My response from Delta by the way:

Thank you for writing. Delta, as well as other companies, has offered discounts to groups of all kinds traveling to conventions or large meetings. We have chosen to end our contract with the National Rifle Association (NRA) for discounted fares for travel to their annual meeting in May. Out of respect for our customers and employees on both sides we felt we needed to remove ourselves from the current debate and remain neutral. Your comments will be shared with our leadership team.

Fedex "inherent potential danger when misused".
Looking around the room I'm in I can find several things that pose inherent potential danger if misused that don't even have shoulder things that go up.

Regarding the response to these companies abandoning the NRA, I have resolved to do no further business with them. I held the NRA Visa card for twenty years. I closed the account this morning, and sent First National of Omaha an email explaining why I did. The best part was using my rewards points to make an NRA-ILA donation right before I closed the account. I suggest anyone holding the NRA Visa do the same.

I renewed my NRA membership today. First time I have been a member since I lived in VA and used to be a member at their Range. That was at least 10 years ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.b24b2e2e109b

Don’t be fooled: Companies cut ties to the NRA only when it’s cheap and easy

Gun-control proponents shouldn't be so quick to praise corporations.

By Heidi N. Moore March 1 at 12:04 PM

Morality is easy when it costs nothing. That is a good principle to keep in mind as nearly two-dozen companies bathe in the glow of public approval after noisily abandoning their ties to the National Rifle Association this week. Delta, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hertz, Avis, Budget, LifeLock, MetLife — these and a batch of other corporations renounced their connections to the NRA. On Facebook and Twitter, grateful activists are encouraging people to support the companies with dollars to reward their stances: Rent cars, buy airline tickets, take out insurance policies. The mayor of Portland, Ore., praised Dick’s and urged other companies to follow suit. “Support retailers that do the right thing,” cheered one influential political consultant.

Given the love, it seems like a no-brainer to ditch the NRA. This is the kind of reputation boost and customer goodwill that you can’t pay for. In fact, companies know these accolades are all too easy to buy — and they’re pretty cheap, too.

None of these companies took a particularly controversial stance. School shootings have been a growing problem since the Columbine massacre in 1999. In the ensuing 19 years, none of those companies cut ties with the NRA, pulled back discounts or declared their independence from gun manufacturers. And for 19 years, they didn’t have to.

So what changed? The mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., made pressuring the NRA a mainstream opinion, and there is nothing better for a company’s bottom line than supporting a mainstream view. An eloquent, quick-witted group of young survivors created a different kind of political and moral electricity. Apathy was no longer an option. In only two weeks, regulation of assault weapons — thwarted and danced around by lawmakers for years — became an urgent and mainstream opinion.

It’s smart but not especially brave to see on which side your bread is buttered. It’s the easiest thing in the world to find your moral center when a pivot to ethical behavior results in widespread approval. That is why what has happened this week was not a vast moral stand by the nation’s corporate sector. It was a simple calculus of profit and loss.

It costs these companies almost nothing to give up their discounts to the relatively paltry membership of the NRA. It would cost them a lot to lose every other customer. As influential activists and celebrities declared boycotts and whipped up public sentiment against any NRA-friendly companies, executives faced the possibility of reputational and financial harm. (No one wants to face the same disaster that Coca-Cola did in the 1980s, when activists urged a national boycott of the company for doing business in South Africa, which was then under apartheid.) And all they had to do to avoid it was give up a bunch of discounts to a relatively small subset of potential customers. (The NRA claims 5 million members, which sounds considerable until you realize that AARP has 37.8 million.)

Dick’s Sporting Goods has won much praise. Not only did it promise to stop selling assault weapons, but the company also jumped into political advocacy with a slate of gun-control measures it urged lawmakers to adopt. (Parkland shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz, 19, reportedly bought a gun at Dick’s, although not the AR-15 that was used in the rampage.) Now Dick’s just has to keep its resolve, because it didn’t before. The chain previously promised to stop selling assault weapons after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, but it went back on its word within eight months when it decided to sell $800 AR-15s at its Field & Stream stores. Dick’s chairman and chief executive Ed Stack had to clarify this week that the new move to stop selling assault weapons was meant “permanently,” to distinguish it, perhaps, from the temporary precedent.

Still, for all the advocacy, optics around a company’s reputation cannot be separated from these decisions. Dick’s made its announcement in part because, as Stack said, “we don’t want to be part of this story any longer.”

