The left is now on a mission to shame businesses with ties not only to gun manufacturers, but with the NRA.
First Bank of Omaha was first:
https://twitter.com/FNBOmaha/status/966797005900173318
Customer feedback, huh?
Seems there is a concerted effort by liberal activists to force businesses to make a choice for their fascist views and against groups who protect Constitutional rights. Seems as though First Bank chose the fascists. Most likely, these “customers” were probably not customers at all.
Enterprise, National and Alamo have all decided to end their discounts for NRA members.
Cool.
I used to use Enterprise Rental Car for years. They helped me once when I needed to rent a car in a bad situation where another car company wouldn’t. I have been loyal for over a decade because I thought they cared.
And yet, for whatever reason, the company has chosen to side with the lies and dishonesty of the left against an organization that bears no responsibility to any shootings and supports the rights of every American citizen.
What they are saying is that the NRA, and their members, are unworthy of discounts or preferred treatment, even though NRA customers are extremely loyal. And most likely, the people doing the complaining are people who aren’t regular customers anyway.
And this is a lesson that weak companies ultimately learn: It’s not just NRA members that will stop using their services, but those who see this as a company bowing to groups who do not have the customer’s best interest in mind.
When a company like Enterprise, or First Bank of Omaha make that choice, there will be consequences of customers exercising their choices. If you alienate one segment of your customer base, it means you will have no trouble doing the same whenever it is politically convenient. Do you want to be a group that all of a sudden loses preferential treatment simply because you have a different political view than the left?
And so will stockholders who may want the company leadership to not make such hasty decisions.
As they say, though, it’s a free country and there are plenty of other businesses who believe in the fundamental Constitutional rights of its customers.
With that, I will be booking my business elsewhere.
Update:
Metlife and Symantec have chosen to listen to the fascists on the left:
Sonoran Conservative 
Guantanamo Bay is an example of how the US is *still* willing to ignore the Rule of Law and/or the Rules of War [perhaps Guerilla Combat is a grey area] when it suits them when dealing with selected targets. But “Second Amendment”? Sacre Bleu!
In our country, we’ve managed to get the really dangerous weapons off the street, without going down some “slippery slope”: People are still able to purchase and use firearms for legitimate purposes. Strict storage requirements have also helped keep fatalities low.
Regarding the relationship of the US to other countries, I’m reminded of the quote by the (sadly departed) Robin Williams from the 1970s/early 80s:
“We Americans, we’re a simple people… but piss us off, and we’ll bomb your cities.”
High-power guns are so entrenched in the American Psyche and/or Arsenal, that I despair of seeing a way of tapering off, and cooling down, the situation.
If you do manage to make a reliable “mental health detector”, for crying out loud, patent it, and sell it worldwide. You’ll make an absolute mint. (I’m not holding my breath.)
— recherche
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1. Guantanamo is perfectly legal. Illegal combatants aren’t entitled to Geneva protections and POW’s who are can be held until the cessation of hostilities.
2. AR-15’s are not “high-power guns.” They’re dressed-up .22’s.
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“Perhaps guerilla combat is a very area”?
They weren’t guerillas, and it’s not a grey area. The Geneva Accords very carefully — but clearly — define who is entitled to their protection. No one associated with al Qaeda qualifies. Frankly, they should have been shot after we were sure they had no more information. That, also, would have been 100% in compliance with the Geneva Accords, and completely within their intent.
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US Supreme Courts disagree about Guantanamo: [Wikipedia quotations, so criticising me for sloppy scholarship is valid, sigh):
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1. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_v._Rumsfeld
is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay lack “the power to proceed because its structures and procedures violate both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949.”[1] Specifically, the ruling says that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was violated.
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2. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasul_v._Bush
… is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court recognized the power of the U.S. government to detain enemy combatants, including U.S. citizens, but ruled that detainees who are U.S. citizens must have the rights of due process, and the ability to challenge their enemy combatant status before an impartial authority.
