While mass-shootings are the most visible and spectacular consequence of America's love affair with guns, the person most likely to shoot you is you (either accidentally or deliberately), with a loved one or a friend (again, either accidentally or deliberately) close behind. Read the rest

Another story came out this week about gun owners letting their NRA memberships lapse.

My gun-owning family — admittedly more my husband than me — falls into that middle ground. He chose to drop his NRA affiliation and his favored gun range when its mandatory NRA membership tipped from practical tips into political advocacy.

Apparently, he is not alone.

The National Rifle Association of America reported $98 million in contributions in 2017, down from nearly $125 million in 2016, according to The Daily Beast, even though it has in President Donald Trump a champion it helped elect. The NRA’s more than $128 million in dues last year was a drop from the $163 million it took in the year before, the report said.

Moreover, there's growing dismay at the decadent lifestyles of NRA leaders amid belt-tightening and layoffs.

The National Rifle Association paid more than $100,000 in personal expenses for an official who is now leading an austerity campaign within the organization, new tax filings show.

The official, Josh Powell, is the NRA’s executive director for general operations. The Trace and Mother Jones reported two weeks ago that Powell, along with the NRA’s new treasurer, Craig Spray, is seeking to impose steep cuts to the gun group’s budget. The effort is so stringent that the NRA did away with free coffee and water coolers in its Fairfax headquarters, causing consternation among NRA staffers.

Even conservative gun owners are getting tired of the NRA's political bullshit and lavish expenses, all paid for on their dime. Read the rest

Cindy Hyde-Smith is a Mississipi GOP Senator is going into a runoff election against her Democratic opponent, Black man named Mike Espy who might end up the first Black Mississipi Senator since 1883; she made headlines last week with a joke about attending a "public hanging." Read the rest

The record on "active shooter" fatalities is fragmented; as a result, the AMA researchers who published Lethality of Civilian Active Shooter Incidents With and Without Semiautomatic Rifles in the United States in JAMA (Sci-Hub Mirror) had to piece together their own data from disparate sources. Read the rest

After decades of Thomas the Tank Engine having female and international characters (typically represented by an actual train design from their home countries) conservatives have finally noticed and gotten angry about it. This is because the latest one is from Kenya.

In response, the NRA posted pictures of the show's trains in Klan hoods.

Dana Loesch: "Nia, will be from Kenya to add ethnic diversity to the show. And -- which that by the way, that’s Where it gets really strange to me because I’ve looked at Thomas and Friends, at their pictures, and I see gray and blue. Am I to understand this entire time that Thomas and his trains were white? Because they all have gray faces."

Forget, for a moment, that Thomas has been coding non-UK nationality into characters since at least the 1980s. What's funny about Loesch's rant here is the Kenyan train is, in fact, the same color as all the others:

Loesch hasn't actually seen what she's mad about. She's imagining a black train and getting frightened and angry.

Read the rest

“Putin’s Russia,” as ABC News reports today, would have featured the Russian President hunting, fishing, and generally being a very macho man outdoors. Read the rest

This is the story that may unravel the presidency of Donald Trump. Read the rest

Politifact ran the math on Gwen Graham's Washington Post story comparing numbers of 2018 US school shooting deaths vs 2018 US armed service combat deaths to-date. Schools have seen more deaths than combat this year. Politifact, however, reminds us that combat-zones should be be more dangerous than public school.

Combat zones should be more dangerous, but are not. How incredibly we are failing.

Poltifact:

Graham wrote, "So far this year, more students have been killed in schools than soldiers in combat zones."

On the numbers, she is right. This year at least, within Graham’s stated parameters, exactly twice as many students have died in school shootings than military personnel have died in combat zones.

It is important to know, however, the likelihood of being killed in a combat zone is still vastly higher than it is in a school.

The statement is accurate but needs additional information. That meets our definition of Mostly True.

Earlier this month my daughter, aged 11, spent an afternoon sheltering-in-place at her school. There was an unrelated-to-school incident of domestic violence a block or two away. The sound of shots appropriately sent the school into 'save the kids' mode. My daughter huddled in a corner for 3.5 hours. This is not the school experience our kids should have: wondering when it will be their turn to die. Read the rest

The Senate Judiciary Committee believes NRA leadership were likely tools evil enough to have been a channel for funneling illegal foreign money into Trump's 2016 campaign.

More interesting to me: are Americans who maintain 'gun ownership is insurance against the US Government' now unwitting Russian insurgents?

Via the Daily Beast:

The Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that the Russian government apparently used the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. “The committee has obtained a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign,” according to a report on the panel’s preliminary findings on Russia and the presidential campaign. The NRA may have been used to “secretly fund Mr. Trump’s campaign,” the report states. While the report didn’t discuss the documents, it said two Russian nationals—Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina—were “involved in this effort.” Torshin, a member of Russia’s central bank, hosted an NRA delegation in Moscow in 2013. Butina, founder of a pro-gun group in Russia, boasted at a Washington, D.C. party following the election that she was “part of the Trump campaign’s communications with Russia,” The Daily Beast reported last year.

After listening to tons of racist and ignorant horseshit from NRA conference attendees, the owner of Dallas-area eatery Ellen's decided to donate a portion of this weeks proceeds to groups pursuing reasonable gun legislation. The NRA asked its members to eat elsewhere.