It bears reminding that giving up these sales is unlikely to be a financial sacrifice for these companies. Gun sales are falling, according to a widely used industry proxy: FBI background checks, which were down more than 8 percent in 2017. Dick’s maintains 644 stores in 47 states but only 19 Field & Stream stores in nine states. And the company was well aware that the “improper or illegal use by our customers” of guns or ammunition sold by Dick’s “could have a negative impact on our reputation and business,” as it acknowledged in its 2016 annual report. Walmart stopped selling assault weapons in 2015 — not out of principle but because customers weren’t buying them. Brian Rafn, director of research at Morgan Dempsey Capital Management, told CNN Money that so many stores sell military-style assault weapons that “a few guns here or there at Dick’s isn’t going to make a difference” to the consumer market.

There are some companies for which guns and the NRA are a pretty solid revenue stream. Predictably enough, they’re not breaking off ties with the gun lobby. FedEx, the most famous of the holdouts, has a policy of making gun-shipping accommodations for 86 firearms manufacturers and the NRA, according to a company document obtained by ThinkProgress. That is revenue that FedEx doesn’t want to give up, especially to a competitor. There’s profit at stake, so it’s not making any brave stands.

FedEx will have to face public disapproval and reputational risk to keep that profit: Celebrities such as Alyssa Milano, social media influencers and activists are calling for a one-day boycott on March 1 at the remaining large companies that still have business dealings with the NRA — FedEx, Amazon and Apple, in this case. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Of course, there are plenty of people who don’t particularly care what Milano does and strongly oppose gun control — but opponents are a minority. Support for gun control has surged to its highest point in 25 years, and the NRA is viewed increasingly unfavorably.

All of this pressure was, of course, the purpose of the threats of boycotts: to turn the free market into the regulatory body it was promised to be. To force the companies to recognize a higher financial power than the NRA — consumers — and to bring them to heel before the power of consumer dollars. In return, the companies that obliged and broke off their NRA ties would not only get to keep most of their business but perhaps gain even more. This arrangement is entirely sensible, but it is not a transformative moral reckoning worthy of emotional outpourings of support for corporate bravery. The companies understand it is a transaction — and consumers should understand that, too.


Heidi N. Moore is a business editor and consultant. She has been an editor, columnist and reporter for publications including the Guardian U.S. and the Wall Street Journal.

Companies See Negative Responses to Cutting Business Ties With NRA

Poll shows unfavorable ratings rose for firms that severed ties with the NRA

Unfavorability ratings for the three major rental car brands associated with Enterprise Holdings Inc. — Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Alamo and National Car Rental — all more than doubled among surveyed adults after they learned about the companies ending discounts for NRA members.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s favorability rating slid from 61 percent to 50 percent, while its unfavorability rating jumped from 12 percent to 25 percent. For Alamo and National Car Rental, favorability was little changed, whereas unfavorability ratings increased from 10 percent to 24 percent and 11 percent to 25 percent, respectively.

Representatives for Enterprise Holdings did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



https://morningconsult.com/201...iness-ties-with-nra/

USA Today
Jon Gabriel
February 27, 2018

Do we really want separate financial systems for Republicans and Democrats? Because that's where we're headed if this witch hunt continues.

In the aftermath of the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the American people are mad.

Mad at the FBI, which received a detailed and specific warning of the shooting but never followed up. Mad at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, which visited the attacker’s home 23 times before the shooting and waited outside for several minutes before running into the high school. And, of course, they’re mad at the killer.

Progressive activists and many in the news media have rather different priorities. Their ire is focused squarely on a group that wasn’t tipped off, wasn’t a first responder, and had no affiliation with the attacker. Namely, the National Rifle Association.

CNN held an hour-long town hall where the audience hollered at the GOP, hooted at the NRA, and lauded the disgraced sheriff. But progressive activists are no longer content with mere political theater — they’re targeting any and all businesses that have any affiliation with the NRA.

Across social media, left-leaning accounts have pressured a slew of companies offering modest discounts to NRA’s 5 million members. These deals are in the companies' interest, and they extend them to thousands of organizations. When an airline offers 10% off a ticket to a national conference, that helps the bottom line.

But as soon as a vocal group started yelling online, many of these companies cancelled the programs — some within 24 hours. Enterprise car rental, Delta Air Lines, MetLife insurance, Symantec security software and several others abruptly abandoned their often long-standing arrangements with the NRA.

Emboldened by the easy victory, the activists moved to new targets. Celebrities shared cut-and-paste messages on Twitter demanding that Apple, Google, Roku and Amazon immediately remove NRATV from their video streaming services.

