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gthaustex wrote:I like to keep up with what others are thinking, especially those I tend to disagree with. You know, the old know your foe thing. So, here is something along those lines, published in the New Yorker, which is no surprise. Unfortunately for the gun control lobby, it really isn't anything new. Just the same tired, old arguments about the majority wanting more control, "reasonable" gun owners should be for expanded background checks, etc...

The National Rifle Association, as I pointed out in my previous post, is on the offensive. Not content with its recent victory in Congress, it is already looking forward to the 2014 midterm elections, when it hopes to sink the prospect of effective gun control for another decade or more. So what, if anything, can be done? How can supporters of sensible measures to prevent the proliferation of deadly firearms—a group that includes the majority of Americans—hope to defeat the gun lobby?

“I think the gun lobby will come to regret that it didn’t do what Wayne LaPierre advocated in 1999, and accept more background checks,” Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told me. “This vote really exposed to a lot of people just how outrageous the situation is. I think history will show that this was the moment when the American people decided they’d had enough.”

The piece discusses the fractured nature of the gun control organizations and how that has been bad in the past, but may be a good thing in the future for them as they draw from a wide range of viewpoints, rather than the monolitic NRA member who is a gun owner, first and foremost.

I had to laugh to myself when I read about the groups using targeted ads, specifically using Nanny Bloomberg's money. This, as opposed to the NRA which draws in donations from millions of like minded citizens...

the Brady Campaign, with its wealth of volunteers, can focus on calling politicians and other labor-intensive tasks, whereas Mayors Against Illegal Guns, using Bloomberg’s money, can run targeted ads in key districts. “There is a heightened sense of everybody needing to fill certain roles—more so than in the past,” Gross said. “I think there is a fundamental respect for the value that other groups bring to the table. It’s great for us that we don’t have to spend ten million dollars in advertising because somebody else is doing it.”

Gross pointed out that the N.R.A.’s membership only includes a small minority of America’s hundred million gun owners, most of whom support expanded background checks and other measures to restrict the supply of firearms to criminals and nuts. “It’s about changing the narrative in Washington, and showing that it’s not just the N.R.A. that holds people accountable,” he said.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/j ... e-nra.html