It reversed the dismissal by a lower court of a habeas corpus petition brought on behalf of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen who was being detained indefinitely as an illegal enemy combatant after being captured in Afghanistan in 2001. Following the court’s decision, on October 9, 2004, the U.S. government released Hamdi without charge and deported him to Saudi Arabia, where his family lived and he had grown up, on the condition that he renounce his U.S. citizenship and commit to travel prohibitions and other conditions; and
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[Long quotation, apologies, but it specifically talks about whether the US Government may “switch on or off” Constitutional rights at its whim, and does so specifically during another Guantanamo case:]
3. Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush
… was a writ of habeas corpus submission made in a civilian court of the United States on behalf of Lakhdar Boumediene, a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, held in military detention by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba.[1][2][3][4] Guantanamo Bay is not formally part of the United States, and under the terms of the 1903 lease between the United States and Cuba, Cuba retained ultimate sovereignty over the territory, while the United States exercises complete jurisdiction and control.[5] The case was consolidated with habeas petition Al Odah v. United States. It challenged the legality of Boumediene’s detention at the United States Naval Station military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as well as the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Oral arguments on the combined cases were heard by the Supreme Court on December 5, 2007.
On June 12, 2008, Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion for the 5–4 majority, holding that the prisoners had a right to the writ of habeas corpus under the United States Constitution and that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was an unconstitutional suspension of that right. The Court applied the Insular Cases, by the fact that the United States, by virtue of its complete jurisdiction and control, maintains de facto sovereignty over this territory, while Cuba retained ultimate sovereignty over the territory, to hold that the aliens detained as enemy combatants on that territory were entitled to the writ of habeas corpus protected in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution. The lower court had expressly indicated that no constitutional rights (not merely the right to habeas) extend to the Guantanamo detainees, rejecting petitioners’ arguments, but the Supreme Court held that fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution extend to the Guantanamo detainees as well.[6][7] Invoking Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Court concluded:
The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say ‘what the law is’.
Along with Rasul v. Bush (2004), Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), this was a landmark case in the Court’s detainee jurisprudence.
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Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention reads:
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
None of the people detained at Guantanamo were wearing uniforms (“…a fixed distinctive sign…”).
Suicide bombs targeting civilians don’t fall in to the category of “in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”
USA could have legitimately shot outright every single Al Queda member and/or fellow traveler.
US courts are tied up in how, or whether to execute, these animals with some sort of due process. IF we don’t immediately execute people on the battlefield THEN what process to you use to determine whether to do so or not? Thus the fight over military commissions sitting in judgement.
The American Left would like to see all constitutional protections granted to enable the gold-plated procedures available in American judicial system granted to non-lawful combatants.
I myself agree with Pablo and crawford421.
I also wonder what is this ‘Rule of Law’ of which you speak? Whose rule(s)? The uniquely American thinking is that laws are promulgated by people the electorate chooses. Not by, unlike you see in most of the rest of the world, by our betters.
Therefore there is no such thing as International Law. Just agreements freely entered in to.
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“US Supreme Courts disagree about Guantanamo”
That’s nice.
They’re wrong.
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“People are still able to purchase and use firearms for legitimate purposes.
Define ‘legitimate’. Better yet, WHO gets to define it? Maybe my legitimate purpose, say carrying for self defense, clashes with your definition of legitimate. Who wins? You by stripping me of my right to self defense?
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Excellent question. If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m an Aussie, and the major large step that has happened has been the Guns Buyback scheme after the Port Arthur Massacre. There have, of course, been incremental steps downhill since then, mainly surrounding gang violence, but these have relatively self-contained, with a couple of exceptions where someone was executed by being gunned down in a public cafe.
I need to research the legislation to find out how to respond. Obvious candidates are police patrols, police special forces and cash transportation. Also, there are opportunities for people such as farmers, who want to control pests on their land, to get a permit. Another class of permitted use is members of sporting/recreational shooting clubs, such as rifle clubs.
On the question of “legitimate”: The overwhelming response by the Australian public in approval of the Guns Buyback Scheme showed that they did not want to have a proliferation of automatic or semi-automatic weapons in the wider community. Politicians campaigned for and against these rules at a number of rallies over (I think) 1-3 months after the shooting, and the Prime Minister, given that he felt that he had a mandate to legislate for a Guns Buyback scheme, had the appropriate legislation drafted and presented to Parliament for debate.
