calimary
calimary's JournalI have found that large organizations, especially well-funded and influential ones
will only do the right thing IF THEY'RE FORCED TO. It could be propaganda-driven - like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers worked to make it uncool to drink and drive. I think we have to take it directly to them. Put them on defense. Make them look bad.
What about making it SOOOOO costly to do business that they shut down? A hundred lawsuits a week? Letter-writing campaigns? Sit-ins at congressional offices? I realize most of this stuff doesn't work well - we sure tried to shut down the Iraq war during the dubya years - and that didn't do much. BUT IF WE COULD GENERATE ENOUGH ACTION THAT WE REACH A CRITICAL MASS...
Ideas! We need 'em!
And the problem with the NRA - there is massacre after massacre and NOTHING has happened, and NOTHING significant has been done, and the blather and propaganda go on. Outfits like the NRA are COUNTING on that sense of hopelessness and a David who's too depressed and demoralized to pick up that slingshot against Goliath. They're COUNTING on us getting mad for a few days and then rolling over and going back to sleep, or worrying about how to get home in time to see the Honey Boo Boo show or "Dancing with the Stars" or some such mindless dreck.
HOW DO WE GET THE BALL ROLLING, THE DRUM BEATING, THE PEOPLE RISING UP? Let's figure out what will stick, what will make the bad guys in this case look SO DAMN AWFUL that even they can't stomach supporting the NRA anymore. Sour the milk. Poison the well. HOW DO WE DO THAT, AND DO IT EFFECTIVELY?????
We need to start strategizing this. HOW DO WE DEFANG/DECLAW/DEFUND the NRA????
I think we have to go straight to the source. Like doctors do with new treatments against a tumor. STARVE IT OF BLOOD FLOW. So it can't grow, and it loses power and influence, and then withers and dies.
I'm thinking of the way the bad guys did to ACORN. What they've done, over the years, to weaken and dissolve the power of unions.
How they've strangled and starved the organized labor movement.
How they've completely debased and poisoned the very word "liberal."
WE NEED TO START THE CONVERSATION. And maybe we need to do it HERE.
Is there some forum we can start? I see references to the term "gungeon" but I'm not sure what that means. I don't know how to go about forums-setting-up. But I think it's important to have one place here or elsewhere, where people can go to think this out, come up with ideas, test or debate those ideas, and refine actual, workable, realistic strategies to start tarnishing and weakening the NRA.
I'm sure David thought Goliath was pretty invincible. And look what happened there!
We have to be ruthless. While everybody's mourning and some people don't want to talk about it (yet, if ever) and others pay lip service til the service is over and then they forget and the whole effort just fizzles away. I think THIS is a perfect time, while the iron is hot, to bring up all the difficult ideas and questions that nobody wants to deal with while they're mourning. Well, those of us who are NOT mourning a specific loved one or individual - MAYBE IT FALLS ON US - to start doing something!!!!!!
And the Second Amendment has to be challenged, modified, brought into the real world.
Any thoughts?
What can we do, what kinds of strategies can we come up with, what laws or regulations can we push, what methods could we use to attack the NRA and BEAT THEM?
We can't just wring our hands and say a prayer and talk about how awful it is. DAMMIT, we have to DO something. Enough is ENOUGH!!!!
Well, I'm gonna post something asking about a forum on putting the NRA on severe defense.
How do we dirty-up the name of the NRA so that it doesn't have the clout it enjoys - ANYMORE!!!!!!!!
It's gotta start somewhere!!!!!!! Like a cancerous tumor in the body that new therapies target - by starving it of blood flow. Like the bad guys did to ACORN. Like grover norquist has been trying to do to the federal government for all these years. We need to figure out how to starve this beast. We need to start the ball rolling, the drum beating, AND MORE.
Aw shit. This madness MUST stop.
Maybe it's up to US, even us here on DU, to take the first step? Nobody else seems interested in showing leadership.
Ed Shultz has a segment on now in which they're focusing on the gun lobby, and he's asking - WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT THE NRA? And he mentioned how Mothers Against Drunk Driving made it uncool to drink and drive. WE HAVE TO DO THAT ABOUT GUNS. We have to sour the taste of the NRA and make it a thoroughly uncool organization. Just the same way the bad guys did to ACORN.
Well, I don't wanna play nice!
Nice doesn't feed the bulldog, so to speak. TIRED of nice. I want to get ruthless and mean. ANYTHING they've done against teachers, public employees, unions in general, liberals in general, ACORN, and more - I want to turn that strategy around ON THEM.
Not sure what this term "gungeon" is about since I don't go onto pro-gun sites. How does one start a forum? That sounds like a good idea. Might be good, and shrewd, to have ONE place to find strategizing and think pieces and proposals we can kick around and refine - so they're WORKABLE in the real world.
