Others have said this before, but it's worth noting the failure of NRA members to show up to help when citizens need to defend themselves from assault by corporations and government agencies.

The actress Daryl Hannah was recently arrested for helping Eleanor Fairchild defined her land from confiscation and destruction by TransCanada, the foreign company installing the Keystone tar sands pipeline across the U.S. Where were all the NRA members who are always talking about how they would fight government oppression to the death? Gone AWOL, I guess.

If the NRA membership get their news and dot points only from Fox News and NRA.com, how else do you expect them to act? When News Corp and the NRA control the narrative, the right will never hear of Fairchild, except maybe being likened to an ELF terrorist.

I agree with you - I was being facetious. The only thing NRA members seem to be committed to defending with their weapons is their right to own weapons. As a group, they seem to be entirely self-serving in that regard.

The NRA acts more like the KKK, I remember when their main purpose was gun safety, not promoting fear and killing humans, now they promote people like black water.

For me their main purpose is to stop anti-gun candidates and they do that handily. Most of the NRA members I know, and that is pretty much everyone I know, isn't really afraid of losing their guns, we are all afraid there will be more regulations though. Here in California we have to fight the legislature all the time on gun rights and we don't win most of the time.

I get my news here for the most part.

The NRA members missing in action? They were probably lining up to get jobs with TransCanada.

The NRA seems to think that the entirety of American history and government revolves around the second amendment.

chicken shits in my book- can't even defend an American

They didn't show up at the Occupy encampments, either. Just as well. Why do on one's own time what the police are already doing as part of a day's work?

This is the first I head about this and I usually read web news. But if you put up links to the article about Hannah then we can all e-mail the link to Fox, MSNBC, CNN and CBS & ABC news organizations and demand that they report on it. See which one will win the contest.

I'm googling now...

I know you are being facetious, but, in the case of the pipeline, an alliance with (right wing) private property advocates, could be, at least, tactically, an advantageous alliance. From a nationalist, right wing viewpoint, the claim of eminent domain to benefit a foreign corporation is something that the right wing would be up in arms about (excuse the pun). If only, they weren't getting their news from Faux News.

On the other hand, from a gun owners' (and I know a bunch of them) perspective the critique would be that Daryl Hannah and Eleanor Fairchild should have taken their responsibility for protecting Fairchild's land by bringing their own body armor and AR-15's.

I am not saying I agree with that view, but that's what criticism would be -- if you aren't prepared to defend your own property, don't expect others to risk their lives to do it for you.

they would be DEAD within the hour, (body armor and AR-15's)

A gun is a tool. Unfortunately, so are many gun owners.

So are many non gun owners. Nice sound bite though. You work for Romney? Sound like his handlers there.

Are you saying Obama's handlers can't come up with a decent sound bite? You know, you might be on to something there.

Nope. I don't think yours come up to the level of Obama's.

Gosh Shade, it sounds like the post offended you. Hmmmm. Who would be offended by a remark against gun owning tools? Let's see...

Not at all. I am a gun owning tool. However I am a loud progressive, politically active tool as well.

I was just commenting not that being a tool was dumb but that your comment was.

Have a nice day. :-)

Well John, I don't think you're a progressive of any type, but at least we can agree you're a tool

Progressives are folk that go to the left only as far as the Right allow them. I am further left than most of the so-called self-professed Liberals on Common Dreams. I am a gun owner and a member of the NRA, and as such, have let them have it with their distortion scare tactic during this election cycle. They, of course, ignore me, and/or have me on their "flagged" list. What the left is concluding more and more, more often lately, is that: the right to bear arms includes the Left to bear arms.

For many gun owners there is no paranoia. As a far leftie I refuse to abrogate the 2nd amendment and the freedoms is give me. I suggest a reading of Keetowah Cherokee, Ward Churchill's chapter on liberals and firearms in his book "Pacifism as Pathology".

It doesn't particularly bother me to know my neighbor owns a gun or rifle. When I meet people who are stockpiling dozens of assault weapons in their basements, though, I'm probably going to feel a tad disturbed.

The gun-owning tools far outweigh, both in loudness and body fat, the non-owning tools.

Guns and paranoia.....what a wonderful way to live. Don't Americans realize that the NRA's only purpose is to make money?