There are all kinds of programs I don’t like; I've never considered prohibiting anyone else from watching them.

All of the companies that decided to cave quickly learned that public pressure and boycotts are a two-way street. NRA members strongly criticized their shortsighted move and promised never to use their services again. Let’s just say there are a lot of corporate social media managers who didn’t get much sleep last weekend.

As this effort expands, there are now calls for credit card companies, banks and financial processing firms to refuse to do business with vendors who sell perfectly legal firearms and accouterments. Before this witch hunt ends, perhaps there can be two separate financial systems — one for Republicans and one for Democrats.

The NRA’s critics don’t understand that the group’s power doesn’t derive from minor discounts from travel companies or donations to politicians. It comes from the more than 5 million members who make up the organization.

These Americans of all races, religions and political parties are passionately dedicated to protecting their Second Amendment rights. They are highly informed and politically active, and often base their votes on that fundamental issue.

By cowering to a day of social media pressure, these companies are punishing 5 million potential customers simply for holding a common view in American politics — that the Constitution is the law of the land.

NRA members are just a small portion of the roughly 74 million gun owners in America. Are they to be chased out of the marketplace as well?

It’s a free country, of course, and businesses can do what they want. But instead of feeling chastened, lots of NRA members will simply take their business elsewhere. I’m an NRA member and had no idea discounts were even available. Now, however, I’m exceptionally aware of those companies who not only hold me in contempt but also have no interest in my disposable income.

The larger problem isn’t this temporary tempest. All of these pressure campaigns accomplish nothing but alienate people based on their politics. The result is to divide Americans into ever smaller subgroups in which we can’t sit in the same town hall or, apparently, shop in the same stores.

Every marketer knows the most expensive customer you have is the one who walks away. By bumbling their way into the latest culture war, companies will have to relearn this lesson the hard way.

Jon Gabriel is editor in chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic.

Link

well, Delta is probably trying to hedge their bets

there is a good chance that the shooter actually flew on a Delta flight at some point and that would make them an accessory

Way to go Georgia


Georgia lawmakers voted to nix a tax benefit for Atlanta-based Delta as part of a broader tax package approved Thursday, following the airline's decision to sever ties with the National Rifle Association.

The bill -- which includes a sweeping income tax cut -- cleared the state House on an overwhelming 135-24 vote, after being approved in the state Senate on a 44-10 vote. It now heads to the governor's desk.

The final version dropped an earlier amendment that would have renewed a jet fuel tax exemption worth $50 million that was taken off the books in 2015.

“Businesses have every legal right to make their own decisions, but the Republican majority in our state legislature also has every right to govern guided by our principles,” Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who very publicly threatened to pull the airline tax break earlier this week, said in a statement.

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, serving his last year in office, said he plans to sign the tax package, though he initially pushed for the airline tax break.

Deal said he would still pursue a jet fuel tax exemption separately.

The rejection of the tax break for now, though, marked a swift rebuke from state lawmakers, who had been weighing the restoration of the benefit until this week. It was originally pitched as an “airline tax break,” rather than one that would only benefit Delta.

But in the wake of the Atlanta-based airline’s decision to end its relationship with the NRA, Cagle, who is running to succeed Deal in November, warned that he would block any legislation that could prove to be beneficial to them.

“I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with the @NRA,” Cagle, who heads the Georgia State Senate, tweeted on Monday. “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politic...s-ties-with-nra.html

This is disappointing but not exactly surprising, Fred Meyer has quite a few stores in the PNW.

quote:

NEW YORK (AP) — Kroger will no longer sell guns to anyone under 21 at the stores it owns, becoming the third major retailer this week to put restrictions in place that are stronger than federal laws. The moves by Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart — and retribution on Delta by lawmakers — emphasizes the pressure companies are facing to take a stand.

The nation’s largest grocery chain has sold guns from 44 of its Fred Meyer stores in the West, but said Thursday that since a mass shooting last month at a Florida high school that killed 17 people, it’s become clear that gun retail outlets must go beyond what current U.S. laws requires.

“In response to the tragic events in Parkland and elsewhere, we’ve taken a hard look at our policies and procedures for firearm sales,” Kroger Co. said in a release.

The change comes one day after Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods, both prominent gun sellers, tightened their company policies, and also a day after students returned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for the first time since the shooting there.

Companies like Dick’s had already changed gun-sale policies in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, but the Parkland shooting has opened a fissure between a portion of corporate America and organizations like the National Rifle Association.