The legislation passed both the Upper and Lower Houses, became law, and the Guns Buyback scheme was enabled by the legislation.
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As I said before, I need to research Australian resources for more information on what is considered “legitimate”. But not right now… It’s very, very late, and I’m tired.
One final comment, noting your use of the phrase “right to self defense”. I’ll simply note that the US is worlds apart (well, at least half a hemisphere away) from Australia in what is considered the norm in “the right to self defense”, because of the long-term prevalence of guns in the US, contrasting to the situation in Australia. It may be hard for us to have a clear debate, if we can’t frame some of these terms/phrases/cultural expectations clearly.
One of the troubles with guns, is that they can be lethal over a considerable distance; most other items potentially available to citizens that might be useful for self-defense (knives, chemical (pepper) spray, truncheons, tasers ets) have less potential for lethality, and/or only act over a much shorter distance.
Thanks,
— recherche
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Interesting argument:
“..most other items potentially available to citizens that might be useful for self-defense (knives, chemical (pepper) spray, truncheons, tasers ets) have less potential for lethality, and/or only act over a much shorter distance.”
So you’re saying that criminals are necessarily going to act in a way that will limit their actions that the victim can be effective with a specific style and type of weapon?
“No fair! The criminal used his car and I was told my knife and taser could keep me from being a victim!”
“He built an explosive device and just threw it at me. My pepper spray couldn’t stop the device before it exploded.”
“I threw my truncheon at the two guys that came for me, but they caught it and proceeded to beat me, even though the government elites told me that’s all I could have to defend myself.”
But yeah, I can totally agree with your argument.
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One other point I’d like to make about the differences here.
The US and Australia operate under two different forms of government and if the citizens of Australia believe they have a better deal in terms of how they manage arming citizens, I’m good with that.
In reality, I don’t care how the people in Australia govern themselves. They’ve made their choices. If those work, great. Doesn’t mean it will work anywhere else because each country lives by its own rules.
The Constitution is the standard we live by and it has a Bill of Rights deemed important by the founders. Notice that no amendments since those first ten have been altered by later amendments, even though Congress has tried its best to poke holes in them.
We have to deal with unintended consequences of those rights. Cowards who are taking guns to other people do so out of evil and it needs to be addressed in a way that does not dilute the rights of those who are productive members of society.
If we as a country decide we want to end the Second Amendment, there is a remedy. Unfortunately, the screaming of the left is not to use that, they’ll just keep screaming and making fools of themselves, even though they are the ones the Bill of Rights was meant to protect against.
With that being said, feel free to contribute.
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The Australian solution has been much discussed in the US this week.
The “…overwhelming response by the Australian public in approval of the Guns Buyback Scheme…” is estimated to have netted approximately 20% of the weapons held by the Australian public. The rest were hidden.
There’s a thriving underground trade in weapons and ammo down under, too.
The reason that the US is worlds apart from Australia is cultural. Your country is much closer, culturally, to England than the US is. Any serious attempt to implement England/Australia (don’t get me started on the EU) restrictions will ignite civil war here as there’s a significant percentage of the US population which will not bow down to it’s presumed masters.
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I can neutralize you with a #2 pencil, it is not the weapon but the man.
That is not a trouble with guns, THAT IS THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT!@
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Indeed.
The history of warfare is the pursuit of being able to kill from a distance.
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You evidently missed that the Australian “buyback” actually got no more than 20% compliance.
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Ow! I knew that putting a non-conservative-leaning comment on a conservative blog would cause a backlash, but I’ve been surprised at the level of interest. Thank you to everyone who has responded [a. so far] [b. sobs quietly to himself that nobody has “liked” him].
I’m interested in the perceived versus actual likelihood of risks in society… this is a significant influence in how we (individuals/groups/corporations/governments) make decisions.
On the topic of risks from terrorism, I found the following article, quoting statistics, interesting.
