#nra donations

[bithablu]

I'm having a difficult time with certain people I know IRL who say that both political parties are the same and it's not worth voting. The Palestinian genocide is usually their main talking point about how both parties suck and how they can't vote for anyone who wouldn't demand an immediate cease fire.

Ok. Cool. Name me one president who didn't have to deal with some kind of genocide. Now show me the one that dealt with it perfectly. No flaws. Quickly. Oh? None? Because politicians are deeply flawed people navigating an overly complicated system of checks and balances that are in place to prevent fascism and dictatorships? Huh.

Palestinians need humanitarian aid, support, political allies, and political pressure on Israel. Which candidate do you think would be more likely to provide ANY of that? The guy who moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, tacitly insinuating that Jerusalem was Israel's capital? Or the chick who called for a cease fire and has a history of supporting humanitarian aid programs?

Is she perfect? Fuck no. Is she good enough? Not on this topic. But which one of them is more like to adjust their policies?

Speaking of adjusting policies, have you heard the story of how Walz went from being beloved by the NRA to get constant F ratings from them? His daughter talked to him about how he was the only person she knew who had the power to prevent school shootings. So she talked and he listened. He prioritized life over lobbyists. Action instead of just thoughts and prayers.

Can you see JD Vance doing that? I can't. He's too busy insulting legal immigrants and letting women bleed out from miscarriages because doctors have to wait 'until the mother's life is in danger' to perform D&Cs. You know, that procedure to 'clean out' a woman after a miscarriage. It's technically an abortion and some doctors would rather wait until a woman is in septic shock than risk a jail sentence for obeying their Hippocratic oath. But Vance adjusting his stance on abortion laws to save lives is less important than making a stand against... I dunno, anti-evangelical behavior 🤷🏼‍♀️

Look, I know it's disheartening. It's fucking heart wrenching just to hear about what's happening in Gaza. But throwing your vote away does no one any good. If you want to make a difference, being indifferent with your vote is not the way to go.

Have you tried talking to your local/state politicians? Have you joined any organizations? Donated? What have you done?

For those of you who say that I'm afraid of the bad orange man, you know what- yeah. I'm afraid of what he could do. My daughter is already going to grow up with less rights than I had. Gods help her if she'd move to a different state; in some of the more restrictive states a woman has more bodily autonomy as a corpse than she does if she's pregnant.

Harris/Walz isn't the best choice but they are the better choice. Pro-union, pro-children, pro-education, pro-choice, pro-GBLTQ+, pro-environment.

If you're waiting for the perfect candidate, you're going to be waiting for a while.

[mariacallous]

Recently, Planned Parenthood released a statement on the Oct. 7th attacks and the broader conflict between Israel and Palestine. Their statement condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians, and specifically condemned sexual assaults committed against Israeli women during the violence. They also noted how thousands of Palestinian women and children had been killed in Israel’s counteroffensive, stated the need for Palestinian women to maintain access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, and condemned both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The social media reaction to such a balanced and empathetic statement? Furious, unrelenting anger.

The statement was quote-tweeted thousands of times by social media users outraged by the statement. Planned Parenthood was accused of spreading Israeli propaganda, ignoring Palestinian deaths and fabricating rape claims, and enabling genocide. These outraged users aren’t conservatives who always oppose Planned Parenthood—they’re progressives furious that an organization they normally support put out a statement they hated. Now there are calls to end donations and Planned Parenthood staffers are fighting with donors. Their own employees, affiliates and organizers are making public statements against them.

This outcome was predictable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of social media dynamics. And it raises an obvious question—why release a statement at all?

Metastatic social justice

It’s actually quite common for organizations and activists to get into hot water these days by addressing areas outside their expertise. Trans activists in Vancouver loudly insisted there can be no Trans Liberation without Palestinian Liberation, which caused pushback all over Canada. Two years ago, New York City’s Pride organizations courted controversy by excluding LGBT police officers from the city’s Pride parade in the name of racial justice. There are YIMBY housing organizations taking a stand on abortion rights and climate organizations demanding a Federal Job Guarantee.

