(07-03-2017, 10:23 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(07-03-2017, 02:22 PM)Mikebert Wrote: About the NRA ad. Nobody saw it as an ad to promote gun sales? Guns last a long time if properly cared for. Guns purchased for specific purposes like hunting is a saturated market segment. Hunting is not a growing sport. How often do you need to replace one of your hunting guns? Not very often, so there is little sales potential there. Now what is the purpose of a hunting gun? To kill animals. What is the purpose of a military weapon? To kill people. These were traditionally the two most important market segments, sales of weapons to civilians hunters and weapon sales to the military.
Today there is a new market segment, military-styled semi-automatic weapons. What is their purpose? I suspect it is a fashion statement. Guns in the first two categories are tools. Once you have good tools, you only are going to buy when you want to replace an old one.
In contrast, one cannot never have too many fashion statements, as the purpose is to signal social status.
The ominous footage shown in the ad provides a justification for gun owners to be a "sheepdog" as opposed to a sheep, when faced by amorphous threats from people you don't like. The sheepdog lifestyle is best illustrated by the arsenal you have acquired. Encouraging conservative men to purchase ever more weapons keeps demand high for the industry--which is something you would expect from an industry group like the NRA.
I'm pretty sure it was an ad to promote NRA membership, like most NRA ads.
When the left gets a win, they push further. They got gay marriage, so now they're pushing to force people to participate and be supportive of gay marriage ceremonies even if that's against those people's religious beliefs. They'll be pushing to force churches to perform the ceremonies next.
Of course the Right backs off when it starts seeing itself go too far. And you can train a cat to go vegan.
Truth be told, one can refuse to attend any marriage ceremony for any reason. The State cannot compel people to attend interfaith or interracial marriages, so if someone does not want to witness his pretty white daughter marrying some black man, one can avoid attending the marriage even if being unable to stop it. I know of a preacher who will not perform a marriage between people who have cohabitated for at least a year of living separately. That is his standard. Churches can refuse to become venues for marriages of which they disapprove. I doubt that anyone expects Westboro Baptist Church to perform a same-sex marriage or the Church of Adolf Hitler to perform a marriage between an 'Aryan' and an 'Untermensch'. Were I a preacher I would refuse to participate in a marriage that looks exploitative or potentially destructive. Marriage between two people with a wide disparity of age creeps me out and suggests the potential for an exploitative relationship, and for practical reasons I would refuse to officiate a wedding involving two people who do not even speak the same language or a couple that has already had violence in their relationship.
So go to a civil authority which cannot discriminate against a marriage between someone 70 and someone 16 or shop around for clergy who will go along. Oh, Warren Jeffs is no longer available?
Quote:The NRA didn't do that. They fought for the right to own firearms, successfully, but they didn't follow that up by aggressively pursuing concealed carry and open carry. As a result, they lost the support of the militia movement folks for being allegedly insufficiently supportive of the second amendment.
...any cause that sees the need for support from the 'militia movement' has a problem.
This might surprise you, but NRA leadership might as well see the election of Donald Trump as overwhelming evidence that liberals would be wise to not sacrifice 'gun rights' should they need guns with which to defend against right-wing extremists. (OK, if one wanted to treat 'gun rights' like other rights in the Constitution one might as well rewrite the Second Amendment to include at the least a non-discrimination clause as do those Amendments involving voting rights, due process, and citizenship.
Quote:This video appears to me to be an attempt to get those people back on board with the NRA.
The NRA needs to become more mainstream if it is to have credibility.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.