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Comment by averagewall | Hacker News Reader

Would people have the same complaints if it was the other way around? Snapchat reached out to the NRA and offered a free Live Story as partnership for Gun Appreciation Day. Another division then threatened the NRA that it could run anti-gun ads during the NRA's free Live Story.

If the complaints would be different, then it's just your political bias. Some people think the NRA is important and its message is being harmed by groups like Everytown. In that case, why not focus on the heart of the issue which is "Snapchat allows NRA ads but I don't like guns".

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Not quite correct. When you're discussing the death of innocent people, children, etc. some tact is appropriate. I'm generally pro-gun but yelling at the top of your lungs about how great guns are to the parents of the victims of sandy hook is completely repulsive and something I'm sure you would never do.

Pro-gun ads are great but if they appear right after a haunting piece about a child killed through gun violence they are disgusting unless they are very, very tactful (which I have never seen from ANY ad). They shouldn't be placed there because it's offensive (and it does no favor to the pro-gun cause). I think that's on snap chat to avoid those instances always.

You could say hyper-emotional appeals about the victims shouldn't be done, and I'd agree with you, but they are done, so tact is important.

To take a bit of a devil's advocate approach, one might argue that seeing gun control ads in the context of Sandy Hook would be inappropriate because one could argue that more responsible people carrying guns could have prevented the tragedy. I am not supporting or opposing that viewpoint but it could be argued just as effectively as an assertion that gun control would have prevented the tragedy.

I do NOT want to (or intend to) get into a gun control debate -- my point is that there a many ways to parse these things.

When discussing the Boston Marathon bombing no advocacy groups were demanding a ban on pressure cookers. In France after the Nice attack, nobody was advocating for stricter truck licensing requirements or enhanced background checks on commercial truck renters/puchasers.

My second point is that agenda groups hijack tragedy to achieve their own ends. As Obama's advisor Rahm Emanuel said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." In the context of a story, its editorial malfeasance to prevent all sides of a story from being expressed.

The problem is neither of your analogies are appropriate.

A reasonable analogy would be ads cheerleading nuclear power after a nuclear power plant explosion killed thousands and permanently ruined a region of a country. And an ad just played that tried to garner sympathy for the children of women effected by the nuclear blast.

A reasonable analogy would be additional regulations on airplanes after they killed thousands of people in a terrorist attack.

Could you explain why you think his two analogies are not appropriate? You simply state it as a fact and then go on to give two analogies that are far less appropriate in my view. Your first analogy is not even seem to be about deliberate use of technology to harm others but about some advertising after a horrible accident. While advertising is a theme in the original article posted it has nothing to do with the points the gp is arguing with his analogies. Your second while more reasonable is still I think less appropriate then the gp. A fully loaded 747 jet is far more leathal then a pressure cooker bomb or a commercial truck attack. Also many many people do think that that regulations/security in airports are heavy handed.

As far as I can tell the only reason you view his analogies as inappropriate is they don't support the conclusion you want to draw.

Also I would like to point out that accses/ownership to pressure cookers, trucks, nuclear power, and air-travel are not constitutional protected whereas gun ownership very explicitly is. I am all for talking about removing/modifying the 2nd amendment through the constitutional amedment process I just not for pretending like it's not there .

The parent post creates a hypothetical opinion held by hypothetical people, and then criticizes it. IMHO this kind of comment is merely inflammatory; I'm no smarter after reading it, and if I buy into it then I become misinformed.

I'm trying to isolate the political beliefs from the "treating customers badly" or "being mean" concerns. People sometimes confuse them and expect that groups on their own political side should be given better treatment than opposing groups. You might not be making that mistake yourself so perhaps it's no use to you. In general, I think isolating those separate ideas is helpful for thinking critically.

> You might not be making that mistake yourself so perhaps it's no use to you

But is anyone thinking it? I can say in reference some people I don't like, 'I disagree with the people who like to kick puppies'.