I would note, however, that sometimes measures taken by defendants end up deterring attacker action, and that this effect is not reflected in the numbers shown, as it only draws on cases where action caused death. [I suspect that this is getting to the core of the debate: A person carrying a gun is seen as not a “soft target”, and this changes the choices made by a potential adversary]:
“How likely are foreign terrorists to kill Americans? The odds may surprise you”:
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/death-risk-statistics-terrorism-disease-accidents-2017-1?r=US&IR=T
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Secondly, a quick Wikipedia search has brought up the following article about gun laws in Australia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia
— recherche
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Yeah, odds of being involved in a terrorist attack are low. Odds of a car-jacking or mugging are higher, but still low (outside of those involved in the illegal drug trade, rates of violent crime in the US are equivalent to those of Canada).
But the possible consequences are quite high. And, as we’ve learned this week, the police can’t protect you if they’re not there and sometimes won’t even if they’re there.
So I’ve taken the choice to arm myself so I can defend myself and — when appropriate — those around me. I’ve taken courses covering the relevant laws in my state, keep myself informed as those laws change, and keep myself informed of the laws in others states when I travel. I practice, maintain my equipment, and constantly keep in mind the rules of gun safety.
Every gun owner I know does the same thing.
Now, stop trying to convince yourself Australia made the right choices by forcing them on the US, and we won’t taunt you all for selling liberty for a false sense of security.
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Our Second Amendment rights can be traced back to just before the Revolutionary War. Because of the Quartering Act, Stamp Tax Act (which basically taxed you for everything you did), and Townshend Act, colonist were fed up. After the Boston Tea Party, Britain devised the Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts which basically removed all government control, including courts, sheriffs, etc, from the colonist. When General Gates tired to shut down a town meeting, he was forced to retreat when at least 3000 armed colonist arrived. Gates realized to quell this and propagate British rule he needed to confiscate all weapons and gunpowder. Welcome to warrentless search and seizure. So now that were going to tax you for everything, while you get nothing in return, we’re going to seize your personal property because we can. Yep, nothing can go wrong with that idea.
The founding fathers always believed that the citizens should rule, not the ruling elite. They fought a long and brutal war against not only an oppressor, but with friends and in some cases family members. They also believed that every form of government will someday turn on its people unless they were willing to stand up and hold them accountable. They tried to build in safeguards, but they also left provisions to help just in case, hence the Second Amendment.
And before anyone says, but it only refers to a well armed militia (National Guard), please research the origins of the militia. “As a result of the outrage over the arms embargo and other gun control measures, many Americans started to form militias that were independent of the British government.” http://www.simplefactsplainarguments.com/2013/02/the-revolutionary-war-began-with-gun.html. Translation for liberals: They formed them without consent or control of the government.
Gun control for America is wrong. With a porous border and people willing to make a buck the illegal way, guns are a way of protecting oneself from the idiots of the world. If gun controlled worked so well please explain Chicago , Washington D.C., Baltimore, California, Detroit or any other liberal shnithole city that have passed excessive gun regulations. If the only people who have guns are criminals (non-law-abiding citizens), then how will you protect yourself and your family. I guess you can always use the liberal approach and pee on them. Personally, I believe in the three-step approach, two in the chest,, one in the head.
Sorry about the rant MR.
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https://turo.com/
https://www.getaround.com/
There’s also Dollar/Thrifty if you still want a traditional rental car. And don’t forget to check for local rental options.
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recheche, just a quick question or two. Do you insure your car/truck? The odds of anything happening to it are low. How about your house? Very low odds of anything bad happening to it. Did you get vaccinated? Do you have health insurance? Ever have a tetanus shot? It’s not the amount of risk that counts, it’s the cost of the event if the thing happens that counts.
I insure my house, my car/truck, my health, my life, and I insure them in more ways than one IYKWIMAITYD. Or I would if all my firearms and ammo hadn’t been lost in that tragic boating accident.
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G’day JXMcKK* and others,
Yes, I do have insurance on various things, to lower the cost to me if Bad Things happen. Insurance is a way of spreading low-likelihood risk amongst a pool of people. However, there’s a quote I’ve heard that “Taking out insurance is not only gambling in a game that’s not just giving you good odds, the owner of the table is also the one setting the odds.”
