Via Bearing Arms.
President Donald Trump reportedly privately reassured National Rifle Association boss Wayne LaPierre that he would not pursue increased background check measures for firearms amid rising mass shooting concerns.
Trump, whose comments to LaPierre were reported by The Atlantic, made the guarantee during a phone call on Tuesday afternoon — a day after he told reporters that the U.S. already has “very strong” background checks and warned that increasing such measures could lead to a “slippery slope” where all guns are taken away. One source told The Atlantic that Trump cemented “his stance that we already have background checks and that he’s not waffling on this anymore” during his chat with the NRA chief.
If Trump’s stance is right and final, then LaPierre scored big for Gun Rights much to the dismay of his absolute haters in the gun community and in the Gun Control side. Say what you want about him, but LaPierre has no issues playing bulldozer and face attackers.
I know that there will be those who will belittle this result. I mean because of BUMPSTOCKS and they still can’t buy machine guns at the local gas station yet, this is another failure of the NRA and we need people who screams NO COMPROMISE! (Incidentally, did you hear about those people and how they convinced the president? Me neither).
We still have many issues to resolve within. And to me, more important than the accusations of frivolous spending by The Trace (readily consumed and regurgitated by Gun Owners) is the fact we still do not know who gave the NRA’s internal information to Bloomberg and his scribes. Has the mole been discovered? Is he/she out? Has he/she been “Hillaried”? Is this being investigated at all?
I think we are going to see some amazing cliffhangers in the future, specially if all the lawsuits do not get settled and we go to court. If there is something I learned about Wayne and his circle is that they are the most dangerous when they are quiet and let everybody scream and yell first and then they take their sweet time taking all the screaming down.
PS: Yes, I have to like the guy a little. Imagine if the coup had been successful: who would have been an experienced and proven substitute to deal with the flood of crap Gun Owners are facing right now? Wayne’s real biggest fault? A lack of a trained successor.
It could have also been our now weaponized intelligence services using the Patriot Act to spy on the political opposition to the deep state.
And Mayor Daley got the snow plowed. And Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Every day WLP remains in place is another expression of sneering contempt for the membership.
As for the lack of a “trained successor,” I trust you realize that from WLP’s perspective, that is not a bug, but a feature. It’s the national advocacy group version of the abusive husband who is also the breadwinner: “Without me, baby, you’d be out on the streets. So you’d best shut up and take it.”
That WLP can sway DJT — today, for now, on this, until the feckless opportunist in the White House decides it suits him better to toss the 2d A on the fire — is not an argument that this that WLP’s continued presence bodes well for this vital organization — not in the long term, not even as soon as the next crisis.
WLP’s corruption is the issue. And if your reflex, or the reflex of the organization, is that the best response is to that corruption is to hunt down those who exposed it, I think that’s a damned dangerous reflex to have.
And if your reflex, or the reflex of the organization, is that the best response is to that corruption is to hunt down those who exposed it, I think that’s a damned dangerous reflex to have.
Answer me this then: Why wasn’t these documents given to the Board Members prior to the NRA AM? Was the Xerox machine down and Kinkos closed that copies couldn’t be made and passed along?
Why did the documents end up in The Trace and the NYT when the Washington Post is basically across the street and has a better record of exposes?
Whoever stole the documents, did not do it with the best intentions of the NRA in heart but with all the desire to destroy it. Bloomberg got himself a spy (and probably well paid) to destroy us and it seems noobody is giving a damn and in some cases they are actually cheering.
Your reflex was to ignore the obvious elephant trampling the whole house.
If my worst enemy reported to the newspaper that there was a previously undiscovered sewage leak on my property, and he did it because he wanted to embarrass me, or see me even lose my property, I’d be peeved that he hadn’t had the basic decency to tell me first.
But I’d sure as hell address the sewage leak before I ended up waist-deep in poop.
No doubt Bloomberg and the Moms and Trace and Every Town and all of those see this as a means to cripple the NRA. They’re the enemies of the 2d A and there actions and motives are predictable.
But what I said about WLP still stands and he is still a corrupt and corrupting force within the organization.
“Peeved”? Somebody wants to fuck with your home and you only get peeved?
You address both issues, hoping that both end in a sewage treatment.
But too many people are giving passes to Bloomberg just because they can hate on LaPierre.
I know what you do for a living. Let’s say one morning you wake up and read an expose about your company in the Miami Herald, brought to by your biggest competitor who somehow got himself internal documents from your company. The expose says that your company and the top honchos spend way too much money, money coming from the clients and they wonder if what you guys charge reflect your work or it is just an excuse to live it large.
Would you be peeved or would you be pissed off? Would you want to figure out who was the asshole that violated the trust given by the company? What are you gong to do when your clients call you and want your head on a platter?
And in the famous words from Absence of Malice, the information is accurate, but not necessarily truthful.
Bullshit you’d be peeved. If left to your own devices, you’d have half the staff enjoying a spa treatment at the Waterboarding Institute.
I won’t argue any of that. Fair comment. But going after the “leakers” still leaves the sewage flowing (my hypo) . . . or the unlawful spending happening (your hypo). . . WLP in place (our sad reality).
It’s a given that Bloomberg/ET/Moms/Trace are our enemies. If someone inside is collaborating with them, sure, let’s find them. But we shouldn’t let that blind us to the misdeeds of our employee, WLP. (And let’s not loose sight of the fact that WLP is exactly that — our employee.)
WLP needs to be gone, and if he gave an actual damn about the cause, he’d have gotten himself gone already, from the moment he became a useful talking point to the other side.
Alleged misdeeds, if you please. So far we only have one side of a very dubious equation.
WLP has to go for the simple reason tens of thousands of member are butthurt, nothing else so far. And unless he can coma back with hellacious evidence it was all bullshit or take horribly out of context. the die has been cast. Now it is a question of timing.
And it does not matter if we bring the best guy there is: If we cannot identify and plug the leak, we are still fucked.,
One right, does not negate all the wrongs…
Sorry, no way am I giving Wayne credit for this. Trump knows this game better than anyone, even better than you, Miguel. He was never going to agree to the lefty version of background checks and red flag laws.
And I agree that we don’t know the whole story on the NRA leaks, but Wayne has a lot of explaining to do. I trust Trump 10000x more than Wayne.