“
A little stupid is like a little forest fire. If you happen upon some stupid, please stomp it out before it spreads.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle (Horse Latitudes)
“
One only wishes Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander's last meal.
”
”
Stephen King (Guns)
“
I'm tired of the whole anti gun thing. Saying that Guns cause Murders is like saying Steering Wheels cause car wrecks
”
”
Stanley Victor Paskavich (Return to Stantasyland)
“
Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following: If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns -- or the one we live in now? If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it's not about life and liberty. It's all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
We have a few chicken-shit senators who are afraid of the NRA and its ilk, but with the right tweaks, I still think you have a shot . . .
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal High (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #5))
“
When a country with less than five percent of the world's population has nearly half of the world's privately owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world's mass shootings, it's time to stop saying guns make us safer.
”
”
DaShanne Stokes
“
I hate and fear violence myself, have always avoided barroom brawls, and tho' I'm a bit of a gun-nut, and a member of the NRA, I never shoot at anything but beer cans and mule deer. (In season.) And seldom hit either, except by accident.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast)
“
To all my fellow Americans who simply insist on hangin' on to those guns ... Two things: 1) Enjoy 'em! 2) Please keep them hidden in a safe, secure place where the young 'uns can't get at 'em (I'd suggest the same place you keep the textbooks on evolution and global warming).
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
If guns don't kill people, why do mass killers arm themselves with guns?
”
”
DaShanne Stokes
“
Violence isn't a Democrat or Republican problem. It's an American problem, requiring an American solution.
”
”
DaShanne Stokes
“
The NRA kills more Americans than Muslim terrorists do.
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes (Malloy Rocks Comics Book 1))
“
The country is solidly behind the various proposals to limit access to dangerous weapons, especially high capacity automatic weapons. However, only a short time after the Bloomfield tragedy, it became clear that Congress and the President had other ideas and are still in bed with the NRA.
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”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal High (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #5))
“
Our good friend and fellow sportsman George W. Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act into law back in 2005. Essentially, unless we make a terribly defective gun, the law creates a complete shield from liability. God bless Citizens United, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, tort reform, and needy and greedy politicians.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal High (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #5))
“
If you say guns kill people one more time, I will shoot you with a gun, and you will, coincidentally, die.
”
”
Joseph Fink (Mostly Void, Partially Stars (Welcome to Night Vale Episodes, #1))
“
Good grief. They're like the freaking poster family for the NRA.
”
”
Elisabeth Wheatley (Fanged Princess (Fanged Princess #1))
“
The NRA assholes will tell you that “guns don’t kill people, people do.” Yeah, Malone thinks, people with guns.
”
”
Don Winslow (The Force)
“
And we have obviously failed on guns. Victims have engaged the public, and polls consistently indicate that huge majorities, including gun owners, support commonsense steps. Dr. Ochberg is frustrated, too. “Good people have tried to do good things but no policy has been enacted to reduce access of military weapons to kids,” he said. “No leader has had the guts to take on the NRA.” Nor has its own membership.
”
”
Dave Cullen (Columbine)
“
If you're one of those delusional 2nd Amendment types who believes you and your trailer park 'militia' might need to take on the Army, the Navy, the 101st Airborne and SEAL Team 6; not only should you be denied the right to bear arms -- but the right to your belt & shoelaces as well ... 'cause you're stark, ravin' batshit!!!
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
The NRA is an outdated special interest group. The Association’s membership does not have the best interests of our students or the safety of our schools in mind. Its’ influence must be diminished and ultimately destroyed. The NRA has our fallen friends’ blood on its hands.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal High (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #5))
“
Guns kill far more quickly and efficiently than knives, or crossbows, or toenail clippers; and, unlike bombs, you don't need to build one in your basement -- they come ready-made! There's a reason why guns are the overwhelming weapon of choice among mass murderers.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
Where is outrage from the National Rifle Association? Where’s the damned NRA? The NRA claims to believe the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States grants all of our citizens the right to survive and protect their families with any gun they want. I guess that’s only true when those citizens are Caucasian! Does the Second Amendment apply if you’re a black man driving through a white neighborhood?
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal In Black (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #4))
“
When nearly 3,000 people died on 9/11, it was enough to create massive change in our society. Over ten times as many people die from guns each year. Where is the social change?
”
”
DaShanne Stokes
“
It takes a good guy with a gun, to stop a bad guy with a gun (unless the bad guy's a much better shot).
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
We don't have a gun problem; we have a math problem: ZERO GUNS = ZERO GUN-RELATED DEATHS.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
Like the NRA says, it's better to have a machine gun and not need it than to need a machine gun and not have it.