I’ve always maintained a position that it’s impossible to eliminate risk — the next breath you take may contain the pathogen, or perhaps the speck of asbestos, that ends up killing you — so focus instead on becoming good at managing risk.
If you accept this premise, then anyone that tries to sell you a solution that makes you “100% safe”, “gets rid of all the nasty germs”, “clinically proven to eliminate disease X” etc is selling snake oil.
My gut feel is that slogans that have been tossed around such as “our kids deserve to be [unspoken 100%] safe in schools” is sailing very close to the wind — it would change the dynamics of the situation, but is less certain in exactly how things would pan out.
For example, if the teacher is known to be armed, what’s the chance that they misunderstand a situation and kill an innocent person? Or turn it around the other way, if a malicious actor knows the teacher is armed, he may choose to aim to kill the teacher first; alternately, people have been known to plant explosives in order to create confusion and mass movement towards Assembly Points, and then be ready to fire upon those Points.
Thought experiment: if there’s gunfire coming from four different people, three of them probably are armed school personnel, and the fourth is the malicious actor… but how to make a choice in a few fleeting seconds, when a four minute delay is effectively an eternity in such a situation?
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Okay, let me backtrack to Guantanamo Bay, and especially to the treatment of the Australian David Hicks. People who call for “capture, collect information, then kill” would have killed an innocent man, because the law that he was charged with didn’t exist when he was captured: It was later enacted, and retrospectively applied to him by the US Government. Would you like another government to do that to one of your citizens? Here’s a snippet from the Wikipedia article:
In October 2012, the United States Court of Appeals ruled that the charge under which Hicks had been convicted was invalid, because the law did not exist at the time of the alleged offence, and it could not be applied retrospectively.[9] The efforts of the US to charge Hicks have been described as “a significant departure from the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, quite apart from the US constitution”, the implications being that “anyone in the world, who has suitable radical connections and who is in a war zone fighting against Americans, is guilty of a war crime”.[162]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks
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Finally, I’d like to briefly note some phrases that have been used in the preceding series of posts, and make me uncomfortable because they’re far from neutral:
“criminals” — sometimes the question of “who’s the criminal?” only becomes clear after the event;
“Cowards who are taking guns to other people do so out of evil […]”… I’m reminded of the quote from Catch-22: “They told him not to kill, and he did not kill. Then he joined the Air Force, and they told him to kill, so he killed.” “Cowards”? “evil”? Who is appointed as the ultimate authority on these judgemental terms?
“US courts are tied up in how, or whether to execute, these animals […]” — “animals”?! — talk about the commenter being the judge, jury and executioner in using that term in the middle of a debate!
“[…] selling liberty for a false sense of security.” No, I was talking about trade-offs, not simply yielding meekly. I’d prefer to see multiple layers of protection: Defense in depth (multiple overlapping mechanisms), not just one step.
You guys have treated me quite well (given the nature of the forum), so again, thank you. I’d just like to reiterate that different cultures make debate hard (thanks to SC for saying that also), and I’d also like to reiterate my plea to try and avoid language that’s loaded towards one viewpoint over another.
Thanks,
–recherche
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So, recherche, you must admit that banning firearms would not make everyone “100% safe” either it would seem. I’m not trying to force anyone to buy or use a gun, so why should they want to force em not to? After all, the odds of me shooting any of them is vanishingly small, right?
IOW, all your “points” work just as well for the opposite argument.
At this point it just seems you’re trying to use an avalanche of words.
And of course, the trade-offs are exactly what those of us who prefer an armed, polite society are basing our arguments on. Odd how you can’t seem to see (or perhaps accept) that.
Finally, please link me to where “there’s gunfire coming from four different people, three of them probably are armed school personnel, and the fourth is the malicious actor… but how to make a choice in a few fleeting seconds, when a four minute delay is effectively an eternity in such a situation?” has actually happened.
Burning large numbers of straw men is really no more effective than burning just one.
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