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 Peregrine wrote:
Let me try to re-state that in a more reasonable form:

1) If you're buying a gun you probably have a reason for it (like buying most things). If you buy a hunting rifle you probably intend to shoot an appropriate animal in the near future. If you have a concealed handgun permit you probably expect a non-trivial chance of having to use that gun in self defense. If you don't foresee any realistic situation where you will ever use a gun then you probably aren't going to own one.

I agree with everything except the "non-trivial" portion. We have fire extinguishers in the house despite the fact that we know our chances of lighting the place on fire are pretty low.

2) There's a fine line between protecting the right to self defense and exaggerating the threat of the "big scary black guy" or "UN black helicopters" to justify preparing for self defense. Pro-gun organizations arguably end up on the wrong side of that line and create a perception that the chances of needing to act in self defense are much higher than they really are.

We're speaking of the NRA in particular here, and I have to say, as someone who occasionally throws money at the NRA-ILA (the actual legislative action arm) whenever the Democrats start another nutty push on gun control, and who consequently receives a lot of email from them, I've yet to receive anything remotely of the sort. They generally tell you what pending or proposed legislation's going on across the country, how it could affect gun rights, and ask for money. That's pretty much it.

Now, I'm not going to argue that this represents a majority of gun owners, but there's a very real problem here. When you have groups encouraging this very distorted view of self defense you get cases like Zimmerman, where someone is dangerously eager to see a situation that requires them to shoot in self defense. Or, if you give them a badge you get situations like the guy who was shot for knocking on the door to ask for help because everyone jumped to the "scary black guy = criminal = OMG SHOOT HIM BEFORE HE KILLS US ALL" interpretation.

We'd end up arguing Zimmerman for the umpteenth time if I respond to this, so I'll let it go.


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 Kanluwen wrote:
That's the definition of a hate crime, not a characteristic of a hate group.

So you can be a hate group without hate?

 Kanluwen wrote:

Bear in mind that the characteristics are, as always, not going to be 1:1 in every case. You can pick and choose.
Points 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are very applicable with the NRA.

Honestly. That's more of an argument that the criteria is shoddy than that the NRA is a hate group.

501st Legion;

1) Check
2) Oh hell yes. Check.
3) No. But we can just ignore that one.
4) Well they seem savvy enough from their website.
5) Maybe.
6) They seem pretty Middle America but lets face it, Middle America is the generic America.
7) They want to purge the Jedi.

501st Legion is a hate group. The guys who march for tolerance, help the Salvation Army during Christmas, run local charities all year long, and attend conventions like the nerds they are.

Of course, the anti-gun Brady Campaign meets a lot of those same criteria, too.

 LordofHats wrote:
I'm sure you could find some examples of the NRA saying hateful things from time to time, but I doubt you'd manage to really build a good argument to call the NRA a hate group. If fear mongering is enough to be called a hate group pretty much every group is a hate group.

Only if we ignore the insensity, extent and nature of the fear mongering. Which is subjective sure, but it needs to be done, because a group who's entire reason for being is to tell people that black people are plotting a war to take control of the USA, and to plan to stop that from happening, is very different from, I don't know, someone claiming that Obamacare has death panels.

Both are fear mongering, but only the former is a hate group.


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 LordofHats wrote:
Baring #7 a lot of non-hate groups would fit those criteria.

That's why you don't exclude that one. It's weird its down the bottom rather than #1, and it should be "this one is really important, and all these other ones are important but not all are needed". But that'd be Janet Reno for you. She was just really bad at her job, wasn't she?

 sebster wrote:
Only if we ignore the insensity, extent and nature of the fear mongering. Which is subjective sure, but it needs to be done, because a group who's entire reason for being is to tell people that black people are plotting a war to take control of the USA, and to plan to stop that from happening, is very different from, I don't know, someone claiming that Obamacare has death panels.

That's kind of what I'm getting at. Fear mongering in itself is just par for the course in political activism and means little beyond mixing it with something like a (un)healthy dose of racism. The NRA certainly does a lot of fear mongering, and I'm sure some members also happen to believe in the coming race war (come on there's gotta be some overlap there somewhere) but I just don't see how the NRA's shenanigans can raise to the level of being a hate group.


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 sebster wrote:
But that'd be Janet Reno for you. She was just really bad at her job, wasn't she?

Judging from that list I'd assume so but I'm also not ruling out that the FBI has a more nuanced application of that list, hopefully one employing common sense.

I'm still waiting to hear how the NRA fits #7.

And I honestly, no-joke find this fascinating. You see stuff like that in comments on liberal sites - "the NRA's a hate/terrorist/whatever group" - but I've never actually sat and listened to someone work it out for me before. I'm dying to hear what Kan thinks they're advocating hate against.

If a group hates people...then it seems to me it'd be fair to label them a hate group. If you don't like groups being labelled at all...well, that's your own thing, but other people do, and if it is a reasonable label then it might as well be applied. I don't think the NRA is inherently hateful but the AFA seems to fit the bill quite nicely.

I suppose the NRA hates hippies

 Kanluwen wrote:
Zimmerman

Sigh.

Hey man. We can't hold that against Kan;

Zimmerman's Law; If there is an internet discussion about guns, the NRA, race, or neighborhood watches, the chances that the case of George Zimmerman will be mentioned slowly approach 1.

 Seaward wrote:
I agree with everything except the "non-trivial" portion. We have fire extinguishers in the house despite the fact that we know our chances of lighting the place on fire are pretty low.