”
”
John Sandford (Outrage (The Singular Menace, #2))
“
You’d think these “red-blooded” conservative congressmen who don’t want equal rights for gays or the right to choose for women would be embarrassed to have the NRA so publicly cupping their balls.
”
”
Beck Dorey-Stein (From the Corner of the Oval)
“
When has a civilian ever stopped a mass shooting with an AR-15? An AR-15 is a perfect weapon for mass murderers -- not so much for self-defense. Would you bring an AR-15 along on a date? To your place of work? To the movies? If not, how can owning an AR-15 save your life in the event of a mass shooting? Why does the NRA keep telling us we need semi-automatic rifles for self-defense? Whose side are they really on?
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
I only wish the NRA and its jellyfish, well-paid supporters in legislatures both State and Federal would be careful to recite the whole of it, and then tell us how a heavily armed man, woman, or child, recruited by no official, led by no official, given no goals by any official, motivated or restrained only by his or her personality and perceptions of what is going on, can be considered a member of a well-regulated militia.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage)
“
Just a thought for all you God-fearin', gun-lovin', Bible-thumpin' 2nd Amendment patriots. If it turns out Heaven's a gun-free zone, what's plan B???
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”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
The NRA was laying down its weapons. Yankee fans were rooting for the Boston Red Sox. The French were eating English food and loving it. Matthew was sure all those things were happening.... This was the proverbial cold day in hell, and Matthew was living it.
”
”
James Grippando (A King's Ransom)
“
Before you're allowed to own a .44, your IQ should be higher than .44.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle (Horse Latitudes)
“
He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. (Unless the other guy has a gun!)
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
The NRA brainwashes you into believing that you need to buy a bunch of guns, to protect yourself from all the people with guns.
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book)
“
It was an insult to having enough—to knowing that there was such a thing as enough. Inside those houses weren’t altruistic, good people whom fortune had smiled down on in exchange for their kind acts and good works. No, inside those columned, great-lawned homes were pirates for whom there was never enough. There was never enough money, goods, clothing, safety, security, club memberships, bottles of old wine. There was not a number at which anyone said, “I have a good life. I’d like to see if I can help someone else have a good life.” These were criminals—yes, most of them were real, live criminals. Not always with jailable offenses, but certainly morally abhorrent ones: They had offshore accounts or they underpaid their assistants or they didn’t pay taxes on their housekeepers or they were NRA members.
”
”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fleishman Is in Trouble)
“
Why do we still cling to the intellectually retarded notion that liberty can be obtained, maintained, or lost at the end of a gun barrel? When you're working 3 minimum wage jobs to make the minimum payment on a pair of socks you bought 12 years ago because your credit card company slapped you with an interest rate that would make a loan shark holler WTF! ... well, no one needs to hold a gun to your head. Your ass has already been sold down the river.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
Remember: Guns don't kill! -- The dimwits who insist EVERYONE should have the right to own 'em do!
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
Forget 'pray the gay away.' I you're more turned on by an AR-15 than a pair of tits, time for some serious therapy. Time for all you gun-humpers to come out of the closet. Is this really about the 2nd Amendment and self-defense -- or just a pathetic fetish for guys with tiny pee-pees?
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle (Horse Latitudes)
“
Mass shootings are all part of a vast Left-wing conspiracy to undermine the 2nd Amendment and deprive your 6-year-old of his God-given right to bring a Bushmaster to class for "show and tell" ... The one he got from his psychotic, meth-addicted uncle's trailer while the latter was out getting the Confederate flag tattooed on his face. Remember, guns don't kill: the dimwits who insist EVERYONE should have the right to own 'em do.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
One only wishes Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander’s last meal.
”
”
Stephen King (Guns (Kindle Single))
“
To all the kids from the "special" reading class back in high school (the one where you tried to form words using wooden blocks) -- PLEASE stop telling me that I can't blame an "inanimate object" for the off-the-hook gun violence in this country. YES! ... I CAN!!! I blame all the "inanimate objects" in Congress who refuse to pass sensible gun legislation because they're too chicken-shit to take on Wayne LaPierre and the gun lobby.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
We do wish they’d have the same fervor and monetary backing for, say, a group of black legal gun carriers in Ferguson, Missouri, as they do white folks.
”
”
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)
“
Guns are useless against a tyrannical government with tanks and drones.
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America)
“
Capitalism is cruelty for money.
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes (Malloy Rocks Comics Book 1))
“
If you so much as set foot downtown, you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the D.A., I'm a member of the NRA and I'm always packing.