There’s a common theme here. Organizations that appear to be single-issue advocacy groups are increasingly commenting and taking stances on issues outside of their narrow focus. Activism is becoming more global in nature—if you are an activist for one cause, you’re expected to speak up about all causes now. It’s not enough to ‘stay in your lane’, you need to be protesting and advocating for all forms of social justice. Pro-choice advocacy is now part of your racial justice non-profit. Jobs packages are in your environmental bills. Your LGBT organization has a stance on ‘Defund The Police’ and your housing group has a stance on Israel/Palestine. Social justice is metastasizing.

This phenomenon has happened on the right as well—see the NRA transitioning from being a somewhat non-partisan group to essentially being an arm of the GOP—but it’s especially striking in the current progressive movement. There’s a real sense in which NYC Pride is no longer an LGBT advocacy organization, but rather an overall progressive social justice organization. That may sound like an exaggeration, but they kicked out a gay organization (the Gay Officers Action League) to accommodate another form of social justice. It’s the internal logic behind a LGBT Pride march excluding LGBT people.

This also explains the online fury at Planned Parenthood. Their statement was thoughtful and balanced, but deviated from the dominant and overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian progressive narrative. Their donors expect them to advocate not just for progressive goals in women’s health, but progressive goals everywhere.

This type of activist mission creep risks stunting the progress on the core issues that social justice advocates care about.

The downsides of missions creep

The urge towards mission creep comes from a reasonable place. If you care so deeply that you spend your free time (or your career!) as an activist for a particular issue, the odds are that you also have strong feelings on many other issues. You’re also likely to live in a bubble of activists and people who think like you, and so your conversations professionally and socially may often center around all sorts of political issues. But as an activist it’s important to remember that most people you’re trying to reach are not like you and don’t think like you.

The typical voter is over 50 and does not have a college degree. They also don’t think about politics all that much. They are far, far away from the mindset of a typical activist. And when they do have political opinions, those opinions are far more varied and haphazard than a committed political partisan would guess. I think a few minutes scrolling the twitter feed of the American Voter Bot is invaluable to understand how voters think. This bot takes real voters and profiles them in brief tweets. While some look as expected—a Democrat who supports gun control, for instance—many look like this:

Most people are a confusing mix of demographic signals, issue positions and partisan identification, and they rarely fit squarely within one political tribe. That’s the danger of turning a single-issue advocacy group into a generalized progressive messaging group—you’ll end up alienating a far wider group of potential allies than you realize.

If Issue Group X declares loud progressive positions not just on Issue X but also on gun control, abortion, Palestine, Medicare For All, trans rights, free trade and school prayer, they won’t attract a large diverse group of people who care about Issue X. They’ll end up attracting a narrow slice of progressive activists who are ideologically pristine enough to agree with them on every issue.

The ultimate result of activist mission creep is that your issue ceases to be something that people across the ideological spectrum can work together on. It becomes coded as a red tribe vs blue tribe issue, gets swallowed by the general culture war, and progress grinds to a halt as partisan warfare starts.

The most likely outcome of Planned Parenthood voicing an opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not that they make any difference at all towards that conflict. It’s that they alienate their own supporters with differing views on Israel/Palestine. They’ve undercut their own ability to make progress on reproductive care and reproductive rights for no gain.

One thing at a time

None of this is to say that individuals shouldn’t care about many issues at once—they obviously should. And general purpose ideological organizations can and should tackle many policy areas. But it’s a poor strategy for single-issue groups to try to become general purpose organizations. There are real benefits to staying in your lane.

One example of a movement that has done a reasonable job at this is the pro-housing YIMBY movement. While there are some instances of YIMBY groups straying from their purpose, for the most part they’ve done a good job staying narrowly focused, and that that focus has allowed them great success.

YIMBYism is a far more ideologically diverse movement than many people realize. There are conservative YIMBYs, neoliberal YIMBYs, Democratic YIMBYs, libertarian YIMBYs, and many left or socialist YIMBYs (although in true socialist tradition, some want to break away from the YIMBY label and create a sub-label PHIMBY). This isn’t just a feel good story about how conservatives and liberals can be friends—this has a real impact on YIMBYs getting things done. It’s part of why you see both Republican and Democratic officials at the local level working towards YIMBY solutions in different cities, and why those solutions can often pass without bitter partisan warfare. It’s why the YIMBY Act in Congress had Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. It’s why YIMBYs are scoring victories in blue states like California and red states like Montana.

