nyrifleman
Member
This is a rant. You've been warned.
I'm sure many of us have noticed how the anti-gun media always blames the fact that gun laws have become looser and gun ownership more popular on the nebulous "gun lobby". This is a joke, of course. The entire gun and ammunition manufacturing industry has an annual gross income of something like $4 billion. That's GROSS income, as in, not including ANY of the expenses, such as salaries, taxes, rent, equipment, raw materials, advertising, etc., etc., etc. By comparison, tobacco companies spend around $10 billion every year on advertising ALONE.
Blaming everything on "the gun lobby" is pretty handy. Firstly, it implies that the only reason 80+ million own and shoot guns is because they are mindless, brain-washed rednecks and mere victims of the NRA and evil gun-manufacturing corporations. Just a little legislative effort on the part of the gun-grabbers and we gun owners would beat our 1911s into ploughshares and re-join the better and brighter portion of humanity. At the same time, it denies all of us RKBA folks the credit of being one of the most successful grass-roots movements since, probably, the Civil Rights movement.
Well, it's time the media got it: WE are the gun lobby. Just regular people, some of us dumber, some of us smarter, some of us richer, some of us poorer, some of us conservative and some of us liberal (believe it or not). It's not we who dance to the tune of the NRA, but the NRA who dances to our tune (and anybody who can remember even 20 years back can tell you how much more radical about gun rights the NRA has grown in that time).
Now... who can go and run us off a few "I AM THE GUN LOBBY" t-shirts and bumber stickers?
I'm sure many of us have noticed how the anti-gun media always blames the fact that gun laws have become looser and gun ownership more popular on the nebulous "gun lobby". This is a joke, of course. The entire gun and ammunition manufacturing industry has an annual gross income of something like $4 billion. That's GROSS income, as in, not including ANY of the expenses, such as salaries, taxes, rent, equipment, raw materials, advertising, etc., etc., etc. By comparison, tobacco companies spend around $10 billion every year on advertising ALONE.
Blaming everything on "the gun lobby" is pretty handy. Firstly, it implies that the only reason 80+ million own and shoot guns is because they are mindless, brain-washed rednecks and mere victims of the NRA and evil gun-manufacturing corporations. Just a little legislative effort on the part of the gun-grabbers and we gun owners would beat our 1911s into ploughshares and re-join the better and brighter portion of humanity. At the same time, it denies all of us RKBA folks the credit of being one of the most successful grass-roots movements since, probably, the Civil Rights movement.
Well, it's time the media got it: WE are the gun lobby. Just regular people, some of us dumber, some of us smarter, some of us richer, some of us poorer, some of us conservative and some of us liberal (believe it or not). It's not we who dance to the tune of the NRA, but the NRA who dances to our tune (and anybody who can remember even 20 years back can tell you how much more radical about gun rights the NRA has grown in that time).
Now... who can go and run us off a few "I AM THE GUN LOBBY" t-shirts and bumber stickers?