”
”
Leigh Anne Touhy
“
I could shoot the dick off a hummingbird but fuck the NRA with a prickly pear.
”
”
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)
“
Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns.
”
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Tom Spanbauer (In the City of Shy Hunters)
“
For example, the Bible does not directly say that you have the right to bear arms, yet I have found at least one hundred passages that talk about caring and showing justice for the alien and immigrant among us,” Rah said. He wondered why the “typical evangelical church” seemed to have more members of the NRA than people advocating for immigration reform. “Is that cultural Christianity or biblical Christianity?
”
”
Deborah Jian Lee (Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women, and Queer Christians are Reclaiming Evangelicalism)
“
By the 1980s, influenced by the psychology and popular culture of trauma, the Left had abandoned solidarity across difference in favor of the meditation on and expression of suffering, a politics of feeling and resentment, of self and sensitivity. The Right, if it didn’t describe itself as engaging in identity politics, adopted the same model: the NRA, notably, cultivated the resentments and grievances of white men,
”
”
Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
“
When the NSSF fights against legislation designed to prevent mass shootings because it “won’t work and is a violation of rights,” we understand that many people agree with that argument. But that’s not, at all, even a little bit why the organization lobbies so hard. It works hand in hand with the NRA and certain senators, and spends millions of dollars per year for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. And every time a shooting happens, it makes even more money.
Yes. For real. When a mass shooting makes national headlines, the gun lobby purposefully stokes up fear and paranoia over proposed new gun laws so that scared citizens get out their checkbooks and buy a new AR-15 (or sporting rifle). So why would the NSSF have any interest in stopping mass shootings? Why would it engage politically and invest in compromise, a reform plan that attempts to make all Americans safer, or any sort of reckoning of the role guns play in gun violence? It won’t.
However you feel about guns and their place in America—whether we’re talking about rifles for hunting or assault rifles, or anything in between—it’s undeniable that the gun lobby has refused to acknowledge or entertain any sort of regulation or reform aimed at making us a safer and saner nation. The reason why: because that does not make it more money. A customer base kept terrified at all times that this will be “the last chance before the government bans” whatever gun manufacturers are peddling is much more valuable. A customer base absolutely convinced that the just-about-anyone-can-buy culture we have is politically necessary without seeing that it serves those companies is what they’re after. They have achieved it.
”
”
Trae Crowder (The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark)
“
Personally, I think we should remove the word "shooting" from the vernacular. It's an ugly, biased word that somehow creates the assumption that a gun was involved. Let's go with 'Interpersonal Ballistic Event' (IBE).
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle
“
I didn't know until a year later that Marilyn Manson had canceled concert dates in our area out of respect, or that the NRA did not cancel their annual meeting, held at a hotel fifteen miles away from the school, just ten days after the shootings.
”
”
Sue Klebold (A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy)
“
MY ASS IS WORTH MORE THAN YOUR INCONVENIENCE ... that's my response to anyone opposed to universal background checks. If Ted Nugent has to wait three days because his wife wants a Howitzer for the backyard -- tough shit! If a background check keeps ONE gun out of the hands of ONE maniac thereby saving MY ass, it's worth it. May sound a bit selfish, but I'd hope you're equally fond of your own ass.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle (Horse Latitudes)
“
They just didn't make them like that anymore. Nowadays she was lucky to get some mild flirtation from some leather-faced NRA lobbyist. Forget about doggy-style on an eighteenth-century canopied bed by a certified KGB agent who said things like “beg for it my little Yankee poodle.
”
”
Magnus Flyte (City of Dark Magic (City of Dark Magic, #1))
“
Forget the National Debt Clock. We need an electronic billboard to track all the daily shootings in this country. I'm really sick of listening to all the mouth breathers who soil their camouflage pants every time someone suggests we might have a gun problem. Other countries have crazy, violent people. What they don't have is 300,000,000 WMDs and a gun show loophole that allows any psycho with a valid credit card to own 'em.
”
”
Quentin R. Bufogle (Horse Latitudes)
“
When it comes to television advertising, Michael Bloomberg out-spends the NRA and all other self-defense groups by 6.3 to one. The money produces political attack ads that accuse supporters of right-to-carry on college campuses of “allowing criminals to carry hidden, loaded guns in our schools.
”
”
John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
“
If enough American gun-owners urge Congress to do the right thing, and insist the NRA climb aboard, the results might surprise you. Gun owners aren’t dragons, and they don’t have to practice Gerald Ford two-mindedness, simultaneously mourning the victims and denying the role speed-shooters play in these tragedies, forever.
