The more you know... Wrote:
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> $$Not Really Americans!$ NRA$$ Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The 143-year-old National Rifle Association has
> not always been like today's NRA, fighting every
> gun control law as if the essence of American
> freedom depends on every citizen owning a gun.
> What follows are a series of shocking quotes taken
> from various academic histories of the NRA by top
> officials within the organization supporting
> reasonable gun control laws.
> >
> > 1. “I have never believed in the general
> practice of carrying weapons,” said NRA
> president Karl T. Frederick, a 1920 Olympic
> gold-medal winner for marksmanship who became a
> lawyer, praising state gun control laws in
> Congress. He testified before the 1938 federal gun
> control law passed, “I do not believe in the
> general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it
> should be sharply restricted and only under
> licenses.”
> >
> > 2. “We do not think that any sane American,
> who calls himself an American, can object to
> placing into this bill the instrument which killed
> the president of the United States,” NRA
> executive vice-president Franklin Orth told
> Congress, shortly after Lee Harvey Oswald shot and
> killed President John F. Kennedy with an Italian
> military surplus rifle Oswald bought from a
> mail-order ad in the NRA’s American Rifleman
> magazine.
> >
> > 3. “There’s no reason why on the street
> today a citizen should be carrying loaded
> weapons,” said California Gov. Ronald Reagan in
> May 1967, after two dozen Black Panther Party
> members walked into the California statehouse
> carrying rifles to protest a gun-control bill.
> Reagan said guns were “a ridiculous way to solve
> problems that have to be solved among people of
> good will.”
> >
> > 4. “You do know that I am a member of the NRA
> and my position on the right to bear arms is well
> known,” Reagan said, speaking out in support of
> the 1994 Brady bill to create new background
> checks and a waiting period for gun buyers. “But
> I want you to know something else, and I am going
> to say it in clear, unmistakable language: I
> support the Brady Bill and I urge Congress to
> enact it without further delay.”
> >
> > 5. “To ‘keep and bear arms’ for hunting
> today is essentially a recreational activity and
> not an imperative of survival, as it was 200 years
> ago; ‘Saturday night specials’ [handguns] and
> machine guns are not recreational weapons and
> surely are as much in need of regulation as motor
> vehicles,” said retired U.S. Supreme Court Chief
> Justice Warren Burger in Parade magazine, in
> January 1990.
> >
> > 6. The Second Amendment “has been the subject
> of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat
> the word fraud, on the American public by special
> interest groups that I have ever seen in my
> lifetime,” Burger told PBS’ News Hour in late
> 1991, referring to the NRA’s claim that the U.S.
> Constitution included a personal right to own
> guns.
> >
> > 7. “These people are crazy,” said Alan Gura,
> referring to NRA critics who said he’d ceded too
> much to gun control arguments when he successfully
> argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2008
> to overturn the District of Columbia’s handgun
> ban and establish a Second Amendment right to a
> handgun at home for self-defense. “I could have,
> if I wanted to, stood before the Court and said,
> ‘Yes, [the Amendment’s clause] shall not be
> infringed,’ means you would never have any gun
> laws, and of course need to all have machine guns
> in case we want to overthrow the government, and
> while we’re at it we should have rocket
> launchers and stinger missiles. And that would
> have probably made me very popular in some cabin
> somewhere out there in the woods… Of course, I
> would have lost 9-0.”
> >
> >
>
> "We believe in absolutely gun-free,
> zero-tolerance, totally safe schools.That means no
> guns in America’s schools. Period." -Wayne
> LaPierre
>
> Before the NRA lost it's collective mind and
> started laundering money for the russians, they
> used to believe sensible gun control.
More dumb, dishonest out-of-context anti-gun nut bullshit.
He was speaking about randomly carrying a weapon for no particular reason in the context of hearings re the NFA which was enacted to combat gangsters at the time. Which he opposed for a variety of reasons, primary among them being that then as now such criminals pay no attention to laws and it would affect mostly only law-abiding citizens who aren't the problem. In fact, the NFA (and other gun laws) wasn't actually intended to *prevent* the use of guns in crimes. It was designed to provide a basis for prosecution of gangsters and criminals *after* the fact in violating the law.
In full context...