This sort of thing matters. YIMBYs are a big tent and they’re getting things done. It’s hard enough to make real change happen on a single policy or a single issue. Whole movements try for years and still sometimes fail. Single-issue groups trying to address every issue at once aren’t going to succeed. The urge towards mission creep is strong, and too many groups are weakening their core strengths to address problems they can’t solve. Single-issue organizations shouldn’t burden themselves with having the answer to every question, with having a stance on every issue, and with having to be all things to all people. It’s ok not to comment. It’s ok to stay in your lane and just work on one problem. It’s ok to try to change the world just one issue at a time.

[butch-reidentified]

Today marks 6 years since a man who had openly expressed such violent desires took 17 innocent lives in Parkland, FL, just 20 minutes from my home. I know some of the survivors because of my own history having been at Pulse. My wife knew one of the victims because she grew up right here. He used to teach at her school when she was in high school, and died a hero trying to save lives.

Today marks the last anniversary before that building is torn down and gone forever. I imagine there are mixed feelings about this in the community, as the debate regarding the future of the site of the Pulse shooting continues. I myself was once of the mindset that it should stay, but no longer feel this way. It has been long enough; sooner or later we must move forward.

I know that today is a holiday, but I ask that you spare a minute or two today to look into causes like Change the Ref, and donate if you can.

[scottguy]

Or worse... Republicans sabotage any progress on legislation by Democrats and progressives.

Congressional Republicans go to the church of Guns & Ammo. It's perverse.

You name an issue that needs real leadership to get a tough job done, and you will find Republicans on the other side doing nothing.

[truth4ourfreedom]

HOW MUCH THE NRA AND THE 'EVIL' GUN LOBBY SPENDS EACH YEAR.

The popular narrative from prohibitionists is that the lack of legislative support for various gun control schemes is due to aggressive lobbying. The story goes that “blood money” from the National Rifle Association and other gun lobby efforts along with the firearm industry has a stranglehold on elected officials who are just pining to do “the right thing” but are being drowned out by all the cash.

How much money is actually spent by the NRA on lobbying? How does this compare to lobbying efforts from elsewhere?

Statista is a German online platform specializing in data gathering and visualization in German, English, Spanish, and French. The company provides statistics and survey results presented in charts and tables. Its main target groups are business customers, lecturers, and researchers, offering subscriptions to a database of companies in the same manner as Bloomberg L.P.

Statista’s data partners include the Federal Statistical Office, the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research, the OECD, and the German Institute for Economic Research. Other partners include the Financial Times and Fortune. Financial Times Germany named them among the winners of the start-up competition, Enable to Start.

Major U.S. Political Lobbying

The big three in major U.S. political lobbying are Pharmaceuticals/Health Products ($357 million per year), Electronics Manufacturing ($180 million per year), and Insurance ($153 million per year.)

Major annual lobbying expenditures in the United States

www.statista.com/statistics/257364/top-lobbying-industries-in-the-us

Critical note: Statista felt compelled to add the following footnote to this chart:

The NRA and lobbying: One of the most famous lobbying organizations in the United States is the National Rifle Association (NRA), which lobbies lawmakers in favor of gun rights. However, despite this, it only spent around 2.2 million U.S. dollars on lobbying expenditures in 2020.

Apparently, they received so many inquiries as to why the NRA wasn’t included in that chart above they included the answer right underneath: the NRA spends a marginal fraction on lobbying compared to the actual big spenders.

NRA (bottom) compared to the actual big lobby efforts.

Gun Lobby Money:

The NRA typically spends a few million dollars per year on lobbying. From 1998-2022, the most the NRA spent on lobbying in a single year was just over $5 million. Most years it’s between 1.5-2.5 million.

www.statista.com/statistics/249398/lobbying-expenditures-of-the-national-rifle-associaction-in-the-united-states/

The National Shooting Sports Foundation also lobbies. In 2023, according to federal records, the NSSF spent the most in lobbying in its 60-year history: $5.4 million on federal lobbying, slightly more than the NRA’s all-time annual record amount.

