NRA mailer

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Direct mail solicitation and fundraising is a science. The cost to print and mail the materials is calculated, then a rate of return with actual checks is estimated, (usually just a few percent) and the difference is the profit that is split between the mailing firm and the NRA. Every large organization does this, and does it the same way. The propaganda may be different, but the overall pattern is the same.
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I always wonder why people get mad at people who don't like the "junk mail". The people sending it out know what's going to happen, so why complain when the expected happens? They know they will turn some people off, they could do something different, but they do what they do because they feel it will maximize their returns.
 
I didn't consider it junk mail actually. Had the survey not been in there I would have joined.
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Darn. If you hadn't said that I would have sent you eight million dollars. And I was just going to ask where to send it. Better luck next time.
 
I thank those who approached my post with thought, it was nice to hear your input. For the others, well, I guess it shows that the NRA mailing I cited was designed for you.

I do my work at the ballot box.
 
I might have missed this in the thread, but I believe you can contact them and ask to be removed from the mailing list.

Seems I saw this another NRA thread. The poster of that had said that it drastically reduces the amount of mail.
 
You're a good sport, chabanais, and I thank you for doing your work at the ballot box.

If you ever get caught casting 4 million votes at the ballot box, you might want to explain that you're not an NRA member but you do as much as all the rest of us do together.

Be sure to tell everybody that you would have joined the NRA if it hadn't sent you a survey.

By the way, most of the other freeloaders say that in addition to doing their work at the ballot box (by which they probably mean casting a vote every couple of years) they send e-mails and take an "anti" shooting. Just a tip to help you develop your position as a gun rights activist and staunch supporter of the Second Amendment.

As for all those guys who are ridiculing you, don't pay attention to them. You're doing even better than they are. You're freeloading, complaining about the style in which we're carying you, and making up excuses for it while we're carrying your load. That's pretty sharp. Congratulations.
 
I thank those who approached my post with thought, it was nice to hear your input. For the others, well, I guess it shows that the NRA mailing I cited was designed for you.
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"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."--Thomas Paine
 
AJ has the right analysis. These are not surveys, they are fund raising letters. They have discovered that certain buzz words ("gun grabbing liberals", "protect our 2nd amendment rights", etc.) play on the emotions of their target audience and cause them (us) to reach for our checkbooks. You can't raise money by appealing to the center (or the intellect). I get the same approach from my other favorite organization, the ACLU; only the rhetoric is from the other side of the political spectrum. Don't take it personally. You too can be despised and called a moron by almost everyone.
-BothellBob
 
WHY! WHY!WHY!!!!!!!

First Ron Paul, now the NRA.

Seriously, do you want to keep trashing and betraying the folks who really care about our constitutional rights, until we only have a candidate to vote for that will only give us a false sense of security?

Why was that questionaire signed the "wrong" way and returned? I got the same questionaire, and I wrote in the last section, that the NRA should not endore ANY candidate until the Libertarian Party has made their selection.

The only people who will wreck our 2nd Amendment rights is people from the inside, from our own community.
 
The NRA has insulted the intelligence of a lot of people. It seems they only want to recruit the kind of simple minded hot heads that give responsible gun owners a bad reputation. The NRA really needs to clean up its act.
 
The NRA has insulted the intelligence of a lot of people. It seems they only want to recruit the kind of simple minded hot heads that give responsible gun owners a bad reputation. The NRA really needs to clean up its act.
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You mean people like Mr. Ted Nugent?

Well, I don't think he is a hot head at all. And our current NRA leadership is just a tad bit weaker than when the great Charlton Heston was running it. The current leadership is really good, however, they should get tougher against gun grabbers, and issue some more hot articles and debates.

Mr. Heston had no problem with calling the Harvard audience a bunch of cowards, because they ARE a bunch of cowards. Talking about being willing to give up their right to vote for life in exchange for a free iPod. What is wrong with young people these days?
 
I just meant he was the President. Of course the NRA is ran BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE.
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The NRA has been run by Wayne La Pierre for a very long time. Heston was a figurehead. Do a web search for Harlon Carter and Neal Knox. I respected Carter and Knox.
 
The NRA has been run by Wayne La Pierre for a very long time. Heston was a figurehead. Do a web search for Harlon Carter and Neal Knox. I respected Carter and Knox.
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But under Heston's guiding, the NRA grew from a tiny flame flickering in a cold wind to a bright, warm campfire.
 
I guess it's the issue of whipping people into a frenzy so they will write checks that I found distasteful. I understand that the NRA has to sometimes take what many would call 'extreme' positions so as to balance what many anti-firearm people say in the media, but I disliked the fact that things were worded so as to manipulate me. Obviously my views are in the minority as the NRA is very successful in raising money.