”
”
Stephen King (Guns (Kindle Single))
“
At an NRA annual meeting in Cincinnati in 1977, Second Amendment “absolutists” took control of the NRA from previous leaders who thought the organization was really there to protect marksmen. Gun nuts call this event the Revolt at Cincinnati. Our modern epidemic of mass shootings can, more or less, be traced to these yahoos winning control of that organization. The ammosexuals reformed the NRA from the generally benign conglomeration of Bambi killers to the grotesque weapon of mass destruction we know it to be today. It was this new NRA that invented the radical rationalization of the Second Amendment as a right to armed self-defense. It was this new NRA that gained political supremacy in the Republican party. It was this new NRA that got Ronald Reagan, who once signed one of the most sweeping gun restrictions in the nation, to sign the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, an act that rolled back many of the restrictions from the Gun Control Act. The NRA’s wholesale reimagining of the Second Amendment hasn’t just lured Republican politicians, it’s become part of the gospel of Republican judges. The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, the two outside interest groups most responsible for telling Republican judges how to rule, have fully adopted an absolutist, blood-soaked interpretation of the Second Amendment. These groups of alleged “textualists” read “well regulated militia” clear out of the text of the Amendment. Instead, they substitute self-defense as the “original purpose” of the language. There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn’t to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery.
”
”
Elie Mystal (Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution)
“
Raise your gun in anger, then hang your head in sorrow.
”
”
Anthony T. Hincks
“
Hi, you’ve reached 555-3080,” Cassandra’s voice says. “Please leave your name and number, the date and time of your call, the purpose of your call, your religious persuasion, political affiliation, NRA membership status, IQ, resting pulse, and whether a spot check of your freezer would reveal fillets of any upper-trophic-level fish, and I’ll call you back. Bye.
”
”
Lee Goodman (Indefensible)
“
There was not a number at which anyone said, “I have a good life. I’d like to see if I can help someone else have a good life.” These were criminals—yes, most of them were real, live criminals. Not always with jailable offenses, but certainly morally abhorrent ones: They had offshore accounts or they underpaid their assistants or they didn’t pay taxes on their housekeepers or they were NRA members.
”
”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fleishman Is in Trouble)
“
Although Herbert Hoover in many ways prefigured him, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who first tried to create an explicit corporate state in America with his National Recovery Administration (NRA). With its fascist-style Blue Eagle emblem, the NRA coordinated big business and labor in a central plan, and outlawed competition. The NRA even employed vigilante groups to spy on smaller businesses and report if they violated the plan. Just as in Mussolini’s Italy, the beneficiaries of the U.S. corporate state were—in addition to the government itself—established economic interest groups. NRA cheerleaders included the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, the United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and—above all—Gerard Swope of General Electric, who helped draft the NRA act.
”
”
Ludwig von Mises (The Free Market Reader (LvMI))
“
IT BEGAN WITH A GUN. On September 1, 1939, the German army invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. In the October 1939 issue of Detective Comics, Batman killed a vampire by shooting silver bullets into his heart. In the next issue, Batman fired a gun at two evil henchmen. When Whitney Ellsworth, DC’s editorial director, got a first look at a draft of the next installment, Batman was shooting again. Ellsworth shook his head and said, Take the gun out.1 Batman had debuted in Detective Com-ics in May 1939, the same month that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in United States v. Miller, a landmark gun-control case. It concerned the constitutionality of the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Federal Firearms Act, which effectively banned machine guns through prohibitive taxation, and regulated handgun ownership by introducing licensing, waiting period, and permit requirements. The National Rifle Association supported the legislation (at the time, the NRA was a sportsman’s organization). But gun manufacturers challenged it on the grounds that federal control of gun ownership violated the Second Amendment. FDR’s solicitor general said the Second Amendment had nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun; it had to do with the common defense. The court agreed, unanimously.2
”
”
Jill Lepore (The Secret History of Wonder Woman)
“
A sacred cow, unexamined, feeds itself and produces a whole lot of bullshit. And nobody wants that, except the people who profit by selling you bullshit. Those are the people who try to tell you that examining or criticizing the sacred cow is taboo.
”
”
Oliver Markus Malloy (Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (How The Great American Opioid Epidemic of The 21st Century Began, #3))
“
Shaking, I pushed at him and managed to turn my head long enough to gasp, “I can’t. No. That’s enough, Jack.”
He stopped at once. But he kept me against him, his chest moving hard and fast.
I couldn’t look at him. My voice was hoarse as I said, “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“I’ve wanted this since the first second I saw you.” His arms tightened, and he bent over me until his mouth was close to my ear. Gently he whispered, “You did, too.”