Everyone wins except the people dead of gun violence.

Via Share Blue:

Ellen’s, a restaurant in downtown Dallas where the NRA is holding its annual convention, had a message printed on its customer receipts: “Thanks for visiting Ellen’s! A portion of this week’s proceeds will be donated to organizations dedicated to implementing reasonable and effective gun regulation.”

Most Americans consider that a sensible message — especially following the mass shootings at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Parkland and the daily murders all around the country. But it angered the NRA.

The group tweeted an image of an Ellen’s receipt. “Attn @AnnualMeetings attendees. Steer clear of Ellen’s in downtown Dallas! Why go there when there are so many other great choices.”

Joe Groves, the owner of Ellen’s, said he added the message because of what he heard from NRA convention attendees. “I’m making a list of the vile, racist, moronic conversations overheard from NRA attendees eating at the restaurant,” he wrote on Facebook. “They don’t even speak softly.”

He told the website Eater that the attendees have insulted his wait staff with racial epithets. One person reportedly asked a Latino staff member, “Your illegals are kept in the kitchen, right?”

Another NRA fan reportedly told black employees they “don’t sound black” and asked if they were from India.

As you recall, after the Parkland school shooting in February that killed 17 people including 14 students, the NRA was adamant that schools would be safer if it were staffed with gun-toting faculty members. “To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun,” is the mantra of NRA CEO Wayne La Pierre. So it's pretty incredulous that when Mike Pence speaks at the NRA's forum this weekend, all guns will be banned from the event.

According to Politico:

The NRA posted a disclaimer on the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum event page, saying that due to Pence’s attendance, Secret Service will be responsible for event security. Therefore, “firearms and firearm accessories, knives or weapons of any kind will be prohibited in the forum prior to and during his attendance."

Needless to say, the Parkland survivors are taken aback.

"The NRA has evolved into such a hilarious parody of itself," Parkland survivor Cameron Kasky tweeted.

The NRA has evolved into such a hilarious parody of itself. pic.twitter.com/6Pw6NTQAe6

— Cameron Kasky (@cameron_kasky) April 28, 2018

Others responded to the tweet with the same astonishment over the NRA's hypocrisy:

Wait wait wait wait wait wait you’re telling me to make the VP safe there aren’t any weapons around but when it comes to children they want guns everywhere? Can someone explain this to me? Because it sounds like the NRA wants to protect people who help them sell guns, not kids.

— Matt Deitsch (@MattxRed) April 28, 2018

With a convention full of so many “good guys with guns” wouldn’t this be the safest place on earth?

If a gun toting mad-person enters a classroom in Pennsylvania's Mill Creek Township school district they'll find themselves challenged by an army of billy club wielding school teachers!

Pennsylvania will soon likely have a shortage of school teachers and a lot of extra billy clubs laying around.

Via CNN:

After the shooting in Parkland, Florida, a school district in suburban Erie, Pennsylvania, began formulating a school safety plan. Among its measures: handing out miniature wooden baseball bats to all 500 of its teachers.

In an online message, Millcreek Township School District Superintendent William Hall said the bats "could be used as a tool against an active shooter just like any other item in the immediate room," adding that they will remain locked in the classroom and "are only to be used/available in a hard lockdown situation."

On social media, however, the idea is being roundly mocked.

While people around the world were inspired by the resilience, fearlessness and savvy of the students who created a national gun-control movement in the wake of the Parkland shooting, American right-wing leaders looked at these kids and saw evidence of the urgency to destroy public education and replace it with religious private schools and charter schools. Read the rest

On March 7, the Florida legislature passed a gun control bill in a bipartisan 67-50 vote, banning bump-stocks and imposing a 3-day waiting period on long-gun purchases and raising the minimum age for their purchase to 21; the legislation is a mixed bag as it also includes millions to arm and train school employees. Read the rest

The annual CPAC freakshow reached a new absurdist peak last week when Trump FCC Commissioner was awarded the NRA's Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award for his cowardly back-shooting of America's most beloved policy, the sweet and tender Net Neutrality. Read the rest

In 2016, the Yes Men (previously), everyone's favorite political pranksters, hoaxed the NRA: today, they've released their short documentary, which lays bare the NRA's internal culture of racist-driven fear and gun-humping murderous fantasies. Read the rest

In this video, AJ+’s Sana Saeed breaks down the long history of the NRA, from its beginnings as a post-Civil War sports club to its present day pro-gun activism. It turns out the group wasn’t always the aggressive Second Amendment defender it is today; the NRA actually used to support gun control. NPR has a similar video featuring senior political editor and correspondent Ron Elving discussing the history of the NRA too:

As NPR’s accompanying article explains:

The power of the organization is legendary, especially the widely published report cards it issues giving A to F grades to lawmakers. The cards have been credited with the election (or blamed for the defeat) of many a candidate, including incumbents.

Even the nuances of the group’s affection, an A+ over an A grade, for example, can make the difference for candidates, especially in Republican primaries.

That is why the NRA has anchored the opposition in every major gun-related debate since it altered its main aim from marksmanship to hard-edged political activism. That change came 40 years ago and was related to other shifts in political sentiment, including the departure of Southern rural conservatives from the Democratic Party. All these helped elect the first presidential candidate to ever be endorsed by the NRA, Ronald Reagan, in 1980.

Read the full article on NPR’s website. Read the rest