Anti-Gun Lobbying:

Firearm prohibitionists claim there is some large grassroots movement to push for legislative restrictions. It turns out that many anti-gun organizations are astroturfing fronts funded as tax deductions by a small group of very wealthy donors. These “organizations” provide no services with all funding received as contributions.

As an example, “March for Our Lives” bills itself as a grassroots movement of young people working to restrict gun ownership under the guise of safety. In reality, this is a front group funded by a few dozen donors. According to public tax documents for March for Our Lives, the group is funded almost entirely by large tax-deductible donations in excess of $100,000 with less than 1% of all donations from people donating less than $5,000. Nearly 100% of “March for Our Lives” income is Contributions serving as a tax deduction for donors and no Program Services are offered. Contrast this to the NRA’s public tax records where nearly half of the income is from Program Services and about a third is from Contributions.

Lobby Money Breakdown

Pharmaceutical companies spend the most on lobbying, much more than any other industry or sector. Pharmaceutical companies spend more on lobbying than second and third place (Electronics Manufacturing and Insurance) combined. Novo Nordisk, the maker of the obesity drug Ozempic, has spent $10 million per year just to lobby for that one drug with their primary effort pushing for the passage of the proposed Treat and Reduce Obesity Act which would emphasize regular prescription by doctors to patients for Ozempic. That doesn't count the $100 million Novo Nordisk has spent in advertising this drug to the general public.

Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, appointed to the current Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, has declared that “obesity cannot be treated with exercise and good diet” and is pushing for more pharmaceutical interventions. This push is for drug interventions such as Ozempic. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Stanford had been a paid consultant for Novo Nordisk.

[rowinablx]

Joaquin Oliver was considered missing until the night of February 14th, due the gunshot wound to his head, though many students knew he'd been killed, police needed to identify him first as he was covered in blood and clumps of his hair and brain matter surrounded his body.

Joaquin held up a hand to shield his head when the Parkland shooter aimed at him, he didn't beg for his life according to students.

Joaquin was finally identified to his family, friends and girlfriend at eleven. Patricia, his mother, reportedly started screaming and howling in grief. It's unknown how his father and sister reacted but his girlfriend Tori nearly collapsed in her shock.

The next day, Joaquin's childhood best friend had started to text him before remembering he was dead.

Joaquin was buried in his favorite Dwayne Wade jersey, to which the basketball player cried when he heard of it and proceeded to write Joaquin on his shoes and dedicate the season to him.

Joaquin's favorite singer Frank Ocean would also send his love and support to his parents and even posted about him which made Tori cry as Joaquin would've been so excited.

Manuel Oliver decided to create a non profit organization known as Change the Ref, an activist company that uses art and protests to spread Joaquin's story and make the lives of the NRA hell

You can buy a shirt or donate directly to CTR, which they'll use to donate to other charities like Safe Schools for Alex or use to buy more stuff for their protests

Joaquin would've turned twenty four yesterday but because a nineteen year old got an AR-15, he's forever seventeen and died on Valentine's Day.

That's why I've started fighting for gun control.

Rest in peace Joaquin. We miss you 💔

@axelwolf8109 @staytiny-angel @greek-freak101 @the-iridescent-phoenix @ozzypawsbone-princeofbarkness

[shotofchinaco]

Newsweek reports: Patrick Byrne, ex-CEO of Overstock and an ally to former President Donald Trump, has reportedly moved to Dubai after alleging that he learned the government of Venezuela has a $25 million bounty on him, according to court documents. His support for Trump has cost him legal troubles, including a $1.7 billion lawsuit leveled by the Dominion voting machine company and a defamation suit filed by Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden. Court documents filed on September 18 in the Hunter Biden defamation suit showed that Byrne’s lawyers said their client has left the country. The documents center on disputes over efforts to lock down Byrne’s deposition in the case. The filing from Biden’s lawyers says that they were informed last month that Byrne has fled the U.S. after he was allegedly informed of the bounty by a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent.

Read the full article. Byrne appeared here in July 2024 when it was reported that he has donated millions to cultist “voter fraud” groups. In December 2020, Byrne reportedly took part in a “wild” White House meeting at which he and fellow cultists Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell attempted to have the US military seize voting machines. Byrne has spoken at many QAnon conferences and appeared here in April when he participated in a conference staged by so-called constitutional sheriffs and militia groups. Byrne is the former boyfriend of Russian spy Maria Butina, who was deported in 2019 after allegedly funneling Russian money to the NRA for them to use on Trump’s behalf.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

On June 20, I'm keynoting the LOCUS AWARDS in OAKLAND.

