence. Keep in mind these terrorists in California had a dozen pipe bombs. Look at the Boston bombers. Look at that guy in Calgary last year who killed 5 with a knife at a party.

    So with reason not vitriol, what say you?

    • Warren says:

      I’ve posted my views in a link. I’m not required to further explain myself to a stranger.

      Moreover, I’ve got a job, so I’ll get back to that now.

    • Rob says:

      Walking into a public space and killing innocents is not an accident.

    • Kelly says:

      The NRA works to increase the number and availability of guns — including to terrorists. Here’s a few reasons, stolen from The Guardian as to why the NRA promotes violence and aids in the commission of terrorist acts…

      “The NRA has strongly opposed legislation to prohibit the sale of guns to people on the federal government’s terrorist watch list. Under current law, a suspected terrorist can be put on the no-fly list and be kept off a plane, but can’t be prevented from buying a gun.”

      “The NRA is backing two bills currently being considered by the US Senate that would extend the right to carry concealed weapons right across the US…it would allow people from states that don’t even require permits to carry hidden guns throughout the country.”

      “Under existing federal law, unlicensed gun sellers are allowed to sell weapons without a background check of the buyer at gun shows and other private sales. The NRA strongly opposes legislation that would close this glaring loophole by requiring background checks for all gun sales.”

      “Indiana and North Dakota [with the prodding of the NRA] have enacted laws allowing employees to sue if they are asked about gun possession at work.” (So if Mr. Farook had lived and worked in North Dakota, and his employer got an inkling he had a bunch of guns he had brought to the office, he could have sued his boss before he shot him.)

      There are too many more examples to list here.

      Then there is just their general advocacy of extreme libertarian anti-government positions, helping to create paranoia against the democratically elected US government. They are part of a crazy culture that spouts rhetoric of a sort that feels as if they are waging a sort of “war” against the “government” and that they need gun for protection against the government.

      Unfortunately for them, if anything ever did go down they really wouldn’t stand a chance. The NSA knows who every NRA member is already and where they live. The US can take out anyone they want, if push came to shove, and the individual “dude” in the suburbs of Phoenix won’t stand a chance with his “Glock Nine” and pump action shotgun. The militarized cops will just drop a bomb on his house. A lot of gun nuts are seriously deluded that their guns are protecting them from anything. They’re just making it easier for their kids to accidentally — or purposely — shoot themselves. The NRA offers nothing of value to society. They’re shills for arms dealers, essentially. Do you like arms dealers, DougM? Do you think your squirrel gun will protect you?

  2. JamesHalifax says:

    No one is saying that Americans should be disarmed……they are just asking for some common sense laws; not even necessarily anything as strict as Canada.

    A simply background check, as well as a firearms handling course would do a lot to help. Not everyone should have a gun, even if it is their “RIGHT” to do so according to the US Constitution.

    And no….I’m not a “gun nut” but I am opposed to the gun registry Canada had, and I own them myself.

    • DougM says:

      The San Bernardino shooters obtained their firearms legally according to the BATF. That means they passed a background check. Background checks are great, I believe in them. But they don’t stop every bad person that wants to do bad things. In Canada we get a background check when we apply for a firearms license. Then, every single day our license is checked to see if we’ve become ineligible as part of the “Continuous Eligibility Screening Program”. So in a sense Canadian firearms owners get a background check every day. But that didn’t stop that a-hole in Ontario killing those three women with a rifle two months after getting out of jail.

      http://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-bernardino-shooting-atf-says-all-4-guns-bought-legally/

      • Mike says:

        Whatever justification you may have for owning a gun, there is no reason on god’s green earth anyone needs an assault rifle.

        And Doug I think you have made the best argument for a total ban on firearms. If we can’t put measures in place to prevent bad people from doing terrible things with guns, then let’s get rid of guns. I have yet to hear one valid reason that anyone needs a gun.

  3. JH says:

    Looks like someone is going to finally have to use the words ‘act of terrorism’ and self radicalization.
    http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/04/us/san-bernardino-shooting/index.html

  4. Phil says:

    Just for fun, here’s some facts:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

    per 100K

    US is ~10

    Canada is ~2

    If US might be down, but there’s considerable room for improvement.

  5. Jack D says:

    YES! So much YES!

    This cover couldn’t be anymore accurate. They’re all f*cking terrorists including the NRA. The NRA is like the League of Terror that makes its mission to ensure the USA is never free of gun violence fuelled by easy accessibility to fire arms. They are the equivalent of Tobacco companies; they tell people stupid (and crazy) enough that its their god given right to do something that is quite literally causing death yet deny such a correlation. The truth of the matter is, we have a better chance of controlling access to guns than we do monitoring mentally unstable individuals who believe god’s whispering murderous marching orders into their ear.

    Terrorists aim to strike terror into their victims, both directly and indirectly. Whether its shooting up a church or shooting up a health facility, the main objective is to kill and imbed fear. The NRA is enables the festering of fear by creating a false parallel between “bad guys with guns” and “good guys with guns”. All this achieves is easier accessibility to guns for “bad guys” and vehement denial in the “good guys”.

    Stupidity begets stupidity.

    • Cory says:

      I think the definition of terrorism has to include the motivation which is to produce political goals through fear/intimidation. Just causing fear isn’t enough because many criminals do that as par for the course. This political motivation, sets terrorism apart from just a crazed killer.