I know the Washington Post is a biased paper, but these appear to be facts I found interesting:

Take the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, now pending before the Supreme Court. It was the libertarian Cato Institute, not the NRA, that took up the plight of D.C. residents who seek firearms for personal protection. Before the case reached the high court, the NRA did its best to derail it. Why? Because the District gun ban is one of the reddest flags the organization could wave to inflame its membership. If the NRA were to "solve" the D.C. gun-ban problem, it would lose some powerful talking points for getting the check-writing machinery rolling. Now that the case looks like a winner, the association has climbed aboard the bandwagon and will be asking for "emergency" donations to defray its legal costs.

Harlon B. Carter, who created the modern NRA in the 1970s, earned about $70,000 a year (about $200,000 in today's dollars) as executive vice president and was driven to meetings in the company Chevrolet. Wayne LaPierre, who currently sits upon the executive vice president throne, pocketed about $950,000 in 2005. The parking lot at the association's twin-glass-towered headquarters off Interstate 66 in Virginia is filled with shiny new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes.

What's unseemly about the stratospheric six-figure salaries flowing into NRA leadership wallets is that the cash comes from hundreds of thousands of members who are hard pressed to write $35 annual membership renewal checks or send an extra $10 or $20 to the NRA Political Victory Fund to protect their guns.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121401328.html

I suppose with any organization there is good and there is bad but I guess reading that letter I felt like someone was trying to blatantly use me.
 
As has been pointed out before, the parking lots of all businesses in the area are full of BMWs and Mercedes. Keep in mind that the NRA is not the only business in that building and many of the cars are those of visitors and people using the range.
 
The parking lot at the association's twin-glass-towered headquarters off Interstate 66 in Virginia is filled with shiny new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes.
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The parking lot at the elementary school down the street from me is full of BMW's and Mercedes.

Doesn't mean that the teachers are overpaid, it means that Americans piss off way too much money on cars.
 
I know the Washington Post is a biased paper, but these appear to be facts I found interesting ....
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People with reasonable intelligence don't use biased sources when they're gathering facts. Biased sources apply what is called "bias" to what they say. But no one reading your presentations has any difficulty believing that you accept what biased sources say, treat them as "facts," and waste a lot of people's time presenting such stuff.

Chabanais, try real hard to pay attention.

People who eat a free lunch don't get the right to complain about the food or the service or anything else about it. Of course there are jerks who do such boorish things but that's all they are: ungrateful jerks who take what others give them, don't pay for it, and complain and whine that it's not good enough for them.

So when you're a guest and somebody else pays your bill, you look dumber and dumber the more you whine and complain about it. If you're paying attention you should have figured out that I'm not trying to convince you to join the NRA. We don't need people like you. In my own opinion you'll do us all more good in you join The Brady Campaign or some other anti-Second Amendment group and help them instead.

I am one of four million members of the NRA who pay the bills to defend your Second Amendment rights. I don't take seriously your nonsensical claim to being an activist at the "ballot box." Even if I believed that you really do bestir yourself to actually vote in elections (I don't believe it for a moment), the most you could possibly be doing is to cast a vote every once in a while. And you're doing even that badly. Your city--San Francisco--reflects your achievement.

What you can't seem to understand is that we--the members of the NRA who carry you on our backs--make it possible for you to have a choice on which to exercise your vote about Second Amendment issues. Without us--the NRA members who fight your battles--and the members of local Second Amendment groups, you can't get those choices. You don't even have the slightest idea about what it takes to get them. You're a keyboard activist practicing finger exercises that don't accomplish a thing and mean even less. You're a straw in the wind.

You live in San Francisco, California. We--the four million members of the NRA who pay your way--fund the frequent law suits by the NRA against your city's gun control laws. If you really do vote (which I doubt), the indisputable evidence is that you do a very bad job of it. Your city officials (the people on those ballots with which you practice your gun rights activism) are committed to gun control and impose it in every way possible. Your San Francisco is notoriously anti-gun. Without us--the NRA and its members--you would be up the creek.

But instead of being grateful for our help you criticize those of us who pay and work to protect your rights. You don't pay a penny for it because you don't belong to the NRA and scorn it and us. I help pay your way, as do my fellow members of the NRA.

Just in case you start singing the second chorus of "The Freeloader's National Anthem," we--me and my fellow members of the NRA--do a lot more, in addition to belonging to the NRA.

NRA membership is the basic emblem of people truly committed to the Second Amendment rights of all Americans. Of course we vote too: politicians know and respect our power. You intentionally weakened that power with your sabotage of the survey you were sent. We send streams of e-mails and letters and call our representatives about important issues identified by the NRA to its members. You of course don't know about them and evidently don't care about them when you saunter to the ballot box for your strenuous moment of activism.

We--the NRA members--are also the people who do the volunteer work in political campaigns, from the most menial jobs to advising candidates, that make your choices possible. We don't talk the talk. We walk the walk.

Of course we're in forums like this one and in other Internet venues promoting the right of the people to keep and bear arms. We try to correct honest misconceptions of sincere people and we deal with committed losers too.