Quote
Mr. FREDERICK. You have put your finger on it. My general objections to most of the regulatory provisions are proposed with that in view. I am just as much against the gangster as any man. I am just as much interested in seeing him suppressed, but I do not believe that we should burn down the barn in order to destroy the rats. I am in favor of some more skillful method of getting the rats without destroying the barn. In my opinion, most of the proposals the regulation of firearms, although ostensibly and properly aimed at the crook, do not reach the crook at all, but they do reach the honest. man. In my opinion, the forces which are opposed to crime consist of two general bodies; one is the organized police and the second is the unorganized victims, the great mass of unorganized law-abiding citizens, and if you destroy the effective opposition of either one of those, you are inevitably going to increase crime, because as you destroy the forces of resistance to the human body to disease, you are going to increase disease. So, by destroying the resistance of any body which is opposed to crime, you are going to increase crime. I think we should be careful in considering the actual operation of regulatory measures to make sure that they do not hamstring the law-abiding citizen in his opposition to the crook.
Mr. KNUTSON. There is no opposition on the part of the victims?
Mr. FREDERICK. It is not a 100 percent effective. Of course, the right of self-defense is still a useful thing.
Mr. KNUTSON. It is a right, but an ineffective right under the present situation.
Mr. FREDERICK. I would be interested to show you a collection which I have made of newspaper clippings indicating the effective use of firearms in self-defense, as a protection against the perpetration of crime. Because of arguments which have been advanced by those who are against the use of guns, I have made it my business to clip from newspapers passing over my desk such cases as I run across of effective self-defense with pistols, most of them pistols. I have a scrap book two thirds full and I can show you dozens and hundred of cases happening every year.
Mr. FREAR. How many in this room have pistols in their pockets for self-defense?
Mr. FREDERICK. I doubt if any have.
Mr. FREAR. I doubt, unless a man anticipates danger, that he is going to carry a pistol. You have looked after the clippings of the man who has used a revolver in self-defense. How many men carry revolvers? What percentage of men carry revolvers?
Mr. HILL. Quite a few traveling in automobiles.
Mr. FREDERICK. There are a good many.
Mr. FREAR. I am asking under present conditions
Mr. FREDERICK. I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I seldom carry one. I have when I felt it was desirable to do so for my own protection. I know that applies in most of the instances where guns are used effectively in self-defense or in places of business and in the home. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.
...
Mr. FREDERICK. In our opinion, little of value can be accomplished by Federal legislation on this point.
Mr. KNUTSON. Is it your thought to submit a substitute measure for H.R. 9066 and at the same time not infringe unnecessarily on the rights of law-abiding citizens?
Mr. FREDERICK. As I say, I have grave doubts as to the effectiveness of any such legislation.
Mr. HILL. You concede there is a necessity for something. In politics we have an old saying that you cannot beat somebody with nobody. You cannot hope to defeat or materially alter the legislation unless you submit to the committee something that is better or that will better attain the object that this legislation seeks to accomplish.
Mr. FREDERICK. I must differ with you in principle upon one point. I do not believe that Congress or the people back home want us to attempt miracles. In my opinion, based upon a rather extensive experience with this subject and study of it, very little of practical value can be accomplished by Federal legislation on the point.
Mr. HILL. I take it then that it is your opinion that the criminal is going to get firearms regardless of any laws.
Mr. FREDERICK. I think that is the opinion of any person who has knowledge of the subject. In most instances, the guns are stolen. They are not gotten through legitimate channels. Dillinger stole his guns. I have a half-dozen cases where guns have been used in prisons to effect a break; we have had that in New York, and all over the country. If you cannot keep guns out of the hands of criminals in jails, I do not see how you can keep them out of the hands of criminals walking about on the public highways.
The CHAIRMAN. If that be true, then the laws of the various States of the Union dealing with the subject, are not accomplishing a good purpose because they do not put them all out of business?
Mr. FREDERICK. I do not take that view of it at all. I believe in regulatory methods. I think that makes it desirable that any such regulations imposed should not impose undue hardships on the law-abiding citizens and that they should not obstruct him in the right of self-defense, but that they should be directed exclusively, so far as possible, to suppressing the criminal use, or punishing the criminal use of weapons.
So rather than being somehow different, his view was very much consistent with positions today.