Americans Flock to Get on NRA Blacklist

October 29, 2003 12:59 PM

Getchya Blacklist on"Actor Dustin Hoffman was so dismayed to find his name missing from the NRA's shadowy 19-page list of U.S. companies, celebrities, and news organizations seen as lending support to anti-gun policies that he wrote to the powerful pro-gun lobby group begging to be included. " You can join too!!
posted by GernBlandston (28 comments total)

Yes! Please put my name on the list of unarmed celebrities! My address is...
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:15 PM on October 29, 2003

Saw this last week in SFGate's Morning Fix.

On a side note, its just a little strange for the NRA to publish what is, essentially, a list of enemies. What are they trying to accomplish by polarizing the gun owner crowd from the gun control crowd?
posted by fenriq at 2:07 PM on October 29, 2003

Um, fenriq, the crowds are already polarized. What they're trying to accomplish here is to bring anti-gun figures into the light so pro-gun folks can better choose who we wish to support with our commercial dollars. And I believe the anti-gunners have their own list as well.
posted by Tubes at 2:15 PM on October 29, 2003

What are they trying to accomplish by polarizing the gun owner crowd from the gun control crowd?

How exactly do you think the NRA managed to increase its membership and whip those who belong into a frenzy?
posted by pmurray63 at 2:15 PM on October 29, 2003

It just seems so stupid and ham handed on the NRA's part. Let's go public with the people we don't like and see how people like that.

I don't think they ever considered that many, many people would consider it an honor to be on the list.

I wrote about this a week ago on my blog, Intellectual Poison. I think they're totally out of touch with how to reach people. I'm a gun owner but I'm also in support of gun control. I couldn't ever join an organization like the NRA because they just seem to slap their way through life.

Would I be upset if the government decided to take my firearms from me? Hell yeah. But I'm not so rabid to think that its an all-or-nothing deal. Demonstrate a legitimate use for a weapon that holds 50 rounds and can be converted to full auto and I'll listen to you. Bleat about the 2nd Amendment and what the Founding Father's intentions were and you lose me very, very quickly.
posted by fenriq at 2:22 PM on October 29, 2003

An interesting take on the gun control issue is happening in Phoenix, right now. Some creep threw a cat out a three story window. It landed in a pool and broke its leg. Pretty straight forward animal abuse.

However, PETA has come forward, with something half intelligent this time. They stated that "animal abusers are often repeat offenders", so in addition to jail time, the creep should be forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation,
"because he not only may represent a threat to other animals, but to society as a whole."

Fascinating precedent, if set in lower courts. But if abusing, even killing animals can be equated with psychiatric illness, what about hunting? Or, back to the main issue, gun control, is using guns to kill animals a *possible* symptom of mental illness?

Do you see how the two issues can be seen to interrelate?
posted by kablam at 2:34 PM on October 29, 2003

Another news article on the subject as the NRAblacklist.com site gets inundated with requests to be added.

Kablam, is it okay to hunt with a bow and arrow then? I'm not being smart, I'm just curious. I've known people who think that anyone who doesn't hunt has a mental deficiency. I can see valid arguments from each side.

There's a huge difference between animal cruelty because someone's a stupid mean bastard and hunting to put food on one's table to feed one's children, don't you think?
posted by fenriq at 2:41 PM on October 29, 2003

The NRA isn't about hunting. It's about keeping Republicans in office.
posted by zaelic at 3:02 PM on October 29, 2003

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Given that the First is expressed in absolutes, one would think that since the wording of this one is so much less so that Congress, or the States, or both, would constitutionally would be able to regulate guns. Within reasonable limits, the reasonableness determined by the Supremes. I've never quite understood, heavy dollar lobbying aside, why this is not the generally accepted standard.
posted by billsaysthis at 4:32 PM on October 29, 2003

In texas there is so many deer that if people didn't sport hunt they would overpopulate, creating a breeding ground for disease and a reduction of food. So how would you like to die? Being shot in the heart or starving to death?
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:09 PM on October 29, 2003

excuse me for my poor grammar.
posted by Keyser Soze at 5:10 PM on October 29, 2003

i'd rather starve to death--there's always hope right up until the end then, keyser. I think people should be allowed to hunt if they want, but with strict limits and much more oversight on sales and registration of all firearms--they should also, by law, be locked away and unloaded unless being used for hunting. It seems to me that way too many kids are getting their hands on them in their own houses, and dying/killing as a result.

poor Dustin--this seems like a weird way to get his career back on track. ; >

and what zaelic said, re: electing repubs.
posted by amberglow at 5:29 PM on October 29, 2003

Second Amendment.

Get the government out of your lives. Out.

See the U.S. Constitution.
posted by hama7 at 5:38 PM on October 29, 2003

I believe the anti-gunners have their own list as well.

Actually we just think Ted Nugent's music sucks.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 5:41 PM on October 29, 2003

Actually we just think Ted Nugent's music sucks.

what the freak ever.

o/~ wango tango! o/~
posted by mcsweetie at 6:26 PM on October 29, 2003

Well Keyser, we could concentrate our efforts on re-introducting natural predators to the area like the Mexican and Red wolves to keep those populations in check.
posted by X-00 at 6:26 PM on October 29, 2003

fenriq: Well, what really got my attention are the logical, legal and *social* extrapolations of the PETA action.

Granted, this guy is probably mentally ill, and possibly should be under psychiatric care. But also, PETA has a point about 1) animal abusers doing so repeatedly, and 2) that animal abusers are often criminally sociopathic towards people, too. Should we lump "cruelty to animals" with other senseless violent crimes that routinely require psychiatric evaluation? Truthfully, there *might* be a correlation.

Hunting vs. going to the Quickie Mart for 5 lbs. of hamburger.