Part of my objection is that throwing unfounded allegations around is at the core, IMHO, of the propaganda that seems to rule public discourse currently. It's easy to make them, it takes far more time to refute them - and then the attacker makes another one.

It is called the Straw Man fallacy[1]; once you learn about it (and other fallacies) you will see it in many more places. Don't forget to account for personal Bias though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Maybe it's not someone's political bias but your false equivalency at work?

I think there's a perceived difference with non profits. E.g. I enjoy alcohol but would still feel the same way if this happened with MADD vs Jonny Walker

The NRA doesn't sell guns.

pre-emptive edit in case someone finds some place where this isn't true: I mean generally. They are not a gun manufacturer or seller generally.

Furthermore, the NRA is pro-gun safety. I can't speak for the NRA, but myself and other members will be wearing orange on June 2nd. It's not like the NRA is going to run a "BUY MORE GUNS!" advertisement... it'll likely be something tasteful. Then again, I have been disappointed by the NRA's taste in the past.

The NRA has lobbied to block federally funded scientific research on gun violence and safety[1], so I wouldn't say they're pro gun safety, at a macro level at least.

[1] http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-gun-re...

The Dickey Amendment only banned political advocacy, not research. The problem is that the CDC was producing research that was thinly veiled political advocacy.

The purpose of CDC research on public health problems is largely to identify and support policy responses to those problems.

Patrick O'Carroll, one of the major researchers involved with the CDC's efforts in question, infamously wrote that, "We’re going to systematically build the case that owning firearms causes deaths." Doing research to support a predetermined conclusion is not good science. It was political advocacy wearing the mantle of science.

And that is a huge issue with people that don't understand science backing away from and outright rejecting science. That is the whole problem with "Science" today is once you inject advocacy in one little area and it is exposed people throw the baby out with the bath water.

Take environmental sciences for example, the CRU and other leaks where scientist where exposed colluding with other scientist to blackball legitimate skeptics tainted the whole industry. Now we are seeing an wholesale rejection of environmental sciences and the gutting of the EPA. In a manner this is good, because there was obvious collusion and political advocacy and intent to stifle real science. On the other had, we also got a wholesale rejection by the voting majority which is now set to put clean energy back decades.

I personally put the blame squarely on the scientist of the CRU and the NOAA pause buster scientists (they are a disgrace to the title). They cost us dearly by trying to advance their agenda. When you compromise the integrity of science the cost is just too great.

When the logging industry finds certain invasive species on land it owns it clear cuts, chips and burns a few square miles just to be on the safe side.

I have no problem with science taking that approach. At least it keeps it fairly pure.

Do you feel the same about the science rejecting portion of the population?

Science 'rejects' the behavior choices of individuals all the time. Should we ignore the obesity epidemic because it 'rejects' those suffering from it?

Science isn't about making feel comfortable, it's about following the scientific method. It often presents ugly or inconvenient truths.

I meant people rejecting science. I could've been more clear.

I think it's naïve to think that the agenda is only held by the person who accidentally exposed it. I think a research team where a member can speak broadly about their group "we're going to.." versus "I'm going to" is tainted. What about the way people characterize the paid faux research commissioned by the tobacco industry? Generally it is bad enough that they paid for it, it tainted all the results of the study.

I think it's bad enough if one researcher says that they and their entire team ("we're") are committed to corrupting the results of the study to reach a foregone conclusion.

The state does not like citizens having guns, the state owns and operates the CDC and decides its budget and staffing. In a way, the research is about matters which the state has a vested interest in. If this were a private company, we would be ready to write it off entirely.

If the evidence at that point was damning he wouldn't have been biased (don't know enough, but I suspect I very well could have been) rather than operating from the evidence.

The cool thing about science is that regardless of your beliefs, you have to show your work, and it must stand up to scrutiny. The process filters advocacy. When there's ample data that suggests causal relationships (which there is in this case), you go out and try to prove a cause and reject the null hypothesis.