#15yrsago Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course https://memex.craphound.com/2009/06/10/student-challenges-prof-wins-right-to-post-source-code-he-wrote-for-course/

#15yrsago France’s three-strikes copyright rule is unconstitutional and hence dead https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2009/06/10/hadopi-is-dead-three-strikes-killed-by-highest-court/

#15yrsago The Brain that Changes Itself: hopeful book on the science of neuroplasticity https://memex.craphound.com/2009/06/10/the-brain-that-changes-itself-hopeful-book-on-the-science-of-neuroplasticity/

#10yrsago National anti-censorship orgs protest cancellation of Little Brother summer reading program https://ncac.org/incident/little-brother-pensacola

#10yrsago Piketty’s inherited-wealth dystopia: private capital millionaires multiply https://www.bbc.com/news/business-27774753

#10yrsago How Heinlein went from socialist to right-wing libertarian https://newrepublic.com/article/118048/william-pattersons-robert-heinlein-biography-hagiography

#10yrsago Whistleblower org says it will go to jail rather than turning over its keys https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/to-defeat-encryption-feds-deploy-the-subpoena/

#10yrsago Texas school bans sunscreen because a child might drink it https://web.archive.org/web/20140608074518/http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/san-antonioarea-school-district-do-not-bring-sunscreen-school-18590.shtml

#10yrsago Small town sheriff buys tank: “the United States of America has become a war zone” https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2014/06/07/police-officer-safety-surplus-zeal-military-equipment-spurs-debate-mrap-military-vehicle/10170225/

#5yrsago A grandmother is suing the TSA for strip searching her to get a look at her panty liner, on Mother’s Day https://professional-troublemaker.com/2019/06/06/tsa-strip-searches-grandmother-on-mothers-day-for-over-feminine-hygiene-product-gets-sued/

#5yrsago A trove of leaks show that Brazil’s “anti-corruption” task force was secretly trying to oust Lula and install a far-right strongman https://theintercept.com/2019/06/09/brazil-archive-operation-car-wash/

#5yrsago Americans are too poor to survive whether or not they’re working https://eand.co/half-of-americans-are-effectively-poor-now-what-the-c944c518db6a

#5yrsago Competition can fix Big Tech, but only if we don’t make “bigness” a legal requirement https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/06/06/regulating-big-tech-makes-them-stronger-so-they-need-competition-instead?fsrc=gp_en?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/regulatingbigtechmakesthemstrongersotheyneedcompetitioninsteadopenvoices

#5yrsago Weekend SIM-swapping blitz targets US cryptocurrency holders https://www.zdnet.com/article/wave-of-sim-swapping-attacks-hit-us-cryptocurrency-users/

#5yrsago The NRA begs gun nuts for donations, spends lavishly on its board of directors and execs https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/nra-money-flowed-to-board-members-amid-allegedly-lavish-spending-by-top-officials-and-vendors/2019/06/09/3eafe160-8186-11e9-9a67-a687ca99fb3d_story.html

#5yrsago On Grenfell’s second anniversary, 60,000 Britons are still living in firetraps clad in the same deadly, decorative materials https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/grenfell-tower-fire-material-high-rise-buildings-flat-block-a8946276.html

#1yrago Links, dumped https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/10/in-the-dumps-2/#do-the-humpty-dump

[estavionpira]

Protectorate Callouts

Armsmaster is a techbro

Miss Militia donates to the NRA

Assault attacked a puppy

Battery kicked a puppy

Dauntless listens to Bad Canary

Triumph took a donation from Medhall

Velocity sank Kyushu

[thelambliesdown1974]

Sleepy joe using ao3 donations to fund the NRA

[allamericansbitch]

Why is Coachella the devil, I'm not american

The owner uses the money from Coachella to donate to the NRA (a national run rights advocacy group), conversion therapy camps, and many more

[traiteursroe]

Trump is going to be like “guys, I got shot for America! And also here’s my million dollar donation from the NRA”

[plethoraworldatlas]

Politicoreported Sunday that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee "the biggest source of Republican money flowing into competitive Democratic primaries this year," sparking new calls for candidates and voters nationwide to #RejectAIPAC.