MetLife, Hertz and Delta Air Lines and other major U.S. corporations have already cut ties with the National Rifle Association, and at some political risk. Georgia lawmakers passed a bill Thursday that effectively punishes Delta Air Lines for cutting ties with the NRA, following through on Republican vows to deny a tax break worth an estimated $38 million for the company after it ended discounts for NRA members in the wake of the most recent school massacre.

One industry analyst said after the announcement from Dick’s, and strong words from its CEO about the need for change, that other retailers that devote a small percentage of their business to hunting will probably follow suit.

“It is a risky game but you can’t please everyone,” said Joseph Feldman, a senior managing director at Telsey Advisory Group.

The announcements from Walmart and Dick’s so far have drawn hundreds of thousands of responses on social media for and against the moves, from those who pledged to buy more from one company to campaigns urging people to thank the companies for their decisions to those who vowed never to buy from them again.

Other companies have tried to stay out of the debate. Some gun sellers haven’t responded to requests for comment, including Bass Pro Shops, which owns Cabela’s, or Camping World Holdings, which owns Gander Outdoors. The Outdoor Industry Association hasn’t responded to requests for comment. L.L. Bean also didn’t respond to a message Thursday.

Besides major chains, guns are also bought from gun shows, local stores and from online stores.

“If large retailers, like Dick’s, reduce their exposure to guns, it could impact gun manufacturers,” says Maksim Soshkin, a senior analyst at IBISWorld. “Manufacturers could see a decrease in sales or have to find new avenues to sell their product.”

American Outdoor Brands, which owns Smith & Wesson, said Thursday it expects gun sales to be more or less flat for the next year to 18 months. The company’s third-quarter results and fourth-quarter forecasts were much weaker than Wall Street expected, and its stock fell 19 percent in aftermarket trading, while Sturm, Ruger fell 9 percent.

Kroger, based in Cincinnati, said it has been tweaking some of its gun departments as it renovates stores due to softer demand from customers. The company ended sales of assault-style rifles at Fred Meyer several years ago in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. It will extend that ban to Alaska, where customers could get such guns via special order.

The NRA, which also didn’t respond to request for comment Thursday, has pushed back on calls for raising age limits for guns or restricting the sale of assault-style weapons.

Could a person between the ages of 18 and 21 challenge the companies over the new policies and argue that they are discrimination based on age? Some experts say retailers can set age restrictions without violating the Second Amendment.

Los Angeles-based attorney Angela Reddock-Wright, who focuses on workplace discrimination disputes, said anti-discrimination laws mostly protect people 40 and older from being fired based on their age. Mike Glassman, who chairs the employment law group at the Cincinnati-based firm Dinsmore & Shohl, said the Second Amendment “only limits the government and not private entities.”

https://apnews.com/a70d3d6e213...49b725/Walmart,-Dick's-expand-corporate-rift-with-gun-lobby

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.03b96e649e53

Why the NRA doesn’t much care if businesses spurn them

By Marc Fisher
March 2 at 6:18 PM

The National Rifle Association is, like AAA or AARP, a bundle of bargains, a smorgasbord of savings on insurance policies, motel rooms, bottles of wine and prescription drugs. But unlike the nation’s other interest groups that boast millions of members, the NRA also unabashedly embraces controversy, lunging into battle with fiery rhetoric and no-holds-barred political attacks.

The NRA touts itself with the slogan “Saving Freedom, Delivering Value,” promising its 5 million faithful that “It pays to be a member!” But that piece of the NRA bundle has shrunk in recent days, as a slew of major companies have responded to a groundswell of anti-gun activism by canceling their discounts and other affinity deals with the gun lobby.

The businesses that have cut ties with the NRA include big brand names such as car-rental giant Enterprise, Delta Air Lines, MetLife insurance and the bank behind an NRA Visa credit card.

[NRA lashes out at boycott movement as United, Delta and other corporations cut ties]

Despite that unprecedented pressure from corporate America, the NRA is unlikely to lose a significant number of members or see its influence diminished, according to those who have studied the organization. Supporters and critics say the NRA is cushioned against this kind of pushback because its members sign up not for financial gain but for a chance to be part of a cultural vanguard.

“Nobody’s joining NRA to get a discount at Hertz,” said Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist who is president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association. “Joining NRA is like making a religious commitment; it’s a statement about where you stand not just on guns, but on one view of what it means to be an American. It’s a powerful symbolic move.”