“I didn’t. I don’t.”
“You need some fun, Ella.”
I let out an incredulous laugh. “Believe me, I don’t need fun, I need—” I broke off with a gasp as he pressed my hips closer to his. The feel of him was more than my dazzled senses could handle. To my mortification, I hitched up against him before I could stop myself, heat and instinct winning out over sanity.
Feeling the reflexive response, Jack smiled against my scarlet cheek. “You should take me on. I’d be good for you.”
“You are so full of yourself . . . and you would not be good for me, with your steaks and power tools and your attention-deficit libido, and . . . I’ll bet you’re a card-carrying member of the NRA. Admit it, you are.” I couldn’t seem to shut up. I was talking too much, breathing too fast, jittering like a wind-up toy that had been wound to the limits of its mechanism.
Jack nuzzled into a sensitive place behind my ear. “Why does that matter?”
“Is that a yes? It must be. God. It matters because— stop that. It matters because I would only go to bed with a man who respected me and my views. My—” I broke off with an inarticulate sound as he nibbled lightly at my skin.
“I respect you,” he murmured. “And your views. I think of you as an equal. I respect your brains, and all those big words you like to use. But I also want to rip your clothes off and have sex with you until you scream and cry and see God.” His mouth dragged gently along my throat. I jerked helplessly, muscles jolting with pleasure, and his hands gripped my hips, keeping me in place. “I’m gonna show you a good time, Ella. Starting with some take-no-prisoners sex. The kind when you can’t remember your own name after.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Smooth Talking Stranger (Travises, #3))
“
This is comparable to the long fought battle over the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) and a popular stance that automatic weapons should be illegal while handguns should be permitted. Similarly, Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, fought a hard battle in the 1970s and 1980s over the First Amendment and his right to publish any material regardless of content as it was a matter related to the freedom of expression. Gun control opponents, such as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA), do not want to outlaw fully automatic weapons because of the “what is next?” argument, which can be a slippery slope.
”
”
Dave Pounder (Obscene Thoughts: A Pornographer's Perspective on Sex, Love, and Dating)
“
By the 1980s, influenced by the psychology and popular culture of trauma, the Left had abandoned solidarity across difference in favor of the meditation on and expression of suffering, a politics of feeling and resentment, of self and sensitivity. The Right, if it didn’t describe itself as engaging in identity politics, adopted the same model: the NRA, notably, cultivated the resentments and grievances of white men, feeding, in particular, both longstanding resentment of African Americans and newly repurposed resentment of immigrants. Together, both Left and Right adopted both a politics and a cultural style animated by indictment and indignation.146
”
”
Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
“
Yet here the guardian of the Second Amendment was now deliberately ignoring the inconvenient fact that Black men had been killed for merely possessing a firearm. “Where’s the NRA?” asked journalist Hanna Kozlowska. Didn’t Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have Second Amendment rights, too? 11 David A. Graham, in The Atlantic, coolly observed that the “two shootings give a strong sense that the Second Amendment does not apply to black Americans the same way it does to white Americans.” 12 Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote that he saw that old Jim Crow “whites only” sign plastered above the Second Amendment. 13 The message was loud and clear: Even for the NRA, Black people did not have Second Amendment rights. 14
”
”
Carol Anderson (The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America)
“
When it comes to our current fears regarding unsupervised children, we see both versions of folk wisdom at work. In the sixties or seventies, a child could walk to school or wait in a car because people were better, the world less violent, we say. But also, parents were dumber. They simply didn’t know. Sure, parents used to leave kids on their own, but they also let them drink Kool-Aid by the vat and play with toy weapons the NRA might find a touch aggro. They let them build forts in the trunks of station wagons careening down the freeway or swim without sunscreen until their skin blistered. Parents let kids wait in cars because they were idiots. But also, on average, because it was safer, because people were better then, gentler, less monstrous. It sounds so nice and pleasant, this safer, simpler past. It sounds almost too good to be true.
”
”
Kim Brooks (Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear)
“
As it was in Mao’s China with the Red Guard, it is a political crime in today’s Republican Party to appear well educated. So we find Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri tweeting a rant about “unelected progressive elites in our govt.”16 The senator went to Stanford, taught at St. Paul’s School in London (founded in 1509), and graduated from Yale Law School. Senator Ted Cruz denounces “coastal elites who attack the NRA.”17 Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School, was a Supreme Court clerk, worked in the Bush administration, and is a former assistant attorney general. His wife was born in the coastal town of San Luis Obispo, California, and holds a BA from Claremont McKenna College, an MA from Université Libre de Bruxelles, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She works as a managing director at Goldman Sachs.