"If you don't want Republican megadonors to choose your next Democratic congressperson for you, then there's only one option: #RejectAIPAC," Naftali Ehrenkranz, digital director at Get Free, said on social media, pointing to the reporting.

Also noting the "bombshell" report, Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of the Jewish American organization IfNotNow, said that "AIPAC is a GOP front group. Democrats who accept their money or endorsement should be shamed out of the party."

Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy senior fellow Nina Turner, a former Democratic congressional candidate, declared, "AIPAC is a right-wing group that buys deep blue seats."

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, drew a comparison to the National Rifle Association, saying, "Imagine how mainstream Democrats would react if the NRA was the single biggest source of Republicans donating into Democratic primaries."

Support for or criticism of the Israeli government has become a defining issue in this election cycle over the past eight months, as Israel has waged a war on the Gaza Strip that has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice. AIPAC, which supports pro-Israel Democratic and Republican candidates, has targeted progressives who oppose the military assault.

...

Politico put out the findings from its analysis—which is based on a review of Federal Election Commission filings from AIPAC, the ActBlue and WinRed donation platforms, and individual campaigns—a day after thousands of American critics of Israel's war and U.S. complicity in it descended on the White House while Israeli forces slaughtered hundreds more Palestinians.

According to the outlet:

Only about 2% of this cycle's donors to Democratic candidates or through the Democratic giving platform ActBlue have also given to Republicans over the past few cycles, Politico's analysis found. But 46% of donors who have given to Democratic candidates via AIPAC this cycle have given to Republicans since the 2020 cycle. For Republican donors, giving to Democratic candidates in primaries helps ensure more moderate, pro-Israel candidates win in deep-blue seats where the general election is all but certain to be uncompetitive, and financial support for GOP candidates would be a waste.

The top recipient of AIPAC money—at least $1.61 million—is Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who launched his challenge to Democratic Congressman Jamaal Bowman in New York's 16th Congressional District after visiting Israel.

...

Politico pointed out that "competitive Democratic primaries are also the biggest targets for AIPAC's affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, which has already spent $19.8 million in them this year, including $9.3 million in the Bowman-Latimer race. That makes it by far the biggest outside group in Democratic primaries, with more money flowing from UDP than the next 10 biggest spenders combined. (The super PAC has also spent in a handful of GOP primaries, dropping $3 million total.)"

The New York arm of the Working Families Party, which is backing Bowman in the June 25 primary, shared Politico's graph of top AIPAC beneficiaries and stressed that "we must be united in rejecting AIPAC's efforts to subvert our democracy."

[ingek73]

Guns and lies

US elections 2024

How Tim Walz went from NRA favorite to ‘straight Fs’ on gun rights

In Congress, Walz was endorsed by gun rights advocates. But after the Parkland shooting, he changed his tone

Cecilia Nowell

Fri 9 Aug 2024 14.00 BST

Supported by

Cal Wellness for Guns

At his first rally as Kamala Harris’s running mate Tuesday, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, invoked an issue at the forefront of many Americans’ minds: the right “for our children to be free to go to school without worrying they’ll be shot dead in their classrooms”.

But Walz wasn’t always a fierce advocate against gun violence. The evolution of the vice-presidential candidate, who once boasted an A rating from the NRA, shows the growing relevance of gen Z voters, who’ve grown up amid a surge in mass shootings in the US and are enthusiastically backing Harris.

“Gun violence is the number one killer of our generation, meaning we can’t afford anything less than leaders who will prioritize basic gun safety,” Timberlyn Mazeikis, a gun violence survivor and volunteer leader with Students Demand Action from Minnesota, said in a joint statement issued by Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action supporting Walz yesterday.

Kamala Harris And Running Mate Tim Walz Make First Appearance Together In Philadelphia<br>PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - AUGUST 6: Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appear on stage together during a campaign event at Girard College on August 6, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Harris ended weeks of speculation about who her running mate would be, selecting the 60-year-old midwestern governor over other candidates. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The Tim Walz cheat sheet: 10 things to know about Harris’s VP pick

Read more

Elected to the US House of Representatives in 2007, Walz was long beloved by gun rights advocates. The National Rifle Association endorsed and donated to his campaigns, giving him an A rating. In 2016 Guns & Ammo magazine included him on its list of top 20 politicians for gun owners.