The NRA has been showing its political force in the weeks since the shooting massacre at a Parkland, Fla., high school, after which students and gun-control activists directly assailed the group. NRA officials countered, calling its opponents un-American. After President Trump signaled a willingness to embrace some gun-control measures this week, the White House softened that tone following Trump’s meeting with NRA officials on Thursday night. Chris Cox, the NRA’s executive director, tweeted after the meeting that Trump and Vice President Pence support the Second Amendment and “don’t want gun control.”

Delta Air Lines’ decision to end group discounts for NRA members met with a swift rebuke in Georgia, where legislators overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday that was stripped of a lucrative tax break that would have primarily benefited the airline. That prompted leaders in New York, Virginia, Washington and other blue states to encourage Delta to relocate its hub to more friendly environs.

On Friday, Delta announced that it wanted to remain neutral in the gun debate and is now planning to curtail discounts for any “politically divisive” group.

In some ways, the success of the NRA, as with its peers among the nation’s largest interest groups, depends on finding and winning over a steady stream of like-minded members.

“The whole package is not that different from AARP or the Sierra Club,” said Thomas Holyoke, a political scientist at Fresno State University who studies interest groups. But as the NRA has adopted more absolutist positions against gun regulations and has embraced more radical political language, “the NRA is really becoming the opposite of AAA, which no one joins for their political positions.”

All large membership groups are valuable to big business, which craves the organizations’ membership lists as reliable sources of potential customers and marketing targets. That creates a symbiotic relationship in which both sides tend to eschew controversy, trying to keep their ties clean and neutral.

[NRA goes on the offensive after Parkland shooting]

Other interest groups have occasionally hit a speed bump of controversy. For example, AARP, the retired people’s lobby, suffered through a spate of membership-card burnings in 2003, after the organization endorsed a Medicaid bill that some senior citizens argued would do more to help drug companies than provide security for the elderly.

But the NRA has embraced conflict as few other huge membership groups have dared to. And the organization’s approach has grown ever more caustic, from NRA leader Wayne LaPierre’s 1995 warning that “jack-booted government thugs” were amassing power to strip gun owners of their constitutional rights, to the late Charlton Heston’s scalding address to NRA members in 2000, telling Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore that his firearm would be taken only “from my cold dead hands.”

The wave of corporate moves to separate from the NRA following the Parkland massacre is unique in its size, but it is far from the first time businesses have felt compelled to distance themselves from the group.

“The pattern goes like this: A horrific event happens, a corporate player takes a stand and they’re praised by the general public and squished like a bug by the NRA and their core following,” said Josh Sugarmann, author of a history of the NRA and executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a pro-gun-control group. “It remains to be seen if this time is any different. All these companies aren’t making these decisions out of any ideological commitment; they’re reading the situation and seeing the power of social media.”

In the 1980s, some companies decided not to make deals with the NRA for membership benefits because executives or boards didn’t want their brands associated with a divisive issue such as the role of firearms in the country. Only after several other banks declined an affiliation with the NRA did the First National Bank of Omaha agree to sell NRA-branded credit cards, which give NRA members 5 percent back on gas and sporting goods purchases. Now, that bank says it won’t renew the contract to issue the card.

But such decisions don’t necessarily damage the NRA’s appeal, Sugarmann said. “They’re kind of a two-headed monster. They play to their hardcore base and don’t care about appealing to the general public, so they don’t see a backlash like this as damaging. They view being attacked by the mainstream media as a positive benefit, and their base may look at big business in the same way. On the other hand, they don’t want to be a corporate pariah. So they have pressures in both directions.”

The NRA did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement this week, the group said, “the loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”

As a culture warrior that has mastered the art of advancing its interests through brutal rhetoric and intense tribalism, the NRA, like President Trump, has become a master of gaining and maintaining power with the fervent support of an engaged minority.

But the NRA faces existential pressure as well — a steady decline in the percentage of U.S. households that own firearms and a reversal of fortunes of some major gun manufacturers. In addition, the decisions by Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart, and Kroger stores not to sell guns to anyone under 21 represent a big blow to an industry that puts a premium on winning over young people as gun owners.

Those challenges mean that one of the NRA’s most valuable assets, its membership roll, becomes an ever more important part of its business model. The money’s not too bad, either; in one credit card affiliation deal, the NRA got 0.5 percent of all purchases made on the card. A one-year NRA membership costs $40.

Many of the businesses now distancing themselves from the group likely will return eventually, because that list of 5 million members is that valuable, Feldman said.

“When I was working on the Hill for NRA, I’d ask congressmen, ‘Would you rather have the maximum contribution we can make or a mailing to your district?’ And it was never a question,” the former lobbyist said. “It was one of the greatest lists in the country, and they wanted that access.”

