safe target shooting at a sanctioned range is one of my hobbies.
I ALSO donate to Planned Parenthood.
and I ride off-road motorcycles
and i have a rescued dog.
I never considered them connected. but you are correct.
the US vs THEM - and one has to WIN!
…is what is stopping any and all progress.
I’d like to see the politicians moderating, working with each other, compromising even, and doing something FOR the people, country, and world, – instead of this US-THEM pissing match (and lining their own pockets) that everyone seems to have bought into.
I think it can, but my point is that reasonable is different in different places, and the US federal government controls too many fundamentally different places for reasonable gun legislation to be reasonable at the Federal level.
I was attempting to avoid miscategorizing cities in Texas and Louisiana, actually. I’m told Atlanta is a lot more like Boston or NYC than it is like Houston or New Orleans.
I think it is eclipsed by private donations with its more than 5 Million members. The NRA is very much grass roots in that respect. Also, it isn’t that much money going directly to politicians. According to open secrets, the NRA spends ~$1 Million a year on individuals and Super Pacs at the national level. That isn’t really a lot of money. Most individuals get <$10,000 a year. I don’t think that is enough to buy a vote - and if it is - then that’s easily countered. A Million bucks is nothing.
Where their political power lies in stirring up their member base to go out and VOTE. THAT is the real power.
Much more of the money goes towards the legal arm which is the other big part of where it gets its power, challenging various laws, as well as their instructor education and safety network, competition programs, and other programs.
I am not saying the NRA is perfect, but the reality of what they do is more complicated than what most people have in their heads. Just like the ACLU isn’t full of Nazi sympathizers because they support free speech.
Planned parenthood is not a corporation lobbying for laws that allow them to sell more things, and sending pre-written bills to to politicians. Please do not equate them.
Hence there is no need for silenced firearms in such areas. Gunfire heard is generally far enough away from concentrations of people that it can be chalked up to legitimate use.
The total of contributions to candidates from National Rifle Assn PACs is 51 times larger than contributions from individuals
Contributions from Individuals
$16,015
Contributions from PACs
$823,200
LOBBYING: $3,188,000
"Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala’s, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.
The NRA also made $20.9 million - about 10 percent of its revenue - from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990.
Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA. Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns. Sturm Rugar gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA’s revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.
The NRA Foundation also collects hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry, which it then gives to local-level organizations for training and equipment purchases."
ETA:
My votes, which are cast in every primary and election, and POWERLESS in the face of that kind of influence.
Yeah, we got no (known) response to our report of actual gunfire, back in February. (If there was a police report, it isn’t online with the other reports from that time period.) 7 rapid shots, then a pause, then 2 shots, all in the space of maybe 4 seconds – someone more knowledgeable than I about firearms might be able to deduce what type of gun I heard.
Some years ago, same neighborhood, a neighbor threw a party that went into the wee hours of the morning. One of our neighbors called the cops when they saw a departing woman squat down in someone else’s yard to relieve herself. The police suggested that it was probably just someone leaving for work. The police probably had bigger problems to worry about on a weekend night/early morning, but still…
They spent $3 million in 2000 on individual candidates, and then when soft money was blocked in 2002 they dropped it entirely in favor of outside spending - which is exactly what the graph shows. That $27 million in outside spending is all part of that controversial Citizen’s United ruling stuff, and on top of that there is extremely little data on small elections from the NRA.
What we do know is that about half of what the NRA does is unimpeachable good work providing training and gun safety to people, and allowing those who cannot afford it an avenue to use a gun properly. We know that the legal defense fund is only used at 5% of its revenue rate with the rest of the money not really accounted for, and we know that the industry is purposely masking its donations to the NRA by laundering money through advertisements, “voluntary” individual donations, etc.
We also know the NRA is one of the best funded and most active political influences in the “swamp” for decades, and that if they kept the legal fund and gun safety and knowledge work while dropping their PACs they would be able to be a 100% grassroots organization promoting guns in a pretty healthy way - also known as the programs no one is complaining about.
I can’t go dig into the numbers now on where everything comes from. but that is CAMPAIGN contributions. The bulk of the over all operation costs are from donors and fun raising.
Their overall budget is over $200 million a year and ~5% comes from corporate donations.
To you and I, its a lot. In the grand scheme of things in both politics and business, it’s nothing. Like I said, most of the direct contributions are <$10,000. Yes there are other political things they do that aren’t direct contributions.
I am not saying the NRA isn’t powerful, but if it was as easy as just buying off politicians, we all would have cyborg arm cannons implanted at 18 as a requirement. Money is only part of it, the voter base is huge as well.
It’s all influencial money! Gunmakers are donating to the NRA for each gun sold, and buying NRA memberships for people who purchase guns, as well as laundering money through the organization. The operation costs are irrelevant to the political strong arming.
Every year new laws are drafted that allow more access to guns. There is a direct line to be drawn from this new legislation and the formation of “The American Silencers Association”.
"It should surprise no one that the NRA has recently thrown its weight behind an industry campaign to deregulate and promote the use of silencers. Under the trade banner of the American Silencer Association, manufacturers have come together with the support of the NRA to rebrand the silencer as a safety device belonging in every all-American gun closet. To nurture this potentially large and untapped market, the ASA last April sponsored the first annual all-silencer gun shoot and trade show in Dallas. America’s silencer makers are each doing their part. SWR Suppressors is asking survivalists to send a picture of their “bugout bag” for a chance to win an assault rifle silencer. The firm Silencero — “We Dig Suppressors and What They Do” — has put together a helpful “Silencers Are Legal” website and produced a series of would-be viral videos "
[quote=“Mister44, post:156, topic:102731”]
Their overall budget is over $200 million a year and ~5% comes from corporate donations.
[/quote]And about 20% from running industry ads. And some of their individual donations (no one knows how much) are built into buying gun-related products, like a mandatory tip at a restaurant.
Less than 50% comes from individual donors.
[quote=“Mister44, post:156, topic:102731”]
To you and I, its a lot. In the grand scheme of things in both politics and business, it’s nothing. Like I said, most of the direct contributions are <$10,000. Yes there are other political things they do that aren’t direct contributions.
[/quote]https://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary?cycle=2014&id=PA06
That article seems like a lot of bias and fear mongering. And this is coming from someone that advocates for gun control. If anything silencers make the ballistics of a rifle of gun less effective because it is making the projectile go slower. The advantage is less recoil and less noise to manage but it does not make a firearm more effective or deadly. Also the noise reduction isn’t significant enough to make it harder for a responding unit not to be able to find an active shooter. It’s still a gun and even with a silencer you can hear it.
As it has been mentioned multiple times above, silencers are legal in European countries and it’s incredibly rare seeing them used for crimes, murders, etc.
Then why not just lay that out? Why muddy the article with obvious misrepresentations of what a silencer does? If anything that hurts their point because they are littering their narrative with inaccuracies and bias. It also perpetuates false information that ultimately gives the NRA more to work with.
Again, I only referred to the article to illustrate that money is going straight from makers to politicians via the NRA. This was pointed out upthread as was totally uncontreversial and uncontested.