A great many of us are also NRA instructors: we teach kids and adults and the elderly, and we do it for free or at nominal cost. We teach them Basic Pistol, Basic Rifle, Basic Shotgun, Home Firearm Safety, Refuse To Be A Victim, and other courses that range up to and beyond 10 hours of our time every time. It's time away from our friends and families but we do it gladly.

NRA instructors also are the people who teach the CWP classes required in many states: without us, very few Americans could qualify for a concealed weapons permit under many state laws.

We--the NRA members who carry you and others like you--make it possible for people to have shooting ranges and let them qualify for the insurance that makes ranges possible. We--not you--are the certified Range Safety Officers who volunteer to staff those ranges. Indeed we do take "antis" shooting, soothe frightened people to get them over their fears, help "newbies" learn to shoot, and all the other work that keeps little people like you afloat and arrogant.

We--the NRA members who make it possible for you to own a gun--do it at all at our own expense. Then we contribute more money to the NRA/ILA and other organizations that assist in preserving and extending your rights, and you spit in our faces by complaining that you were sent a survey.

You owe us. But you're not grateful and you're not even gracious enough to take all you can get without complaining. You behave like all the other freeloaders I've ever met. Whatever we do for you is not enough or good enough.

Punish us. Get off our backs and climb on board those of people more suitable to your exquisite freeloading tastes. Find another free lunch you like better.
 
chabanais

I was just thinking about joining due to I am a disable vet with very little $$ coming in and I can not pay out money I don't have. They do great work to help us all out. BUT Thanks to you I will find a way to do it and Piss my wife off by spending the money (she likes the NRA) But after I read this post I will dig deep and join!!!
Thanks
John
Soon to be a member of the NRA
 
Which is more important, getting people to join the NRA or taking the opportunity to insult them? These threads are about as useful as a .45 vs 9mm thread. One more person confirming his desire to not join. I could hardly see it coming!

Chabanais, you want a free membership? It's on me. Then see my sig for the "do not promote" list. All I get is my magazines and offers for discounted life and above memberships. :)
 
You know this thread has been very interesting. What I find most interesting are the insults being directed my way. One can say, honestly, that there are many organizations of which we are not a part that 'fight for our freedom.' One person brought up the ACLU, which does fight for freedom on the one hand but also does things with which I disagree. Should I join them as well? If I want safer streets should I join the police? If I want better educated students should I become a teacher? I find the freeloading argument a bit disingenuous and a rather simplistic view of the situation. I do live in San Francisco, but how am I responsible for the type of government we have here? How is that my fault? Why would somebody call me a liar and say I don't vote? When I lived in Europe I voted by absentee ballot for two years and have never missed an election since I was 18.

Why did the statement in the opinion piece I posted about the NRA initially opposing the Heller vs. D.C. case go unchallenged? Why did this gun law go unchallenged since the early 70s when it passed after D.C. obtained home rule? It sounds reasonable to me that allowing such a ban to continue would be good for membership. What are the merits of that statement?

Did I ever state that I was either grateful or ungrateful for anything except the fact that I did not like the type of letter I received from the NRA? Only a few people have actually responded to that question the rest have said I should essentially shut up and go away or that there must be something wrong with me. This tells me that some people don't like being presented with a different opinion. That's too bad.

The traditional definition of the 'gun owner' is changing in this country I believe and for the ones who have responded because they feel threatened should probably consider that. Fire and brimstone might work in a Puritanical church but it ain't gonna work with most people. In fact, it'll be a real turnoff.

I have never said I objected to the NRA only to what I see as manipulative mailers, which I never asked for and now no longer receive. I posted this question here because I wanted to see what people thought. On the whole, I see that the responses are much the same as the left wing libs I run into in San Francisco except the subject matter is different. That's too bad as I was sincerely hoping for a different type of response but I guess it's all two sides of the same coin.

It bothers me when any leader of a 'movement' makes $1 million per year whether it be Obama's pastor Rev. Wright, the local public school official, or the head of the NRA. Money corrupts, in my opinion.

Ad hominem attacks will do little to further anybody's goals.
 
This tells me that some people don't like being presented with a different opinion. That's too bad.
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But that's the thing - you didn't just present us with "a difference of opinion" - if that was the case, you would have just thrown the mailer away and been done with it.

Instead, you knowingly, purposefully, answered the questions in a way that you knew wasn't going to be what the folks at the NRA wanted you to say, which would then be sent on to the people who make the laws and decide what hoops we'll be forced to jump through next.

That's what we're upset about. Differences in opinion are fine - but when you do things like fill out surveys intended to promote and support gun rights to the heavy-hitters in our country's government in such a way that it contradicts what the real goal is of the organization that sent it to you, you become not only a freeloader, but a saboteur. And last time I checked, nobody - pro-gun or anti - tends to enjoy dealing with such an individual.
 
As I said, I don't like being told what to do and my contrarian streak came out. And, lastly, I really thought that the NRA would be above such tactics and I was disappointed to learn I was wrong. Finally, if a survey is sent to me then the company sending it needs to be prepared for any answers it gets back.
 
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