http://wh.gov/RzdG

To sign the petition to remove tax status from the National Rifle Association, click on above and join others to sign up.

I looked at the petition. Its a shame it was written in such an inflammatory way. I think far more people might have signed it if it had been written differently. I dislike the NRA as much as anyone who would like to rid the country of its love affair with guns but I’m not sure that calling them a terrorist organization is either accurate or helpful.

If you look at the other recent petitions on the site its interesting to see there are two others posted by individual from the opposing side. It appears that all of these petitions were crafted in the heat of the moment.

This was put together in a matter of minutes by a member of CHB (Capitol Hill Blue) where I used to work.  I would imagine someone else might do a better job but this being the Christmas holidays, we did the best we could. I sent it to MSNBC to see if they could do something with it. 

Things like this can work better when fresh.  The government has put off any action and it is time we made the effort to changbe the tax status of the NRA.  I was a member for years but ripped up my card and sent it back after another wild shooting years ago.  I am under the opinion that the House of Representatives is so broken to be useless.  I had hoped all the members would have been dumped on the last election.  We have only the Senate to work with at this time.  The President’s hands are tied on anything like this as it is the Congress who make and change the laws.

I’m not certain, but at this point I’ll bet that there are quite a few anti-gun petitions being circulated.  It probably wouldn’t hurt to do a search and sign all of the ones that are well written and make sense.

Occam

That is a good idea.  I had thought about asking you or someone here if a petition was being put together but I’ve learned that acting quickly sometimes works as well as any action.  I’m not certain if CFI does things like this.  The circumstances that brought this action is so dreadful that I was not certain how to act.  I’m thrilled that Feinstein is taking the action of passing a ban on assault weapons and that is good as she can be a tiger when provoked.  I operate a tad slower these days. 

What would the procedure be if one of us might want a petition for some reason?  From reading through the site, it would appear as if this is an independent part of CFI.  We had one member at CHB who wrote up an amendment for the purpose of removing the taxz status but one of the managers of CHB requested that we go to the site that I brought here.

The Owner of CHB hit a cow on his Harley 2 weeks ago and he was not expected to survive it.  Many of us have been around the site for so many years that we continued the forum on our own.  Doug Thompson is out of ICU but is going to be out of commission for a long time.  He is a wonderful boss and we all hope he will return as soon as possible.  His site has been around for 17 years.  I’ve been in and out for as long as he has been in business.  I believe the cow survived.  I feel certain the cow will be sued for damages.

The President just announced that he would be addressing action on this school slaughter in a few weeks.  Why don’t you write up a better petition action and we can sign it and pass it around.  You are better at this than me.

Sandy Price - 17 December 2012 12:36 PM

  I feel certain the cow will be sued for damages.

No, no.  The owner of the cow.

Old folks like me will recall a Vietnam-era protest chant directed to “LBJ.”  In the more or less immediate aftermath of this horror, it occurs to me to substitute “NRA” for “LBJ”; the balance of the chant seems oddly appropriate, though, right now at least.

I had a wonderful time with Sam Harris’s writings.  I have his books and was able to meet him in person at a convention of A.A. groups. It may have been this converntion where I met Eddie Tabash who is a part of CFI in Los Angeles.  I was able to discuss with him my desire for a return of the separation of church and state.  He was very encouraging and I found this site and met many of you folks.  I am waiting for another convention so I can feel more at ease with you all.  You are way above my education level but we share our Atheism with a sense of pride. 

I have worked for most of my life and had my dream of a bookstore on the California central coast. My store opened the day the village hooked up with television.  Bad timing.  I’m asssuming that any conventions would be announced here…no?

I clicked on your site and was interested how I can comment on one of your articles.  This morning I responded to an old friend on one of my sites on the subject of Rand’s “Virtue of Selfishness”  I do not want to do this here but how do I register at your Blog? or would you rather I did not?

macgyver - 17 December 2012 10:42 AM

I looked at the petition. Its a shame it was written in such an inflammatory way. I think far more people might have signed it if it had been written differently. I dislike the NRA as much as anyone who would like to rid the country of its love affair with guns but I’m not sure that calling them a terrorist organization is either accurate or helpful.

If you look at the other recent petitions on the site its interesting to see there are two others posted by individual from the opposing side. It appears that all of these petitions were crafted in the heat of the moment.

I agree.  I am no fan of the RNA but there is no way I will sign such an inflammatory petition.  I Have no doubt there are others out ther I will be willing to sign.

Sandy Price - 17 December 2012 01:57 PM

I clicked on your site and was interested how I can comment on one of your articles.  This morning I responded to an old friend on one of my sites on the subject of Rand’s “Virtue of Selfishness”  I do not want to do this here but how do I register at your Blog? or would you rather I did not?