”
”
Stuart Stevens (It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump)
“
NBC’s Bob Costas—when he is not out praising Vladimir Putin at the Olympics—is railing against the dangerous gun culture of America, perpetuated by (cue low piano keys) the villainous NRA. When it was pointed out to Costas by Greg Gutfeld that he was protected by armed security, Costas blanched. Costas responded, “In truth, Greg was accurate if you consider 180 degrees from the truth accurate. I have never had a personal bodyguard a single day in my life. There are security people at NFL games that the NFL employs, and there is always massive security at an Olympics, and there…is NBC security.” But Gutfeld never said that Costas had hired a personal bodyguard. Just pointing out that Costas was benefiting from the gun culture he was simultaneously attacking. He doesn’t have to be armed, because the companies he works for have the power and money to make other carry arms for him.
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Dana Loesch (Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America)
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Not every gun owner is as sane or self-possessed as the plumber from Sutherland Springs, after all, and if, as the NRA argues, law-abiding Americans should be and must be armed to protect themselves against the lawbreakers who threaten our safety, vast numbers of fearful, often irrational people will be empowered to make split-second decisions that will inevitably lead to more killings of unarmed strangers. To put a gun in everyone’s hand would turn the United States into a country of soldiers and thrust us back to the early colonial days when every citizen was a musket-bearing warrior and did lifetime service in the local militia. Is that what we want from America today—the right to live in a society of permanent armed struggle? If the problem is too many bad men with guns, would it not be wiser to take those guns away from them rather than arm the so-called good men, who in many if not most instances are considerably less than good, and thereby eliminate the problem altogether, for if the bad men had no guns, why would the good men need them?
As my mother used to say to me whenever I spun off into one of my wild, passionate speculations about how to improve the world: “Dream on, Paul.
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Paul Auster (Bloodbath Nation)
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NBC News reporter David Gregory was on a tear. Lecturing the NRA president—and the rest of the world—on the need for gun restrictions, the D.C. media darling and host of NBC’s boring Sunday morning gabfest, Meet the Press, Gregory displayed a thirty-round magazine during an interview. This was a violation of District of Columbia law, which specifically makes it illegal to own, transfer, or sell “high-capacity ammunition.” Conservatives demanded the Mr. Gregory, a proponent of strict gun control laws, be arrested and charged for his clear violation of the laws he supports. Instead the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Irv Nathan, gave Gregory a pass: Having carefully reviewed all of the facts and circumstances of this matter, as it does in every case involving firearms-related offenses or any other potential violation of D.C. law within our criminal jurisdiction, OAG has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated with the December 23, 2012 broadcast. What irked people even more was the attorney general admitted that NBC had willfully violated D.C. law. As he noted: No specific intent is required for this violation, and ignorance of the law or even confusion about it is no defense. We therefore did not rely in making our judgment on the feeble and unsatisfactory efforts that NBC made to determine whether or not it was lawful to possess, display and broadcast this large capacity magazine as a means of fostering the public policy debate. Although there appears to have been some misinformation provided initially, NBC was clearly and timely advised by an MPD employee that its plans to exhibit on the broadcast a high capacity-magazine would violate D.C. law. David Gregory gets a pass, but not Mark Witaschek. Witaschek was the subject of not one but two raids on his home by D.C. police. The second time that police raided Witaschek’s home, they did so with a SWAT team and even pulled his terrified teenage son out of the shower. They found inoperable muzzleloader bullets (replicas, not live ammunition, no primer) and an inoperable shotgun shell, a tchotchke from a hunting trip. Witaschek, in compliance with D.C. laws, kept his guns out of D.C. and at a family member’s home in Virginia. It wasn’t good enough for the courts, who tangled him up in a two-year court battle that he fought on principle but eventually lost. As punishment, the court forced him to register as a gun offender, even though he never had a firearm in the city. Witaschek is listed as a “gun offender”—not to be confused with “sex offender,” though that’s exactly the intent: to draw some sort of correlation, to make possession of a common firearm seem as perverse as sexual offenses. If only Mark Witaschek got the break that David Gregory received.
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Dana Loesch (Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America)
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There is Irish Spring, but there is no fall soap.
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Jerry Mooney (History Yoghurt and the Moon)
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The neighborhood reduced the risk, Levi felt, of anyone else in the vicinity packing a weapon. In the inner city, he'd probably run into some gang banger. Out in the sticks, it would be some NRA freak's dream come true to put him down. But here in the middle ground, in the suburbs, it was all sheep and no wolves. Or so it seemed.
