{"id":553,"date":"2005-02-13T11:11:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-13T06:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=553"},"modified":"2005-02-13T11:11:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-13T06:11:00","slug":"nra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=553","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;NRA&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I received a call from a nice young man who introduced himself as being from &#8220;the NRA,&#8221; and who asked for the use of a few minutes of my valuable time (his words).  I said &#8220;National Rifle Association?  Sure.  You guys do some good stuff, what&#8217;s up?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><!--more The Call-->He shared that he was calling because of the &#8220;immediate crisis&#8221; and &#8220;threat to the 2nd amendment&#8221; posed by the United Nations.  Apparently, the UN is planning to take away our guns. <b> &#8220;Not just Uzi&#8217;s, but shotguns too,&#8221;<\/b> he said.  Had I heard of this?  No, I had not.  He hyped it a bit more, and I finally told him that I get out regularly, I read the news from several sources, and I consider myself pretty well informed about national and world news.  I had heard nothing of this.  What the hell was he talking about.<\/p>\n<p>He told me that the UN had already succeeded in banning guns in several countries, including Australia, and that they were coming for our guns next.  He said that he had a recording by a senior VP for action (or something similar) that he would like to play for me, and get my reaction afterwords.  &#8220;Why not?&#8221; says I.<\/p>\n<p>The recording was a fast talking huckster whose name I missed. He said that the United Nations was pushing to take guns away from citizens, following the <b>&#8220;failed experiment of gun control in Europe and Japan.&#8221;<\/b>  The proposal meant, according to him that <b>&#8220;monitors from countries like Cuba and North Korea would be ensuring compliance right here in the US.&#8221;<\/b> and that <b>&#8220;Our founding fathers didn&#8217;t need the UN&#8217;s permission when they wrote the 2nd amendment, and we don&#8217;t need it now.&#8221;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Then the recording ended and the nice young man came back on.  He asked my reaction.  I laughed in his ear.  I told him that it was excellent theatre.  I asked to hear more recordings by that guy, because he was funny.  Then I clarified:  The US helped start the UN this century, so no, it wasn&#8217;t around in the 1700&#8217;s.  North Korea and Cuba aren&#8217;t exactly contributing international monitors these days.  The &#8220;experiment&#8221; of gun control in England is working out nicely, thanks.  More to the point, while the recording was on, I had googled around, and I couldn&#8217;t find anything like this.  What did the UN call this measure, so I could read it and decide for myself.<\/p>\n<p>I think they&#8217;re talking about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalpolicy.org\/security\/smallarms\/salwindx.htm\">This<\/a>, though I can&#8217;t be sure.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s the hysterical version from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freerepublic.com\/forum\/a3ae8ec916ace.htm\">Free Republic<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Then came the really funny part.  He asked me if I would be willing to make an &#8220;emergency donation&#8221; of $100 to help out the fight.  <\/p>\n<p><b>&#8220;You poor man, you&#8217;re on your script and there&#8217;s nothing we can do to stop this until you&#8217;re done, is there?&#8221;<\/b> I asked.<\/p>\n<p><b>&#8220;If $100 is too much , would $50 be better for you?&#8221;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I laughed him all the way down to the end of his script.  I&#8217;m impressed that he didn&#8217;t hang up on me.<\/p>\n<p>The thing that makes me furious is that these people extract a lot of money from folks who aren&#8217;t as up to date on the news and as critical of their information sources.  The NRA is a fine organization when it sticks to safety and organization.  For it to sully its name with this carnival huckster junk is a real shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I received a call from a nice young man who introduced himself as being from &#8220;the NRA,&#8221; and who asked for the use of a few minutes of my valuable time (his words). I said &#8220;National Rifle Association? Sure. You guys do some good stuff, what&#8217;s up?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}