A quote of mine: "The right to bear arms includes the left to bear arms".

Liberal with guns: armed and generous

Pacifist with gun...do not piss me off ...more

A bunch of conspiracy nuts!

Really really really effective politically conspiracy nuts. Their bus on politics goes where I want to arrive so I pay them a dime to get there.

You're wrong there. The NRA may make a lot of money, it does, but a huge amount of that goes to defeat politicians that support gun control. They are the most successful lobbying organization out there and the largest except for the SEIU.

As an NRA member I am more than willing to overlook the fact that they get rich when I balance the fact that they pour huge amounts of money into races to defeat anti-gun politicians. They may not win every race, but they can cause each anti-gun politician to have to increase their spending on ads by millions, that additional cost, even if they aren't defeated is a deterrent to other politicians that might consider an anti-gun stance.

I might add that if your position that the NRA is there to make money, then that same could be said for churches, unions, civil society organizations and government. Each is an organization that exists to propagate itself before any other goal.

I would suggest looking into Gun Owners of America (GOA) as the NRA is, and has been for a long time, in bed with politicians.
http://nrawol.net/

The GOA is a great organization, but they don't have the money and the PERCEIVED ability to turn out anti-gun politicians. In this case I want to make that one organization, the NRA, strong enough to defeat any anti-gun candidates and the GOA can't do that. In this case it is better to be with the devil you know.

JohnShade, you write that "... [the] same could be said for churches, unions, civil society organizations and government. Each is an organization that exists to propagate itself before any other goal."

Please consider what you're saying. You are excusing the NRA (and no doubt other organizations and politicians in your life) with the excuse "they all do it, they're all like that, so live with it."

It is in our nature to try to understand others, other organizations and societies from the starting assumption that they are like ourselves, like the groups we know and are part of. This is very limiting. There is a whole world out there of regular people self organizing and organizing for the common good, people and groups whose essential goodness becomes invisible to you when seen through this lens.

Consider in your own life. Do you belong to a local NRA group? Is *it* "there to make money"? Are you in it to make money? Is your local church, lodge or boy scout troop, militia or oath keepers group there to make money?

If your answer is no, then why are so many of these organizations organized from the top around the principles of money, profit, self perpetuation and self-aggrandizement? If that's not what human nature dictates at a small scale, then possibly, just possibly, it isn't a universal law of nature for larger formations either.

Perhaps when you really start looking for these exceptions to the rule, from a place of accepting the possibility they exist rather than a belief that they can't, you will find some.

Your first attempts will very likely be failures and disappointments. If you've spent your adult life assuming all large organizations are corrupt and self-seeking, your skill at sorting the good from the bad is undeveloped. So promise yourself from the start that you won't give up in despair and curse the lot and go back to your old beliefs the first time you are disappointed or feel betrayed by the movement or organization whose honesty and integrity you decided to trust.

Instead, commit now, at the start of your search for honest leaders, organizations and movements, to take each disappointment as a learning moment. Commit now to seriously examining what were the signs and indications of corruption, profit-seeking and self-aggrandizement that you should have picked up on. Commit to grieving your loss and then going back to trying, to continuing your search for groups that don't display those signs and indications.

The reality is that they're all around you, but it will take real work to learn how to see and trust them. The world of free people struggling to learn how to self-organize and cooperate in small and large scale efforts is all around you. But if we're to survive and save our communities, our country, our civilization, we need to learn to see with new eyes. Know that everyone who has gone before you has had to struggle with this, and is still struggling with it.

Undoubtedly in some ways you are already part of the struggle toward this new way of seeing. But you need to learn to distinguish between those leaders and groups who would lead us in circles and pit us against each other, and those that are genuinely part of this path of transformation.

And then you need to engage those around you in this quest.

does no one think gun sales are up because many anticipate chaos to erupt as the economy tanks, and people begin to suffer starvation and evictions?

dubet
exactly, "Greek austerity" is coming to the USA
and as I posted earlier, Obama or not,
the counterproductive "war on drugs" will continue to generate more crime and violence.

Good question, dubet! And considering Obama's assault on the rest of the Bill of Rights, the fear of a crackdown on gun ownership is perhaps well-founded -- I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I mean, it might be argued that the only thing that's postponed the imposition of a full-fledged police state in the U.S. is the threat of resistance from gun owners. I'm no fan of guns, but given the clear intentions of the 1% to reduce the U.S. to a kleptocratic banana republic, run for a corporate-feudal elite, it's little wonder that gun sales are skyrocketing...

