Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

National Rifle Association: “A voice for criminals”

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NYT Op-Ed contributor Alan Berlow lays out what any reasonable observer has known for years: the National Rifle Association is primarily the lobbying arm of the gun manufacturing industry, and supports crime and criminals because that makes people buy more guns.

“[T]he N.R.A. was no longer the voice of law-abiding gun owners, but rather a voice for criminals.”

Americans should understand the outsize role the N.R.A. plays, not only in thwarting sensible gun safety laws but also in undermining law enforcement by abetting gun traffickers, criminal gun dealers and criminal gun users

Read the whole piece here.

 

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  1. This CBS Morning segment shows what many of us know in Chicago, a lot of the gangs buy their guns from the same select stores that cater to the criminal element.

    This store, Badger Guns, has been linked to the majority of criminal on cop shootings in that city. The cops are fed up, and fighting back:

    Fellow officer Graham Kunisch was shot multiple times. He lost an eye and part of his frontal lobe. Surveillance video shows the officers confronting Julius Burton just before he opened fire on them.

    In their lawsuit, the officers claim the weapon Burton used was “negligently and unlawfully sold by Badger Guns.”

    According to the charging document, in 2005, 537 guns recovered from crimes were traced back to Badger Guns, which “ranked as the number one crime gun dealer in America.”

    Burton was 18 years old at the time. The legal age to buy a gun in Wisconsin was 21. He allegedly paid a friend to buy the weapon for him. The officers claim the gun store knew the purchase was illegal and conspired with the friend “to change his answer [on a form] to claim falsely that he was the actual buyer of the gun.”

    A former co-worker is a die hard Goldwater Republican from downstate, needless to say, very libertarian on social and fiscal questions and hawkish on defense. He isn’t an Obama fan or a gun control fan really, but the inner hawk comes out for this issue, which he recognizes as the threat to domestic security it is. So we are both watching this test case and hoping it works. And Mayor Emmanuel will be watching too, since the same four stores in Chicago have been linked to 90% of our gun crimes as well.

  2. …that I learned the NRA’s board of directors is packed with representatives from gun manufacturers. This fact really does make them a special, rather than public, interest group. However, I’m not sure that is widely known and we may do well to publicize that better.

  3. …because how can we prevent convicted felons (or someone like Whitey Bulger while he was the most wanted person in the country) from buying guns from guns shows, when the NRA opposed even that common sense measure?

  5. So Republicans can try to take down perfectly reasonable organizations like ACORN or Planned Parenthood, but a campaign to discredit the NRA that drew precisely the points raised in the New York Times editorial is just unthinkable on the part of the national Democratic Party.

    They want me to contribute for what reason again?

  6. his girlfriend’s mother, and got out of jail on the sort of “technicality” that Dirty Harry fans like to complain about.
    But the perp, Robert Dowlut, definitely committed the murder, because he led the police to where he buried the gun. He just didn’t have his parents or a lawyer with him when he confessed.

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