For the NRA, the future of firearms in the United States will be determined by how well-organized and vocal gun-rights supporters are, not by winning over new members with goodies. The organization is far more devoted to developing cultural affinities — making marketing connections with country music stars, for example — than it is to adding to its menu of discounts.

Former NRA executive vice president Warren Cassidy liked to explain that his organization was different from other interest groups: “You’d get a far better understanding” of the NRA, he once told The Washington Post, “if you just approach us as if [we are] one of the world’s great religions.”

For years, the group posted a slogan at the convention booths where it sold insurance policies: “Share the Belief.”


David Nakamura, J. Freedom du Lac and Marwa Eltagouri contributed to this report.

David Hines: How the Left Runs Psyops On Allied and Enemy Americans

He further elaborates the basics of the plan being executed in Operation Parkland.

Further tweets below are taken out of tweet format and just printed as normal text, in blockquotes. But they come from David Hines (@hradzka on Twitter).

The way spectrum of allies analysis works is: you categorize people and groups by where they stand in relation to you and your target on whatever issue you're working on.

...

Active opponents are against you, and fighting you.
Passive opponents are against you, but they're not fighting you.
Neutrals are neither against or for you.
Passive allies are with you, but they're not fighting for you.
Active allies are with you and are fighting for you.

...


The point of spectrum of allies analysis is figuring out who you can move one notch. Who can you move toward you? Who can you move away from your enemy? And how do you make sure you don't push people away from you?

...

Active allies: engage them.
Passive allies: make them active.
Neutrals: inform or educate them to make them passive allies.
Passive opponents: make them move to neutral by worrying their position may cost them -- BUT CAREFULLY, so they don't become active opponents.

...

Active opponents: make it clear that anything they do against you will cost them, so they retreat to being passive opponents. Failing that, isolate them.

You are now thinking, "Holy crap, yeah, I've seen this technique used everywhere."

...

So under this system, companies giving the NRA discounts are passive opponents to gun control activists. Get them to drop this discount. Make them neutral. And it's not like NRA members really *use* discounts much, so the companies will see no strong material argument against.

...


But if this works: look, now you've got precedent.

(Turns out it cost Delta a $40 million tax break. But most companies with NRA discounts are not vulnerable like that, in large part bc *the NRA does not have comparable research to know what their weaknesses to pressure are.*)


...

Activists have been researching firearms companies, finding ones vulnerable to pressure or whose parent companies are. That's where the REI thing comes in. This has not been done in a few weeks. It is careful preparation and it takes months. Groundwork was done months ago.

...

That's how this stuff is done: preparation, preparation, PREPARATION, then carefully staged release, usually on a calendar, but in this case probably at the most favorable moment that presented itself.


...


What you're seeing is activist pressure to turn NRA's passive allies neutral.

The Lyft thing? Free rides to the march? Lyft didn't just decide to do that. They were asked, and asked carefully, and the people asking knew the people they asked were passive allies needing a push.

...

It pays to be familiar with activists' analytical tools (this isn't the only one, of course). Turn them against yourself or your organization; that way, if you're subject of an activist attack, you'll get an idea of where the attack is likely to come from. Don't get caught blind.

/fin

oh, and a PS. If all this stuff sounds military to you? *That's because it is.* Don't think of activism as bullshit the other guys do. Think of it as a non-violent army. That's what it is. And it's hard work. Respect it.

I would say the most egregious part of this warplan, and the one that makes me the most animated, is the part where they attempt to pressurize their "active enemies" into a coerced silence, threatening consequences for speaking out against them.

I would further say the biggest division on what used to be called "The Right" are the two main factions' understanding of this tactic and this desired end-state, and their total rejection of it -- or soft toleration of it.

Some of us are still in Business as Usual Mode and some of us are highly alarmed at how close the left is to achieving its end-state of a society divided between the Empowered True Believers and the Denigrated and Threatened Underclass, and are no longer willing to walk towards the gulags.

As we consider civil equality and freedom-in-fact (not just theoretical freedom, but actual real freedom in the real world) to be principles that are more important than any other, we are willing to violate some of the less-important procedural principles to fight the left's objective of complete subjugation of us.

To many of us, it appears the Business As Usual crowd is focused on fairly trivial procedural matters while performing their appointed duties as the left's enablers and enforcers of complete social and cultural rulership by the left.

Posted by: Ace at 04:31 PM

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=374125

"There is also evidence showing that permissive concealed carry laws increase rates of accidental firearm injury."