Wake up. The US already is a "kleptocratic banana republic, run for a corporate-feudal elite." Without a shot being fired.

How well is "my guns defend my freedom" working in Syria or Croatia and Bosnia before that?

Really really well. Bosnia is free today. Croatia is free today. Syria is going to be free soon. None of those states even had a right to keep and bear arms, yet their populations stood up and took their liberty.

I took 'dubet's' comment to mean we'd want weapons to protect ourselves and our stuff from other citizens. I think taking on establishment military and militarized police would be very dangerous. Some will consider it; in fact, they already have (the militias we used to hear about).

Also, possessing a weapon gives the owner a feeling of power which is especially important when the government and society show less and less respect for the individual. Males in particular, I think, do not like to feel helpless and powerless.

Of course they do. Those who are particularly worried is our own government.

"House Resolution 6566, also known as the Mass Fatality Planning and Religious Considerations Act, would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002
to mandate that FEMA immediately begin conducting "mass fatality
planning" in preparation for a major event or series of events that may
kill off untold numbers of people."

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/...

Do not know if they are planning fatality or planning for religious considerations of the fatalities or planning on the cover up. "Good job Brownie"

I wonder if this is why FEMA bought every bit of the survival food packets in the millions from the companies distributing survival foods. Guess who also has their hand in that pie...Mormon church. hmmm...dots

They also got 170,000 rounds of hollow point bullets.

Which comes out to about a box of ammo a month for each agent which is below the dictated rules for training. And yes. You do use hollow points for practice. You use the same ammunition that you use for combat.

Non gun people simply do not understand the amount of ammo one uses on a yearly basis if one shoots regularly. I use between 6 and 8,000 rounds a year all tolled.

The economy isn't tanking that I can see, it actually seems to be on the upswing just this moment. I also don't hear about starvation anywhere.

Gun sales are up for a lot of reasons really, Obama is the primary one though. I am a gun owner and all of my gun owning friends save one will not vote for Obama. I think that his positions on gun control, which he has done really nothing at all to promote, are enough to keep anyone that really cares about their 2nd Amendment to not vote for him.

I don't think he should have made any comment really since he isn't going to be able to follow up at all whether he wins or not as Congress isn't going to back him at all.

"I think that his positions on gun control, which he has done really nothing at all to promote, "

Im an amateur astronomer, so I suppose I shouldn't vote for Obama for the sole reason that he doesn't promote telescope sales?

You got your guns, no Demo-blican president will ever take them away from you. There are a lot of reasons not to vote for our corrupt two party duopoly, thinking gun rights is one of them is just being paranoid and asinine.

Paranoid is the key word.

Really? Is thinking about abortion rights paranoid or asinine? Is thinking about free speech rights paranoid or asinine? How about being incensed about loss habeus corpus?

These are all rights and liberties we have. The rights that we took when we created this country. Why is this one something you don't support? When you pick and choose which rights YOU like, then you give *them* the same moral right to pick and choose against YOUR rights.

Rights are one fabric. When you unravel it thread by thread you are left with a pile of threads and no rights.

Dubet, this is likely the most logical reason, and scariest. Those 1%ers have taught Americans really well. Stash your stuff and don't share with anyone who doesn't agree with you. Pathetic. So Christian.

Also I, as rule stay away from personal replies, I'll have to get back to that as I really am not in the least interested in this one upping others but prefer to deal with ideas. A true progressive agenda is about ideas not personalities and egos. The one person who made a rather slimy put down of one gal in the comments forum and in a silly person form was out of it and she and any decent true prorgressive has resent such attacks on decent progressive women and yes in other cases on men as well. Thus for those doing, how about bringing it to a screeching halt. I may have differences of opinion with Abby but I don't make personal attacks on her. We simply have a difference of opinion. I don't believe just because she has a different opinion I have a right to make a personal attack on her. That's that! Enough said!

Didn't read the original, but it is well known that Abby has an irrational hatred of some rights and not others. She is not really that much of a progressive. Just a hysteric on some issues and not others. Her opinion can be disregarded;