That wasn’t terribly surprising. Walz was representing a rural red Minnesota district and had grown up at a time and place where guns were popular for hunting – not mass shootings.

“I grew up in a small town, [so] I’d put my shotgun in my car, or at school or in the football locker, to go pheasant hunting afterwards,” he told Pod Save America last month. “But we weren’t getting shot in school.”

That all changed after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, he has said.

In a 2018 video March for Our Lives co-founder and Parkland survivor David Hogg reshared on X last month, Walz recounts his then teenage daughter Hope approaching him in the days after the shooting: “Dad, you’re the only person I know who’s in elected office, you need to stop what’s happening with this.”

“For me, it was both a reckoning and an embarrassment,” he told Pod Save America, recalling that the children killed at Sandy Hook elementary school would have been his son’s age.

Two weeks later, while campaigning for governor, Walz authored an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, where he called the NRA “the biggest single obstacle to passing the most basic measures to prevent gun violence in America”. He went on to say that he’d donated the $18,000 the organization had donated to his past campaigns and wouldn’t accept NRA contributions in the future. He noted that he was currently co-sponsoring a “bump stocks” ban and came out in support of an assault weapons ban.

As Minnesota governor, Walz has signed wide-ranging gun safety measures into law, most notably a 2023 law including universal background checks and a “red flag law” (which allows state officials to temporarily seize the firearms of someone a court has ruled may be dangerous to themselves or others).

This year, Walz called for Minnesota lawmakers to go even further, asking them to support measures that would require safe firearm storage, better reporting of lost and stolen guns, and harsher penalties for “straw buyers” (those who purchase firearms for others who cannot legally have them). Since then, he’s signed legislation that prohibits automatic weapon modification devices and collects data on gun crime.

Walz remains an enthusiastic hunter – something he’s emphasized in previous campaigns and makes him something of an everyman.

“There’s a vision to reduce gun violence with absolutely no infringement on those who lawfully own guns, to use them for things that many of us cherish,” he told reporters in Bloomington, Minnesota, last week.

Gun safety advocates have already come out in support of his candidacy, including the gun violence prevention organization founded by former congresswoman and gun violence survivor Gabby Giffords (who joined Walz in Minnesota in 2023 when he signed the state’s universal background checks into law).

“As governor, Tim did what others called impossible, passing background checks and extreme risk protection laws in Minnesota with a slim gun safety majority,” Giffords said. “It wasn’t easy, but he got it done with hard work and effective leadership. His work as governor has saved lives, and I know that will continue when he is vice-president.”

Harris’s campaign, which has already drawn great support from gen Z voters and gun violence prevention advocates, has called for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws. Last month, the NRA called her “an existential threat to the second amendment”.

That doesn’t seem to bother Walz. “I had an A rating from the NRA. Now I get straight F’s,” he tweeted last month. “And I sleep just fine.”

[vavuska]

The United States had only 12 mass shootings in the first 15 days of December

which is quite an archivement

considering that they haven't hit a number that low in the first 15 days of a

month since prior to the pandemic

But that low number means that NRA could be about to miss

one of its target for the year

That target being 730 mass shootings

because that would be a rather symbolic average of 2 per day

Now the NRA power comes from the circle of death that its funding provides

And that circle works like this

The mass shootings lead to more gun sales

More gun sales lead to greater donation to the NRA

by both gun manufacturers and gun owners

Those donations lead to more bribes given to right wing politicians

who then in turn turn that bribe money into blood money

when they release gun laws even further

leading to an increased amount of mass shootings

And the circle continues

We'll have to wait and see if the NRA hits that target of 730

But with Americans committing more mass shootings

on days where there's an increased alcohol consumption

like weekend and especially on major holidays

it definitely looks like it's a target they're going to hit on this year

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMFWAJTVR/

[rowinablx]

Tim Waltz used to be a supporter of the NRA and regularly took donations from them, but after the Parkland massacre and at the urging of his daughter, he decided to cease all affiliation with them and donate all the money left over to pro gun control charities 🖤