Dang, I had no idea I was such a danger to myself. I'm going to stop carrying and be safer!"

/sarcasm mode off/


Complete article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.5b74af385b38

The best available evidence suggests NRA-backed gun policies are making crime worse

By Christopher Ingraham
March 2 at 2:09 PM

The best available evidence suggests two major National Rifle Association gun policy prescriptions — what are known as “stand your ground” self-defense laws and permissive concealed carry laws — increase homicides and violent crime.

That is according to a massive new study by the RAND Corporation, an independent think tank. The group's experts scoured thousands of academic papers on gun violence in an effort to make definitive statements about how gun policies affect crime and safety. They winnowed that list down to only the highest-quality studies — just 62 in total — containing evidence capable of establishing a causal link between a gun policy change and a specific outcome.

Because the RAND researchers' criteria for including studies in their final analysis were rigorous, for the majority of policies and outcomes, there was not enough good research to make any definitive statements — a clear indication of how little we know about how to prevent gun violence. But there were notable exceptions.

There is moderate evidence, for instance, that “stand your ground” laws, which remove the requirement for gun owners to attempt to retreat from a situation before using lethal force, increase total rates of homicide. A 2013 study, for instance, found that states passing such laws saw 6 percent to 11 percent increases in their total homicide rate. Another study found that Florida experienced a significant 24 percent increase in total homicides and 32 percent increase in firearm homicides following enactment of the stand-your-ground law in 2005.

The NRA has been a vigorous champion of these laws. After the shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, the group released a statement saying stand-your-ground “empowers lawful people to defend themselves, and deters would-be murderers, rapists and robbers,” and “the alternative leaves the innocent in danger.”

RAND's researchers also uncovered limited evidence that on balance, permissive concealed carry laws increase overall rates of violent crime. While studies into the effects of concealed carry on the rates of specific crimes, like murder, armed robbery and rape, were generally contradictory and inconclusive, one recent high-quality study conducted in 2016 concluded that on net, the expansion of concealed carry laws increased violent crime overall. There is also evidence showing that permissive concealed carry laws increase rates of accidental firearm injury.

Again, that runs contrary to the NRA's doctrine of “more guns, less crime.” Recently the group has been heavily involved in the push for a national concealed carry reciprocity bill that would make concealed carry permits issued in one state valid in all other states. It also supports legislation that allows gun owners to carry concealed firearms in public without a permit.

The RAND findings diverged from the NRA's preferences in other key areas, as well. For instance, the group has lobbied against laws intended to prevent children from getting their hands on unsecured guns. RAND's researchers uncovered strong evidence that these laws prevent unintentional firearm injuries among adults and children, and that they're effective at preventing suicides, as well.

The NRA also opposes expanding background checks for gun purchases because “background checks don’t stop criminals from getting firearms.” The research compiled by RAND shows moderate evidence that dealer background checks decrease rates of firearm homicide and limited evidence that background checks decrease violent crime and total homicide rates.

One area where the NRA's views are in line with the research is in the realm of mental health. RAND found moderate evidence that mental health-related prohibitions on gun ownership lead to a decrease in violent crime. Following major mass shootings, the NRA typically urges lawmakers to focus their efforts on keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, rather than gun control per se.

All told, the RAND report can be read as an indictment of the gun policy agenda favored by the NRA and its allies in Congress. On balance, the evidence suggests a number of NRA-backed policies, like stand-your-ground laws and permissive concealed carry rules, increase gun violence. Conversely, there is good evidence showing that measures opposed by the NRA, like expanded background checks and child access prevention laws, could reduce the overall toll of gun violence.

Setting individual policies aside, the chief argument of the new RAND report is that there is an urgent need for more, better research into gun violence and how to prevent it. “Many of the possible effects of gun policies that are raised in policy debates have only rarely — or never — been studied rigorously,” RAND's Andrew R. Morral, the project's leader, writes.

The report calls on Congress to eliminate the current restrictions on federal funding for gun research — restrictions that were put in place largely at the behest of the NRA.

The NRA did not respond to a request for comment.

We just need to hurry up and divide the country into two separate countries already.

I don’t hate liberals or want to mock them, or shout at them, or boycott them. I just don’t want to live under their values. I respect that they don’t want to live under mine either.

This is like a bad marriage that just needs to end for the health of both parties. They need to go their way, and we need to go ours.

We need to shore up our constitution a bit to keep this from happening again and move along. I’m tired of all this BS and fake outrage and boycotts...I have big boy things to worry about and to do. I’m not interested in all this maneuvering and name calling.

