It's definitely not a bad thing to have a group to represent gun owners, not at all. But you don't think that gun manufacturers are high up in the NRA? It's an industry, there's no way the people making the money in the industry aren't deeply involved. It's not run by Fred down the street who is a gun hobbyist. Or at least, that doesn't seem very plausible to me given how money controls everything basically. I don't actually know.
I don't know for sure either. But I do know over half the NRAs money comes from membership fees from ordinary people.
As for the remainder, some of it is from merchandise. I'm not sure what if any of the gun companies money makes up of it.
I don't know, but I would suspect that private sales probably don't make up that much of most fun companies bottom line. Not when compared to law enforcement, military, security, and the fact that a not small number of the guns bought in the private market are traded from person to person rather than bought new from the company.
But regardless, the question is still how much of the NRAs money comes from say, big companies with vested interests, as opposed to ordinary Americans with pro gun beliefs. When I've looked into this question I recall determining that well over half the money the NRA and its lobbying branch the NRA-ILA gets to fund these activities comes from ordinary Americans.
Until someone has evidence to prove this suspect, I can't say I think very highly of this often repeated claim that the NRA is this evil powerful lobby going against the wishes of ordinary Americans. Not if the evil powerful lobby and the ordinary Americans are, in closer inspection, the same people.
And as I said earlier, I've heard many complaints by... let's call them very driven firearm enthusiasts. That the NRA was too moderate. They felt let down that the NRA didn't take a stronger stance against various gun control laws over the years and that the NRA was to open to compromise.
So I find it quite interesting how one group considers them evil extremists representing the gun lobby. While internally there are many in the gun community who feel the NRAs problem is that they are too moderate and too willing to compromise.
I think the NRA does its best to get what it can for the people who it represents. And like any good political negotiation that takes compromise. And as a result, all the spectators hate you.
The anti gun people consider them extreme and progun crazies.
The real pro gun crazies consider them weak too willing to compromise.
The more passive hunter types, the people who are NRA members more because of an activity that involves guns rather than guns themselves, like hunters and farmers. Also often think the NRA is too extreme.
But the NRA represents a diverse group. Certainly more diverse than most people think. Including self defense types, hunters, farmers, competition shooters, and of course the extreme gun enthusiasts. The type that buy a new AR15 every mass shooting out of fear of an impending assault weapon ban as a result.
They all mostly know they are better off together where they can pool their resources. But they have different beliefs and you can't please everyone. And that's just the NRA members. Then you have the anti gun side. Ordinary moderate Americans who just want a mild increase in gun control. The NRAs insane counterpart in the Brady campaign.
The NRA is just an organization to represent gun rights. I don't know if some of their funding comes from gun manufacturers. But most of it doesn't. But people outside the community just mentally imagine all pro gun types as one homogenous group. and imagine the NRA as the gun version of big tobacco or big pharma. But that's bullshit.
The NRA doesn't make guns, most of their money comes from membership fees. And, this last part I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine private sales make up a pretty small amount of the gun manufacturers revenue compared to worldwide military, police, security sales, etc. vs private sales in a few places where it's popular and legal where much of the trade is in the guns already on the market as opposed to new ones.
But this is all complicated and gray. And my continuing experience in this thread is that every time I introduce complicated gray reasoning into anything, someone comes along, calls me crazy and explains in a sentence or two that it's all actually really really simple.
There is no complexity, there's a small number of gun crazies who wanna arm teachers and students and are ultra right and ultra religious and live in the south. And then there's everyone else. The good guys. Held hostage by those crazies and their powerful lobbiests in the NRA. And that's all there is too it. Black and white. People are so good at reducing complex social phenomenon into simple black and white situations with easy answers. The easy answer here being either to ban all guns, or ban all assault weapons, defined cosmetically. Generally depending on if you're American or not. Nobody worries about taking away a hobby a group of peaceful law abiding citizens used to enjoy, or making life harder for hunters or sports shooters or some types of farmers etc. because they don't exist. They've all been amalgamated into this vague idea of "the gun lobby". So they aren't humans anymore. They're just a stereotype of a gun nut made to be as unsympathetic and crazy as possible.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