'Cause we need to think this out. Work the problem, people - as they said in "Apollo 13." We need to start thinking and strategizing about this. Organize our thoughts and our ideas. Come at it as a united front. If we show some muscle, or this movement shows some muscle, maybe at least some of the politicians who worship the power and influence of the NRA might start fearing us and taking us seriously, for a change. I'd like to take a page from the bad guys' book, and shove it back down their throats!!!
Exactly. We don't take their power away by doing nothing.
I think we need to analyze seriously, even severely, HOW the bad guys have worked successfully - over many years, true - to tarnish and negate and throw shit all over organized labor, organizations like ACORN, and even the very word and concept of "Liberal." YES it took years, but those have been so maligned and demeaned and diminished and tarnished and shat upon and rendered negative - that they're toothless. ACORN even worse - it doesn't even exist anymore!
HOW CAN WE GET THAT DONE AGAINST THE NRA??????????????
FUCK YOU, NRA. But that is NOT all.
I want to think and strategize on HOW TO WEAKEN AND DIMINISH AND DIRTY-UP the NRA. The same way the bad guys have done to unions and organized labor, indeed - what they've done to pee on the very word "Liberal."
I want to get to the root of the gun lobby, and tear it out as though it were a termite nest in my house. The NRA is a termite nest in our COUNTRY!!!!!!!!!
We also need to come at this problem from another direction as well:
We have to figure out how to yank the teeth out of the NRA. Diminish it and demean it and work on the public mindset to render it MUCH less desirable and less "all-American rah-rah-rah." We have to find AS MANY WAYS AS POSSIBLE to weaken it and its power base, to cost it money, to cost it support, to cost it backing, to cost it influence. I don't know what the answer is - except maybe for forcing them to defend 100 lawsuits a week? We have to start thinking in terms of how we can break its back, its bank account, and it's monstrous influence.
We need to strategize. How do you break the NRA? That should be a serious and vital question on EVERYONE'S minds. For the Love of GOD! It's become an epidemic! At the rate we're going, the next gun-nut nutcase slaughter victim might be YOU!!!
We need to bring to this - the same mindset that has attacked organized labor - denying it public support, starving it financially, demeaning and dirtying its name and reputation, WHATEVER IT TAKES. The kind of campaign that's left organized labor and entities like teacher unions and public employee unions that protect firefighters' and police officers' interests in the work place. This relentless campaign to gut organized labor worked beautifully.
WHY CAN'T WE LAUNCH A SIMILAR CAMPAIGN - against the NRA?????
We can't work on this issue one-dimensionally. We can't ONLY work on changing and toughening up the laws. We can't ONLY work on electing pro-gun restriction legislators. We can't just do that. We have to think far more broadly across the political landscape. Go at this from many directions and with many strategies. What brought ACORN down? WHY CAN'T WE DO STUFF LIKE THAT??????? I think we need to start thinking along those lines. As long as the NRA stays almost unassailable, we are doomed to lose this argument. The NRA needs to have its teeth and claws - and its mighty funding - REMOVED.
Plus ANOTHER one billion!!!
Their deaths lay at his feet. Anyone promoting and defending the wanton use and ownership of guns with NO restrictions - deserves that, too.
To all gun-nuts: You've HAD your say. You've HAD YOUR WAY! And THIS is what results.
All I feel is anger, Atypical Liberal. Not as much sadness. All I feel is anger!!!!
I think it's long past time to push past all those "Second Amendment or Bust" folks whose power and clout and money keeps preventing us from doing something decisive about this.
I was talking to my husband about this. What about those laws that stiffen the penalties for bar-tenders and restaurants and other purveyors of alcohol - if somebody drinks too much on their premises and then goes out and does harm to others? Can we impose penalties like that for gun shop owners, gun show owners and organizers, the real estate interests and property owners who own the damn PARKING LOTS OUTSIDE THE GUN SHOWS, and the property on which the gun shows are held - where all kinds of wink-and-a-nod shit goes down and anybody can get any gun they want with nobody following any rules? How 'bout if THEY face penalties as well?
I'm tired of listening to the Second Amendment advocates. HOW MANY MASS SHOOTINGS ARE OKAY???????? HOW MANY?????? Every last one of those mass shootings and carnage crimes - IS ON THEIR HEADS AND ON THEIR IMMORTAL SOULS.
And I think it ought to be on the books so it's in the LAW.
Martin Bashir was just talking about how the laws are so strict in the UK - that firearms are NOT used to resolve conflict among civilians there. Some 60 firearm-related deaths per year over there? We have that much almost PER DAY in this country!!!!!!
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