I wish them the best of luck, I’m just sick of them telling me my religion and beliefs are wrong. They need to F right off and drive themselves into bankruptcy without dragging me along for the ride. I will happily move if Ohio goes with the libs, it’s not an issue.

quote:

We just need to hurry up and divide the country into two separate countries already.

How?
They are concentrated in cities... how do we kick Chicago out of Illinois? Or Baltimore out of Maryland?

It’s actually not that hard. It just takes one state to say “we’re out of here.”

The feds won’t fight a war in this day and age. Some legal debate will take place, but if you don’t recognize the US as your government anymore, what import does a SCOTUS decision have?

After enough time, people will accept that said state is doing their own thing. Then other states will join them as they wish.

The only thing that stopped it once before was a war. I just don’t see that happening today. You’re going to imprison an entire state of people for not following your laws or paying your taxes? Send in the army and force compliance of local courts and governments?

I just don’t see it. The hard part is that it takes an entire state thinking alike. Getting that kind of critical mass is not happening right now. As things get worse, I think we’ll have a better chance of seeing that in more conservative states.

I just wish someone would do it without having to wait for it to get worse. We just get more and more polarized and it’s obvious to me that we want two separate governments and ways of life, so I say let’s guve us that and move on. We don’t even have love of country in common today.

Differences are good and healthy, but we don’t have differences, we have total opposite core principles with little to nothing in a shared ideal.

That entire article is incredibly misleading and fundamentally flawed in its attempted message.

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmund:

There is moderate evidence, for instance, that “stand your ground” laws, which remove the requirement for gun owners to attempt to retreat from a situation before using lethal force, increase total rates of homicide. A 2013 study, for instance, found that states passing such laws saw 6 percent to 11 percent increases in their total homicide rate. Another study found that Florida experienced a significant 24 percent increase in total homicides and 32 percent increase in firearm homicides following enactment of the stand-your-ground law in 2005.

Yeah well duh. That's because good people are killing bad people by defending themselves. Good.

quote:

RAND's researchers also uncovered limited evidence that on balance, permissive concealed carry laws increase overall rates of violent crime. While studies into the effects of concealed carry on the rates of specific crimes, like murder, armed robbery and rape, were generally contradictory and inconclusive,

Uh huh. Inconclusive eh? How convenient. More like the data didn't fit your narrative.

quote:

There is also evidence showing that permissive concealed carry laws increase rates of accidental firearm injury.

No kidding, stupid. You mean like how say a city with more restaurants might have more instances of injuries involving knives or burns to the skin? Imagine that. When there is more of something present, there's more chance of an accident occurring involving it.

quote:

The NRA also opposes expanding background checks for gun purchases because “background checks don’t stop criminals from getting firearms.”

And the award for the biggest lie in this garbage article goes right here. That is not at all why the NRA opposes UNIVERSAL background checks, and this author likely darn well knows it. Furthermore, the NRA has repeatedly called for an improved background check system.

quote:

All told, the RAND report can be read as an indictment of the gun policy agenda favored by the NRA and its allies in Congress.

More likely an indictment on your rampant bias.

quote:

Setting individual policies aside, the chief argument of the new RAND report is that there is an urgent need for more, better research into gun violence and how to prevent it. “Many of the possible effects of gun policies that are raised in policy debates have only rarely — or never — been studied rigorously,” RAND's Andrew R. Morral, the project's leader, writes.

The report calls on Congress to eliminate the current restrictions on federal funding for gun research — restrictions that were put in place largely at the behest of the NRA.

Ah, and now we get to the crutch of the matter. You want more money. Bugger off.

Today, McDonalds stayed neutral in the gun debate. They said nothing about it in a corporate press release. The sold me a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit and said nothing about guns. THAT is how you remain neutral in a national "debate".

Delta, United, REI and others are committing virtue signaling cowardice. Where they take a position that is clearly biased, and insists that are taking no position at all. And they just don't get that outside of the board room, America sees them for being full of shit. They aren't brave enough to admit they are anti-Second Amendment. Apparently, they are taking lessons from John Kerry on being "Pro-Second Amendment".

LOL: Only 13 NRA members used the Delta discount to fly to the NRA convention and that cost them $40 million:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...m_term=.45b4e95319e4

glad to see Delta lost the subsidy

and it was more than $38 million - they were looking for $20 million a year for 5 years for a total of #200 million

I hope that puts a real dent in Delta - perhaps the pilots and FA's will go on strike again and further cripple them