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L.T. Vargus (Killing Season (Violet Darger, #2))
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Restricting the sale and use of guns became a salient political issue only after the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr. The gun control laws enacted or seriously proposed were modest. When Congress was passing gun regulation in 1968, the National Rifle Association’s executive vice-president wrote that “the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.” The GOP platforms of 1968 and 1972 supported gun regulation—and President Nixon, his speechwriter William Safire recalled, told him that “guns are an abomination” and that he would have outlawed handguns if he could. But violent crime had tripled in a decade, and in the late 1970s hysterics managed to take over the NRA, replacing its motto “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation” with the second half of the Second Amendment—“The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” Within a decade, the official Republican position shifted almost 180 degrees to oppose any federal registration of firearms. In other words, fantasy was starting to hold its own against reason.
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Kurt Andersen (Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History)
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Trump calls for Muslim leaders to fight terrorists. Great. Will he now address American leaders about ending the terrorism of the police?
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A.K. Kuykendall
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The forty-first president asked that his name be permanently removed from the rolls of the NRA. Clinton and Bush: There, from two men of different generations, different philosophies, different temperaments, came unambiguous words of denunciation in a time of
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Jon Meacham (The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels)
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In the recent article “The Secret of Scale” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Peter Murray looked at how advocacy organizations achieved true scale and predictable revenue.6 He found that organizations like AARP and the National Rifle Association (NRA) have expanded to provide lifestyle benefits, like group insurance, product discounts, and access to special events—going well beyond traditional advocacy.
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Robbie Kellman Baxter (The Membership Economy)
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The five million members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) are at the forefront of shooting and promoting shooting safety. And they have a proud record of achievement as well as activism. Perhaps you were not aware that: • More than 120,000 certified NRA instructors train about 750,000 gun owners every year.
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Rick Sapp (The NRA Step-by-Step Guide to Gun Safety: How to Care For, Use, and Store Your Firearms)
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Since the establishment of the lifesaving “Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program” in 1988, more than twenty-eight million pre-kindergarten to fourth-grade children have learned what to do if they see a firearm in an unsupervised situation. • During the past seven years, “Refuse to Be a Victim” seminars have helped more than fifteen thousand men and women develop their own personal safety plan using common-sense strategies.
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Rick Sapp (The NRA Step-by-Step Guide to Gun Safety: How to Care For, Use, and Store Your Firearms)
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place. With the world in turmoil, America has generally managed to honor its egalitarian principles and, though some people might disagree, to maintain the basic rights guaranteed to citizens in its founding documents. Freedom to worship as one pleases. Freedom to speak one’s mind. Freedom against unreasonable searches and seizures. Freedom to own a firearm. These are precious liberties, ones that are rare in the world. Freedom together with other promises--such as freedom of assembly and of the press–is standard nowhere else.
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Rick Sapp (The NRA Step-by-Step Guide to Gun Safety: How to Care For, Use, and Store Your Firearms)
Rick Sapp (The NRA Step-by-Step Guide to Gun Safety: How to Care For, Use, and Store Your Firearms)
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Even if you are absolutely certain that a gun is not loaded, handle it as if it were because you’re forming a habit, and the consequences of a moment of inattention or carelessness can be disastrous.
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Rick Sapp (The NRA Step-by-Step Guide to Gun Safety: How to Care For, Use, and Store Your Firearms)
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The damage caused by carelessness is harmful to the entire firearms community in North America. It harms the twenty-five million hunters, competitors, and recreational shooters. It harms the fifteen million concealed-carry permit holders. It harms the 325 million citizens of the United States who believe in and honor our rights as citizens.
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Rick Sapp (The NRA Step-by-Step Guide to Gun Safety: How to Care For, Use, and Store Your Firearms)
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When racks shed arms like autumn leaves, the land shall turn from red to gold
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Agona Apell
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Despite NRA misdirection and outright lies, it’s not a slippery slope. The only slippery slope is with those who buy that argument, who slip from the fear of regulation down the rabbit hole of paranoia. We
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Ian Gurvitz (WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America)
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The most thoughtful progressive scholars recognized that the Court was responding to a broad shift in attitudes about gun rights. For one thing, elections matter. The presidents who appointed the five justices in the majority all were themselves NRA members.
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Michael Waldman (The Second Amendment)
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With more than a million Texans licensed to carry handguns, the state is actually far behind Florida, with 1.7 million. "I'm EMBARRASSED," Governor Greg Abbott tweeted in 2015; "Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans. @NRA
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Lawrence Wright (God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State)
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Soldiers understand and know death.
