My dad was an intelligent, honest, sober, hard-working man who loved his family fiercely. I want to make that clear, because in the cosmic father lottery I think I got lucky.
Dad’s biggest weakness was for conspiracy theories. Once on a trip across several states (he wouldn’t fly, but that’s another story) at every gas station he would loudly tell the attendant that this newfangled unleaded gas thing was part of a communist plot to gum up all of our car engines. My mother and I would cower in the car and pretend we were with somebody else.
I inherited my love for a good argument from him. He and I had epic arguments. I remember — this must have been fifty years ago, give or take — arguing with him that all firearms should be registered. And his response was that if all guns were registered, then when the communists took over (you may see a pattern here) they would know where to go to confiscate everyone’s guns. So I said they don’t need the government for that; they can take over the NRA headquarters and find the membership list. (Score!)
I thought of Dad this morning when I saw this article — How The NRA Built A Massive Secret Database Of Gun Owners.
… the sort of vast, secret database the NRA often warns of already exists, despite having been assembled largely without the knowledge or consent of gun owners. It is housed in the Virginia offices of the NRA itself. The country’s largest privately held database of current, former, and prospective gun owners is one of the powerful lobby’s secret weapons, expanding its influence well beyond its estimated 3 million members and bolstering its political supremacy.
That database has been built through years of acquiring gun permit registration lists from state and county offices, gathering names of new owners from the thousands of gun-safety classes taught by NRA-certified instructors and by buying lists of attendees of gun shows, subscribers to gun magazines and more, BuzzFeed has learned….
…The NRA won’t say how many names and what other personal information is in its database, but former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman estimates they keep tabs on “tens of millions of people.â€
So, if you are a gun owner, the NRA is watching you. And when the UN Agenda 21 infiltrators take over America, they can go straight to the NRA headquarters and know where to find you.
The article says gun owners are unlikely to care, because the data base isn’t in the hands of the government. But how do they know the NSA hasn’t hacked it already? Hmmmmmmm?
For that matter, how do we know the NRA isn’t a communist plot? Makes as much sense as anything else these days …
I’m much more alarmed by the sheer quantity of guns in the USA. There are something like 300 million firearms in the US. That’s about two for every adult in America. This is a tinderbox waiting for a spark. This is a very dangerous country to be in at this time.
moonbat,
Just ask that Australian college baseball player in OK about how dangerous this country is.
Oh wait, you can’t.
He’s dead.
Shot by 3 bored teenagers.
Less and less people in this country see the need for guns. So, most gun sales are not to newbies.
It’s the existing gun-loons are the ones doing most of the buying.
In the age of drone warfare, these armed morons want to protect themselves with weapons that would make SWAT team members and weekend National Guard members, giggle.
“Ok, Bubba, so you got a 50 caliber. Here, take a look at what WE got! And we’re not even the regular military, with all of their assault gear, and tanks, and helicopters, and missiles, and drones, and satellites, and… Your guns will give you the same chance, that a teenager with a kiddie popguns, would have with a professional gunslinger in the days of the Wild West.”
NRA as a communist plot??
Oh yeah? You ever hear the NRA advocating the flouridation of water?
And of ice cream? Children’s ice cream?
Good point.
I received some mailings from the NRA, they somehow get addresses from government folks when you apply for a permit or register a gun, seems illegal to me. I wrote them a nasty-gram and never heard back. Something strange is going on with some gun owners, I have noticed a lot more people just shooting in backyards lately, sometimes it sounds like a war zone out here in the sticks of northwest Indiana! Maybe the tea-tards have issued some sort of orders to get ready for the revolution?
When I was a kid, I got literature for my parents and a dime from a paranoid John Bircher about six doors down at Halloween. So when Teas breathlessly tell us ” …the blue helmets are coming, the blue helmets are coming,” it is literally what the John Birchers were saying fifty years ago. The blue helmets of course never came and the Birchers were laughed out of national politics (and then a bunch of them renamed themselves the Tea Party.)
My dad was a very capable businessman and a reasonably decent man, but he had his bouts of nonsense: “civilization began in the Middle East and it will end in the Middle East,” he would say shaking his finger.
All you can do is either end the conversation or steer people back to saner topics. One of the newest groups are those who acknowledge global warming is real (which of course it is) and that we’re doomed and can’t do anything about it (which is not accurate, though many scientists agree that there will be consequences; what they emphasize strongly is a wide range of things that can be done.)
All I can say is, there’s a lot of work to do out there. And frankly it’s a bit disheartening to realize how many decent people believe utter nonsense that’s easily disprovable. Maybe liberals need to try the good cop/bad cop routine. The bad cop should hammer home the argument and the good cap should say, don’t worry about that, we’ll figure it out, say look at those easy problems over there—let’s talk about those ones!
You think the NSA has a copy?
You know, there’s only one letter separating the NRA from the NSA.
Co-incidence? Hmm.
I had a conversation yesterday with my 75 yr old righty friend. He was on a tear over the direction our nation is headed (as usual). Apparently, there is a plot afoot to change our education system to level the playing field and dumb down the kids. There will be no more american history taught in our schools. He then turned on the Arabs, saying they have always been fighting, saying it is because the quran is filled with violence.
I guess he forgot about the war for independence, war of 1812, the Spanish american war,the war between the states,the Indian wars wwl, well, the Korean war, Viet nam war, the wars in panama, Grenada, Angola, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, the cold war, and the war on Terra.
I told him about a book review I was listening to the other day, about Laurence in Arabia; how t.e. Laurence helped the tribes of Arabia rise up against the ottoman turks, then how the Arabs were rewarded for their efforts by the french and British with a royal screwing with the
Sykes picot agreement and the Balfour declaration.
History matters, it kinda explains cause and effect.
I forgot to mention the american wars / conflicts in Cuba, mexico, the Dominican republic, hati, Colombia,the philippeans, Lebanon, Libya……did I miss any?
Wounded Knee.
Nicaragua.
Here’s a story about another typical gun owning conservative. This is what happens when you own a gun with the uncontrolled desire to shoot someone or something. You can’t just let it collect dust.. you have to destroy life or property to get your jollies ( satiate your conservative impulses) .. Unfortunately this conservative/ bagger was shooting the wrong kind of hawks. He should have gone after Neocon war hawks.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nj-man-accused-shooting-protected-hawks-20047836
Add somalia too-
Folks,
This list keeps getting longer.
Perhaps the list of countries we HAVEN’T fought, or fought in, might be shorter.
Add somalia too- and guatemala