Certainly the scientific community is prone to coming to broader conclusions than the findings suggest, but every scientific paper's discussion section can be prone to this. And, that isn't where the conversation ends, as follow-on research will often pick apart those conclusions.

Meanwhile, the NRA has effectively bullied the CDC into not doing any research at all related to guns, as you can tell from how they respond to the NRA:

> Following the January 2011 shootings in Tucson, Ariz., (in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was injured), the New York Times published an article reporting that the CDC went so far as to “ask researchers it finances to give it a heads-up anytime they are publishing studies that have anything to do with firearms. The agency, in turn, relays this information to the NRA as a courtesy.” In response to this report, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence sent a letter (PDF, 647) in March 2011 to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius expressing concern that the agency was giving the NRA a “preferred position,” and urging that the NRA not be given the opportunity to exercise special influence over CDC’s firearms-related research.

> In December 2011, Congress added language equivalent to the Dickey amendment to fiscal year 2012 appropriations legislation that funded the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 (PDF, 1.3MB), stating that “none of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.” The NRA’s advocacy efforts that lead to this amendment are thought to be a response to a 2009 American Journal of Public Health article by Branas et al., titled “Investigating the link between gun possession and gun assault,” presenting the results of research that was funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. [1]

In what other domain do we tip toe around research like this?

I think its pretty clear the NRA is simply afraid of the implications of such research - the hard question that comes up when liberties and their societal costs intersect. Maybe we choose liberties, but we have to go into that conversation with our eyes open.

[1] http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.as...

sounds like both the NRA and CDC as well as the other parties you name, are all actively encouraging publication bias.

they should all be called out for acting anti-science.

For those who weren't paying attention during the time this occurred (you can hardly be faulted) -- this is perhaps the best summation of how I recall it.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/07/31/cdc-researc...

Only because it's impossible to trust the CDC to be professional in this regard.

NRA is also a non-profit :)

Ya, a non profit sorta like how the NFL was :) It's more or less an industry advocacy group, so it's a bit different than a typical nonprofit advocacy group.

Err, no. The NRA is not an industry association non-profit like the NFL was (the NFL is no longer a 501(c)(6) since 2015)

It's only an industry advocacy group in the sense that there is an industry that happens to have goals that align with the people who fund it.

That's not an industry advocacy group, in the same way the various brady groups are not industry advocacy groups simply because there is an industry (trigger-locks, non-lethal weaponry, etc) that happens to have goals that align with the people who fund that.

I meant it as a bit of a tongue in cheek response, and indeed I used 'was' to indicate the NFLs former status.

Nevertheless, I don't think its as simple as goals happening to align with industry, nor do I see equivalence in the industry relationships to brady groups (though admittedly I haven't researched that).

Given the NRA's closely held governance structure and the large individual donations from manufacturers, one does not need a great deal of money (and certainly not majority of $) to influence direction toward industry ends that may not be in the interest of individual members as much as industry members and NRA leadership. That's honestly the best kind of influence to have, as your goals appear to be those of the large passionate group of individuals.

I agree though 'more or less' overstates that relationship, I was wrong. I'll amend that to: the industry has influence over the policies the NRA advocates for, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base.

FWIW I'm not opposed to the NRA per se, in fact a group for teaching responsible gun use is great. I'm just opposed to the current incarnation of the organization.

"and the large individual donations from manufacturers," This, FWIW, is in fact the case with the brady groups as well.

Honestly: It's just that companies tend to donate more to individuals. That seems normal.

"I agree though 'more or less' overstates that relationship, I was wrong. I'll amend that to: the industry has influence over the policies the NRA advocates for, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base. " I think you have the arrow of causation backwards. How do you now know that it isn't "NRA individual members want to make sure industry does not get screwed, so NRA works with industry to formulate policies that help the industries, to help their members" ?