If you mean me, I think you click on the title of whatever post you want to comment on.  That gets you to a page specific to the post, then you page down and there’s a space for insertion of your comment.  Then you click publish when you’re done.  Thanks for looking, by the way.

I apparently didn’t get it on your site.  No great loss.  I don’t know how to send a private message.  I’m not very good with my computer.  I enjoyed reading your article.  That’s what I wanted to say.

>>but I’m not sure that calling them a terrorist organization is either accurate or helpful.<<

It’s not. The NRA represents the interests and concerns of between 80 to 100million gun owners and is a true grass roots organization which is concerned with protecting an enumerated civil right.

You do not marginalize 80 to 100 million adults and ignore their concerns, nor do you trivialize or marginalize any of them or cop a smugly superior “I Know Better Then You Do” sort of attitude and hope to win any of these people over on any level. This sort of thing is like saying “All Muslims Are Terrorists” because of the very few whackjob bombthrowers who are.

Further, you do not correct one moral wrong (Criminal misuse of firearms in this instance) however profound that moral wrong may be by penalizing such vast numbers who are responsible, play by the rules, cause no harm, and do no wrong just because of the wanton, and evil acts of a very few. This in the end is all that bans of any kind ever succeed in doing. (In short, two wrongs don’t make a right!)

If you guys and gals can’t understand this, then there’s no further point in my wasting any time with this discussion.

Your words are very important.  That is precisely what a forum is designed to do.

Equal Opportunity Curmudgeon - 17 December 2012 09:05 PM

>>but I’m not sure that calling them a terrorist organization is either accurate or helpful.<<

If you guys and gals can’t understand this, then there’s no further point in my wasting any time with this discussion.

Yeesh.  That’s a rather silly statement, is it not?  Make your point by all means, but whining that if it’s not accepted, you’ll go play somewhere else is unimpressive, to say the least.  Not even the NRA, bless it, can change that fact, you know.

I want you all to play here and behave!  I’ve run out of forums…..I need all of you!  Mind your Mother!

Did anyone watch “Meet the Press” this morning?  NRA V.P. spoke in terms of being threatened by the petition to ban assault weapons.  Apparently hundreds of thousands of people signed all the petitions that had been processed.  LaPierre came off like a crazy man blaming the media for promoting a ban on these terrible war weapons.  I am not against guns, I have a daughter who has been trained to protect Americans and she is against the assault weapons that find themselves in bad hands.

My family has been involved in protecting the people and I never have feared the use of weapons.  What the NRA is promoting is a new level of armed volunteers to end up in all our schools.  I’m not certain that our local police should use assault weapons.  Now it is the Conservative part of the GOP who is behind LaPierre in his desire to assault weapon to be issued to our local governments.  Again it is turning into another level of division among our federal government Congress.  I had a friend who was a big game hunter and he never found a use for assault weapons. 

Will the GOP Conservative groups now stand behind the NRA?  Is it because the NRA financed the reelection of the GOP candidates?  Have we gone that insane that half our federal government will back the madness of the NRA? 

I was horrified when the GOP sided with the abortion prohibitions and tired to keep babies being born after a women was raped.  How much more of this insanity must we have to put up with from the GOP under the force of the Evangelicals?  The GOP wants to take America back to the awful pilgrims who were the original white supremacists.  They tried to wipe out women’s choices and I could not believe how far they went on this issue.  The whole movement of individual freedoms being extended to all Americans is now trying to be removed. 

One of the subjects I spoke to Eddie Tabash about was forcing a return to the separation of church and state.  Which would again introduce freedoms to all Americans.  It should not have a connection but when President Bush 43 was put into the White House, his association with Pat Robertson removed the freedoms from all minorities with women leading the list.  This last election introduced a new attack on voting minorities when they were supposed to show new ID cards that had never been issued before.  Voting places were removed so that the working class had to take a day off just to register before they could vote.  The elderly who did not drive had no ability to get an ID with a picture and a date.  What the hell is going on in America? 

This was all described to all of us and we did show support for President Obama but why did they reinstate the House of Representatives who had been the problem for years?  I know that my forum where I worked for many years spent a lot of time and money going over all the issues that would be on the ballot on November 6th.  But across the USA the percentage of Conservatives were swept back in office.  At least Romney was sent home. 

Before the next election do we have to go over all the terms of equality again?  Will the next election open the government to be under the power of the Religious Right?  Must I go back to the “Death With Dignity” again?  Must we have to return to the rights for Gays to marry?  Must we have to battle the Boards of Education to allow science to explain how the earth was formed and the human race was allowed to evolve?  We won these battles once and now because we did not unseat the Tea Party religious nuts, we may have to do it all over again.

I worked around the clock for the last 13 years trying to keep freedoms out of the hands of the religious wingnuts.