NRA rant
SB and I got a call last night that was the NRA push poll described here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/8/27/773400/-Bizarre-push-poll-from-the-NRA
It involved a recorded message that claimed that the UN was considering a treaty to ban guns in the US. The "poll" question, administered by a human afterward was, I shit you not, "Do you think 3rd world dictators and Hilary Clinton should be able to ban guns in the US?" SB, who was on the phone, asked the fellow if he knew he was administering a push poll that was unethical and might be illegal. The fellow said he agreed and then asked for an answer to the question anyway. Which we refused to give of course.
It was so bizarre, so obviously unrelated to any kind of reality, and so blatantly unethical that I did a bunch of web searching afterward to try to determine if the source was actually the NRA. I mean, the NRA seems to drift further from reality every year, but this seemed to be a gold star in their wacko book.
The sad thing is that I'm a 2nd-amendment advocate. I strongly agree with the, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people," slogan. Every few years I scour the Intarwebs for new studies about the effect of gun bans (which would affect my opinion). And while both sides of the issue have some pretty strong statistics to throw out, the best I can tell from my surveys is that gun restrictions have little, if any, effect on safety one way or the other. I'm still libertarian enough to believe that personal liberty shouldn't be restricted just because some people think it's creepy. And the NRA is still the best group from whom to take gun classes -- something I've been planning and failing to do for years b/c the classes here haven't been conveniently scheduled.
I wish there were some mirror-world NRA that could make these arguments for personal liberty without being insane freaks.
I'm pretty sure push-polling is not legal during election season. Is it ever legal? If not, is someone organizing a lawsuit against them? If they're not, why not? And can I sign on? The NRA has a name with clout. Somebody is going to believe this crap.
Sigh.
It involved a recorded message that claimed that the UN was considering a treaty to ban guns in the US. The "poll" question, administered by a human afterward was, I shit you not, "Do you think 3rd world dictators and Hilary Clinton should be able to ban guns in the US?" SB, who was on the phone, asked the fellow if he knew he was administering a push poll that was unethical and might be illegal. The fellow said he agreed and then asked for an answer to the question anyway. Which we refused to give of course.
It was so bizarre, so obviously unrelated to any kind of reality, and so blatantly unethical that I did a bunch of web searching afterward to try to determine if the source was actually the NRA. I mean, the NRA seems to drift further from reality every year, but this seemed to be a gold star in their wacko book.
The sad thing is that I'm a 2nd-amendment advocate. I strongly agree with the, "Guns don't kill people; people kill people," slogan. Every few years I scour the Intarwebs for new studies about the effect of gun bans (which would affect my opinion). And while both sides of the issue have some pretty strong statistics to throw out, the best I can tell from my surveys is that gun restrictions have little, if any, effect on safety one way or the other. I'm still libertarian enough to believe that personal liberty shouldn't be restricted just because some people think it's creepy. And the NRA is still the best group from whom to take gun classes -- something I've been planning and failing to do for years b/c the classes here haven't been conveniently scheduled.
I wish there were some mirror-world NRA that could make these arguments for personal liberty without being insane freaks.
I'm pretty sure push-polling is not legal during election season. Is it ever legal? If not, is someone organizing a lawsuit against them? If they're not, why not? And can I sign on? The NRA has a name with clout. Somebody is going to believe this crap.
Sigh.