Cause otherwise, i could argue the same thing about the brady groups. "The non-lethal weapon industry has influence over the policies the various brady groups advocate, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base"

(substitute non-lethal-weapons from any of a number of industries that benefit here. there are plenty on both sides of this coin :P)

I believe, without evidence otherwise, that the arrow of causation is "members want industry to survive and thrive, so mother org works with industry policy wise".

Note that your arrow of causation is applicable to roughly any major org.

IE industry donates heavily to EFF, in large amounts (though not, AFAIK, larger than user base, much like the NRA). Therefore "industry has influence over the policies EFF advocates for, and benefits from those policies appearing to come from their large member base".

(as you can see, this argument line can be applied to any association accepting corporate contribution :P)

Not at all. The NRA gets most of its money from individual donors. More importantly, the NRA's power doesn't come from the money at their disposal. It comes from the fact that they control a large bloc of single-issue voters.

If you make or sponsor a gun control bill, the NRA will tell every member in your district to vote you out of office... and they will. This means that the only legislators who can safely support such legislation are those who are completely entrenched. Everyone else makes slight nods of approval at the Diane Feinsteins while refraining from committing totally; they can't afford to piss off thousands of very reliable, very energetic voters.

You're correct that their power comes from the large bloc of single-issue voters.

Though I disagree that there is no relationship, see other comment above.

Which is exactly why the auto insurance industry heavily funds MADD, to the point of driving MADD's agenda: the credit people give nonprofit advocacy groups with a superficially socially responsible purposes makes them a very good tool for industry.

You're suggesting there is a type of symmetry around relative moral beliefs on the gun debate, and it is somewhat arbitrary to be upset on one side of it but not the other.

If that was all there was to it, I would agree.

However, that's missing the huge asymmetry at play here: money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it, and the people who's family members have been victims of gun violence don't.

If this was a spat between, say, Google and Oracle, each of which has boatloads of money to buy the competitor's advertising spots, no one would care.

But this story feels scummy because it's a human story, one where the little guy is fighting a noble cause but is being shaken down by organizations who write weekly checks larger than some of these people will see in their lifetime.

If you pretend that money doesn't create an asymmetry, then yes, you being upset this way but not the other is all relative.

Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group

Is it really? It seems to me that there is a lot of reason to believe that the NRA is funded primarily through membership fees and individual contributions.

https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri...

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the NRA, and probably ever other pro-gun advocacy group you've ever heard of, and some you haven't.

" Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it,"

It's really really not. There are plenty of groups that fall into that category, the NRA is not one of them.

The fact that you are just kind of saying this blindly, without any data to back it up, when even trivial searches would tell you it's wrong, severely dilutes any argument you have.

(note, i actually am very anti-gun, but i try to at least research the assertions i'm going to make)

> Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it

That's just not true at all:

https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri...

(edit: bah, in the time verifying my sources, three other people posted the same info :) )

The industry group for gun manufacturers is the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NRA is a membership organization with over five million members. Portraying the NRA as an industry group just because corporations donate to it is misleading. Would you consider the EFF to be an industry group because PayPal donates to them?

> [...] money. Specifically, the NRA is an industry-funded group that has lots of it [...]

The NRA is a member-funded group. Five million members paying annual dues -- that's where their money comes from.[1] They use some of this to fund gun safety education and training (Everytown For Gun Safety does not, oddly enough). Sure, industry chips in, but it's just a couple million $ (which is tiny compared to member dues).

[1] https://www.quora.com/Where-does-funding-for-the-National-Ri... (graphs data from NRA's public tax filings)

Everytown is funded by wealthy people like Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett. If there aren't enough other donors to give them the resources that the NRA has, it might be that there aren't enough people who support their agenda enough to donate. They are not "the little guy".

You've got it completely backwards. The NRA is member-funded, and Everytown is funded by Michael Bloomberg.

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