Decent pro-con comparison

I found the gun debate presented here close to fair. I wish they would have done some fact checking on the claims of the people/organizations they quote. But overall it is pretty good. It has a collection of facts that could be useful. For example:

The most-recently available total annual spending budgets for gun control groups were $13.7 million collectively (4.7% of the NRA’s 2013 budget): including Everytown for Gun Safety ($4.7 million in 2012); the Brady Campaign ($2.7 million in 2012); the Brady Center ($3.1 million in 2010); Coalition to Stop Gun Violence ($308,761 in 2011); Sandy Hook Promise ($2.2 million in 2013); and the Violence Policy Center ($750,311 in 2012).

It includes a decent history of gun laws and gun organizations.

It’s worth a read.

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5 thoughts on “Decent pro-con comparison

  1. I agree, the article is definitely worth the few minutes of time needed to read it.

    However, there is one glaring error (or perhaps “misinterpretation” would be a better term:

    “The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act), part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on Sep. 13, 1994. The ban outlawed 19 models of semi-automatic assault weapons by name and others by “military features,” as well as large-capacity magazines manufactured after the law’s enactment. [114] The ban expired on Sep. 13, 2004 and was not renewed due in part to NRA lobbying efforts.”

    Actually, the ban was agreed to in congress with one specific proviso: a “Sunset” condition.

    If, after five years of influence on American culture, the law was NOT found to have had a positive effect on violent crime, the bill would be allowed to expire. The flip side was that if the bill (now law) had been statistically proven to have had a positive effect, it would continue.

    History shows that the sun set on the bill not because of “NRA lobbying efforts”, but because crime statistics were dramatically shown to NOT have been affected by the law.

    Proving once again that you can’t eliminate crime by making it illegal … because if it was a crime, it would already be illegal.

  2. So an individual anti rights organization has revenue similar to that of a single, small, Mom and Pop business in any city in the U.S. By that measure they’d never make the news and no one would take them seriously. They clearly do not represent many people. A single grocery store in Moscow, Idaho, which is a small town, does about as much in sales revenue in a month as one of them collects in a year, and there are several such stores in Moscow. One decent sized farm in fly-over country, which no one ever takes notice of, does more in revenue than one of the anti rights outfits.

    The antis are microscopic. They’re gnats, and yet we are led to believe that they’re mainstream and cutting edge. That’s how Progressives always operate though. It’s in their play book to over-represent their following as much as possible and in every way possible. In fact they are nothing. No good, dumbo nothings.

    Hell I’m elevating their standing in the world significantly, right now, just typing a few words of contempt on a backwater blog– a single drop of water is a boon, after all, to a shriveled up little cactus.

    Ignore them and move on.

    • And yet – when they mobilize resources and get a few of their rich patrons to throw in bucks for a specific target, they can pack a focused punch. Witness the damage that Bloomberg, Gates, Hanauer, et. al. did in the last Washington election.

  3. And 4.7% of the NRA’s budget? How much goes to “how to shoot” and safety and how much goes to lobbying? I think the number they were looking for was the budget for the NRA-ILA, but that would not make such an impressively small percentage.

  4. And how many dollars were spend to force I-594 on us? I realize your numbers are for 2013 but I swear they must have come close to doubling their 2013 numbers on just this one initiative.

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