      • Jack D says:

        I think it already might; at least by Canadian standards, it does.

        Loosely, terrorism refers to the act of violence with an aim to hurt or kill others, based on a ideological/political motivation. The intention being to attack someone/something representing a symbolic attack on something larger. So the kid who went into the church and killed members of its congregation simply based on them being African American would realize the conditions of referring to something as terrorism.

        But often the incident doesn’t seem to have a political motivation, like the Sandy Hook incident, that would still be referred to as terrorism given the scale and randomness of the massacre. We still don’t have a cause to the violence perpetrated by that man on that day, but the intent in act was very clear –to instil fear into the those who observe the these horror and identify with the victims. The sheer violation of innocence that stems from these acts of terrorism is something that has a profound effect on everyone, and also happens to be the objective of terrorists.

        • Cory says:

          Yes the legal definition does include the motivation.

          As you said though to many the popular definition does not and any mass killing becomes “terrorism”. IMO, we need to keep the distinction in mind so as not to confuse them with cases of mental instability.

          If there is a motivation based in reality, then we can plan a response to prevent them. If it is a case of mental instability our options are more limited.

          This is why I would not include Sandy Hook as an example of “terrorism”.

  6. A. Voter says:

    The United States is not in the top 100 for deadliest countries to live in based on the per capita murder rate. British Honduras is the worst.
    Mid-western Republican voting states with the highest gun ownership have the lowest murder rates by guns.
    The areas with the highest percentage of Obama voters-Detroit, Chicago-have the highest gun murder rates.
    When Virginia enacted a mandatory sentence for crimes committed with guns, the murder rate dropped 41 percent in ten months.
    In Canada, the Supreme Court has ruled against the mandatory sentence for crimes committed with a gun enacted by the Conservatives.
    Which is worse-murder by gun, or incarcerating minorities who commit the gun crimes?

  7. doconnor says:

    On the NRA’s urging Republicans just voted down an amendment that would have disallowed gun sales to those on the no fly list.

    • Scotian says:

      I was reading this thread wondering if anyone was going to mention it or was even aware of it. I find it remarkable that the pro-gun freedom lobby in the US has such sway that even people who are on the no-fly list because of the risks they pose to others on the places and gods forbid turning those planes into weapons yet are seen as perfectly fine for buying whatever legally available firearms they can. If anything shows the NRA and company are terrorists, or at the minimum aiders and abetters of terrorists it is the way they fought against this and had their Congressional GOP allies kill it.

      The saddest and more ironic thing about the modern NRA is that they have become one of the best arguments for why gun safety is needed and why people cannot trust the gun lobby anymore. It stopped being about the 2nd Amendment a long time back, and the only “right” they care about it their right to maximize their profits regardless of the ramifications and repercussions to their society, period end F’nnn dot. When they cannot even get behind trying to limit access to guns for suspected terrorists (which is what the no=fly list is supposed to be dealing with), you see what the NRA is truly all about, and how insane they and this argument have become.

      For those that like guns, so do I. I do not hunt, but that is because I dislike the idea of killing without true need, not because I dislike guns or hate hunting when there is real need/use for the animal, I just do not fall into that category living in a significant city and for me it would feel more like trophyism to do than true need. I still like and eat venison though that hunter friends of mine have given me from time to time, so I am not inherently anti-hunting either. I was the assistant range officer in my cadet corps, I have always been fine with responsible gun use and ownership, but I have never blinded myself to the reality that there is only one purpose for a gun, to cause significant damage at whatever it is shooting at through the application of physics, which can range for tearing up a paper target to tearing up the insides of a living body to turn it into a dead one. We regulate who gets to drive, and use other equally potentially dangerous fatal tools in our societies, guns cannot and should not be treated any differently. Those that want to make this a partisan right/left argument I have no time for. I get why urban and rural have differing views here, but why it is so hard for either side to see the other’s legitimate POV is one of those things about human beings that just drives me nuts at times.

      There clearly is a real problem with gun access and ownership and the gun culture in the USA. These mass shootings are becoming more and more common, and that was even before groups like ISIS started wholesale trying to attract home grown crazies to their causes to act out in their name. Wherever one sits on the issue of basic rights for responsible gun ownership surely this much should be clear, things cannot continue as they have been without something breaking, and breaking badly. Either the society goes anarchic, or there WILL be a backlash against the gun fans that will be far worse than anything they have opposed to date, and it will sweep them under and away. The more one tries to stop the pendulum when it is trying/needing to swing back, the more energy you store into it, the worse/harder it swings to the other side, It is in the interests of even groups like the NRA to stop being obstructionist idiots in this respect, but somehow I doubt they will see it that way until it is far too late for them.

      This is a complicated issue that too often gets treated like a partisan litmus test and football IMHO.

  8. patrick says:

    Well, they are terrorists but with no agenda other than going out in a blaze of glory. A bit different due to context but with the same affect. Curiously, put a silly religious decal on any of these nut bars and the press and various fearful zealots would be running around in circles crying to the mystic heavens that there is a religious war and western civilization is about to collapse. No silly decal, no silly statements like “the day things changed” “billions want us dead” blah blah blah.

  9. domenico says:

    Totally agree the NRA are a terrorist organization.

Leave a Reply to Rob Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.