Families only understand grief, anger and sorrow.
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Anthony T. Hincks
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It’s hard to know exactly how many children are killed or maimed by guns because in 1996, Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., at the behest of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and weapons manufacturers, attached the Dickey Amendment to a must-pass omnibus spending bill, making it illegal for the CDC to keep track of or analyze the data. Congress simultaneously cut the CDC’s budget by the exact amount it had been spending to track gun violence.10 (Sixteen years later, Dickey essentially apologized in a Washington Post op-ed, calling for research into gun violence.11 As he later told ABC, “I wish I had not been so reactionary.”12)
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Thom Hartmann (The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment: How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics, and Other Polarizing Topics)
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Jesus's command to "turn the other cheek" flies in the face of the NRA's command to "stand your ground.
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Shane Claiborne & Michael Martin
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feeling the fear
hysteria
in mass murder
town
83-year-old woman
shot thru eye
convenience clerk
nothing taken
says
it’s pointless
junked out killer on
lam
killing for
art’s sake
THIS is my art
judge me
now.
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Scott C. Holstad (Big Head Press Broadside Poem Collection)
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Even the simplest regulations meet outraged opposition from the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Gun Owners of America. Theirs is a reflexive opposition based on the rather paranoid belief that any step toward firearms regulation must necessarily take us one more step down the road to federal confiscation of America’s guns and, willy-nilly from there, to tyranny and oppression. Yet survey after survey shows that most Americans favor rigorous firearms regulations.
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Erik Larson (Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun)
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As long as our legislators continue to pocket handouts from the NRA, as long as they continue to condone a way of doing business that readily puts guns in the hands of the marginalized and the desperate, of children who see no other access to their share of the American dream …
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Richard Price (Lush Life)
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I thought you right-wing NRA guys were against premarital sex.” “No, no, we just preach that so we can clear the playing fields for ourselves.” She
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Harlan Coben (Caught)
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Many gun control academics use language that is hardly scholarly, attacking academics they disagree with as being paid off by the “execrable NRA.” They claim that “gun sellers call the shots at the NRA.”5 They accuse others of having “blood on [their] hands” or being a “blight on democracy.” Apparently, finding evidence of defensive gun uses brings “harm to the democratic process.”6 There are other less obvious claims that are just as outrageous. No, the United States isn’t unique in terms of mass public shootings or homicides. No, gun bans don’t make people safer. Background checks on private transfers haven’t stopped mass public shootings or any other type of crime in the U.S. or other countries. Background checks are racist. And there are real problems with background checks that harm the most vulnerable. Gun control advocates have it backwards when they claim that gun makers have something to learn about how to reduce accidents from looking at government regulation of cars.
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John R. Lott Jr. (The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies)
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In 2010 the NRA received $71 million in donations, much of it coming from manufacturers of assault weapons. 74% of their funding comes from corporations. According to Firearm Industry Statistics, there are 465 gun manufacturers in the U.S. The number of guns manufactured in the U.S. increased from 2.9 million in 2001 to almost 5.5 million in 2010. In 2013, guns and ammo sales rose to an estimated $14.7 billion. The NRA isn’t fighting for the rights of the average American to own a 30-clip magazine. They’re fighting for the rights of gun manufacturers to make and sell them, both in the U.S. and abroad. That’s why they spend millions each year to make sure the politicians they bought remain in office. Between
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Ian Gurvitz (WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America)
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Flint, Michigan. Detroit as seen backwards through a telescope. The callus on the palm of the state shaped like a welder's mitt. A town where 66.5 percent of the working citizenship are in some way, shape or form linked to the shit-encrusted underbelly of a French buggy racer named Chevrolet and a floppy-eared Scotchman named Buick. A town where 23.5 percent of the population pimp everything from Elvis on velvet to horse tranquilizers to Halo Burgers to NRA bumper stickers. A town where the remaining 10 percent sit back and watch it all go by—sellin’ their blood, rollin’ convenience stores, puffin’ no-brand cigarettes while cursin’ their wives and kids and neighbors and the flies sneakin’ through the screens and the piss-warm quarts of Red White & Blue and the Skylark parked out back with the busted tranny.
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Ben Hamper (Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line)
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first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time.’ So I’m a pro-life-choice NRA gun-control nut who wants schools to pray for the separation of church and state. For the love of God, I just want all of us to start getting along!
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Tim Dorsey (Hurricane Punch (Serge Storms, #9))
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his stepmother was merely playing with firearms in clear defiance of everything everyone has ever been told by the NRA
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Sean Platt (Invasion (Alien Invasion, #1))