If PETA can establish that many hunters hunt for the sole reason that they *sociopathically* enjoy inflicting pain and death in animals, while it may not change the law, it may logically be said that hunters should only be allowed to hunt for a *sane* reason, not to practice psychopathic sadism. What reasonable person wants a sociopath to have and use a deer rifle?

And afterwards, a social sanction may arise about hunters and hunting, equating them with mental illness and abnormality. Your dad is a hunter? Does he take medicine for that?

The power of this should not be underestimated: if a judge can decide that children should live with their father because their mother smokes cigarettes, even outside; what is there to prevent taking children away from a parent that hunts?
posted by kablam at 6:55 PM on October 29, 2003

If PETA can establish that many hunters hunt for the sole reason that they *sociopathically* enjoy inflicting pain and death in animals

... then we can make the argument that they should be allowed to continue to do so as an outlet, lest they turn their weapons on people.

what is there to prevent taking children away from a parent that hunts?

Hopefully, common sense.
posted by kindall at 7:02 PM on October 29, 2003

I loves my gun.
posted by boost ventilator at 7:27 PM on October 29, 2003

So how would you like to die? Being shot in the heart or starving to death?

I think I'd rather be run over by a steam roller.
posted by spilon at 7:43 PM on October 29, 2003

I think I'd rather be run over by a steam roller.

It's K-K-K-Ken! He's coming to k-k-k-kill me!
posted by Tubes at 9:05 PM on October 29, 2003

The Truth About the Second Amendment

As a matter of law, the meaning of the Second Amendment has been settled since the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). In that case, the High Court wrote that the "obvious purpose" of the Second Amendment was "to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness" of the state militia. The Court added that the Amendment "must be interpreted and applied with that end in view." Since Miller, the Supreme Court has addressed the Second Amendment in two cases. In Burton v. Sills, 394 U.S. 812 (1969), the Court dismissed the appeal of a state court ruling upholding New Jersey's strict gun control law, finding the appeal failed to present a "substantial federal question." And in Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55 (1980), the Court upheld the federal law banning felons from possessing guns. The Court found no "constitutionally protected liberties" infringed by the federal law.

In addition, in Maryland v. United States, 381 U.S. 41 (1965) and Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U.S. 334 (1990), cases not involving the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court has affirmed that today's militia is the National Guard.

Since Miller was decided, lower federal and state courts have addressed the meaning of the Second Amendment in more than thirty cases. In every case, the courts have decided that the Amendment guarantees a right to be armed only in connection with service in a "well regulated Militia." The courts unanimously have rejected the NRA's view that the Second Amendment is about the self-defense or sporting uses of guns. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit wrote, the courts "have analyzed the Second Amendment purely in terms of protecting state militias, rather than individual rights." United States v. Nelson, 859 F.2d 1318 (1988).

The National Rifle Association spends millions of dollars every year to foster its myth that the Second Amendment guarantees a broad, individual right to be armed that precludes virtually every restriction on private ownership of guns. The gun lobby's efforts have had a profound influence on the gun control debate. Public opinion polls show that, although more than 60% of Americans erroneously believe that the Constitution gives them a right to be armed, only a minority of Americans believe that it should grant that right. It is time for the American people to know the truth about the Second Amendment and for the NRA's systematic distortion of our Constitution to stop.

As Former Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold put it, "to assert that the Constitution is a barrier to reasonable gun laws, in the face of the unanimous judgment of the federal courts to the contrary, exceeds the limits of principled advocacy. It is time for the NRA and its followers in Congress to stop trying to twist the Second Amendment from a reasoned (if antiquated) empowerment for a militia into a bulletproof personal right for anyone to wield deadly weaponry beyond legislative control."

The NRA is such a lucrative little scam, that I'm thinking of forming the National Cluster Bomb Association. Get government out of your lives. Out. Why shouldn't we be allowed to protect ourselves? When cluster bombs are outlawed, only criminals will have cluster bombs.

If PETA can establish that many hunters hunt for the sole reason that they *sociopathically* enjoy inflicting pain and death in animals

... then we can make the argument that they should be allowed to continue to do so as an outlet, lest they turn their weapons on people.
posted by kindall at 7:02 PM PST on October 29

Oh, brilliant, brilliant. No doubt supplying pedophiles with severely retarded children as outlets (lest they turn their molestation on "normal" children) is next, eh kindall?

Hunting. The joy that some apparently receive from slaughtering helpless animals with chemically propelled missiles is something to behold.

Hunting. Wouldn't it be cheaper just to pull the wings off flies? Or tell: is hunting merely the baccalaureate of that kindergarten?
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 9:55 PM on October 29, 2003

"Heston: 'We Must Arm Ourselves If We Are To Defeat The Apes'"
posted by Scoo at 10:04 PM on October 29, 2003

Heston: "Soylent Green IS PEOPLE!"
posted by zaelic at 1:51 AM on October 30, 2003

"see, see, i told you dustin was a method actor."

this is about as bizarre as governor Arnold. This is an example of how people are blowing this, this...
what is the problem again?
posted by clavdivs at 7:44 AM on October 30, 2003

If you have a problem with people killing animals, become a vegan. Otherwise, STFU and face where your food comes from.
posted by widdershins at 7:52 AM on October 30, 2003

The right of the people to keep and bear arms CANNOT be infringed!!
Join the NRA Good Guys List.
Don't let the Brady Campaign attack Americans for exercising our free speech! Add your name to the list of law-abiding Americans who support the freedom of speech and the RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS!
posted by car_bomb at 9:48 AM on October 30, 2003

I like the way in the list the NRA aren't really sure just what it is that the Zappa kids actually do...
posted by kerplunk at 11:51 AM on October 30, 2003