Actually it's the exact opposite. Fires are common. Here's an estimate of almost 400,000 fires that the fire department responded to link. And with about 120 million homes in the US that's about a 0.33% chance of having a fire. Over a 20 year period you have a 6.5% chance of having a fire, and that's certainly enough to justify owning a fire extinguisher. And of course that's only counting fires that are serious enough to get the fire department called out. If you count minor fires that get put out without ever getting reported then a fire extinguisher looks like a pretty sensible choice.

Compare that with estimates of 1.5-2.5 million incidents of using a gun in self defense. Obviously that probably depends heavily on where you are, how much time you spend working late at night, etc, but again we're talking about an expectation that you may have to use that gun you're carrying. People aren't getting concealed handgun permits because they're afraid of something as rare as dying from getting struck by lightning.

We're speaking of the NRA in particular here, and I have to say, as someone who occasionally throws money at the NRA-ILA (the actual legislative action arm) whenever the Democrats start another nutty push on gun control, and who consequently receives a lot of email from them, I've yet to receive anything remotely of the sort. They generally tell you what pending or proposed legislation's going on across the country, how it could affect gun rights, and ask for money. That's pretty much it.

I don't follow the issue closely enough to know which statements are coming from the NRA vs. other organizations/independent bloggers/etc, so I'll have to give you that one. But taken in a broader sense the argument that a pro-gun organization can or should be labeled a hate group isn't entirely unreasonable.


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 Seaward wrote:
I'm dying to hear what Kan thinks they're advocating hate against.

Again, I don't know specifically which pro-gun organization is responsible, but you could argue that they're advocating hate because of things like stereotyping the person you might have to shoot in self defense as the "big scary black guy" and creating a perception that black men are dangerous and you should be afraid of them (and of course ready to shoot them if you feel threatened). It's not always openly stated racism, but it doesn't have to be when everyone you're talking to knows what you mean. And if you want to look at the "black helicopter" types they advocate hate by building the idea that liberals are "the enemy" who are about to start Nazi-level oppression, and that you need to be prepared to kill them before that happens.

 LordofHats wrote:
That's kind of what I'm getting at. Fear mongering in itself is just par for the course in political activism and means little beyond mixing it with something like a (un)healthy dose of racism. The NRA certainly does a lot of fear mongering, and I'm sure some members also happen to believe in the coming race war (come on there's gotta be some overlap there somewhere) but I just don't see how the NRA's shenanigans can raise to the level of being a hate group.

Yeah, definitely agree. Wasn't trying to suggest the NRA is a hate group, quite the opposite - that despite some fear mongering, if we think about it in terms of nature and extent instead just as a yes/no binary state, it becomes clear that the NRA really doesn't meet the criteria.

I should have used the NRA as my not a hate group example above, it would have made my point much clearer... don't know why I didn't do that.

Judging from that list I'd assume so but I'm also not ruling out that the FBI has a more nuanced application of that list, hopefully one employing common sense.

Yeah, for sure. Just the set up of that list seemed so wrong headed, it reminded me of all the other silliness Reno got up to, so...

Looks like the AFA is behind One Million Moms, too (who were thrown off facebook iirc). Man there are a lot of people in these groups who absolutely cannot stop thinking about gay sex, all the time.

 Peregrine wrote:
Compare that with estimates of 1.5-2.5 million incidents of using a gun in self defense.

That'd only be useful if we compared it to, say, the amount of fires put out by personally-owned fire extinguishers. What you'd need to compare it with would be the total number of potentially deadly assaults.

I don't follow the issue closely enough to know which statements are coming from the NRA vs. other organizations/independent bloggers/etc, so I'll have to give you that one. But taken in a broader sense the argument that a pro-gun organization can or should be labeled a hate group isn't entirely unreasonable.

Again, I don't know specifically which pro-gun organization is responsible, but you could argue that they're advocating hate because of things like stereotyping the person you might have to shoot in self defense as the "big scary black guy" and creating a perception that black men are dangerous and you should be afraid of them (and of course ready to shoot them if you feel threatened).

Can you point to any evidence of this at all? Any advertising, any flyer, any e-mail chain that's come to public knowledge, anything? This feels a lot like you're saying, "I assume this is what goes on there," which is actually kind of ironic, but not particularly helpful. Where do you believe it is the NRA talks about big scary black guys? Meetings? Magazines?

I'm getting the sense you think it's fairly obvious Kanluwen meant the NRA was clearly a hate group due to being racist. I'd still like to hear from him, but I'd find it awfully odd for a racist hate group to allow black people to join.

 Ahtman wrote:
Keep bringing up the SPLC, but the article is about the US Army categorizing this asinine group as a hate group, and the US Military isn't some liberal think tank, and is, as far as I know, a legitimate organization.

Have you considered the possibility the US Army is actually just a wildly liberal organization in general, perhaps heavily influence by the homosexual agenda (much like how the AFA claims homosexuals were the driving force behind the Nazis)?

I mean, the Army is awfully interested in keeping up with the latest fashions, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Funny, huh? 5 billion here, 4 billion here, eventually you're talking about real money. But, lets get back to talking about the important stuff.

 Seaward wrote:
That'd only be useful if we compared it to, say, the amount of fires put out by personally-owned fire extinguishers. What you'd need to compare it with would be the total number of potentially deadly assaults.

That wasn't the point. The point there was that both home fires and incidents justifying the use of a gun in self defense are not exactly "struck by lightning" rarity events. People aren't buying a gun or fire extinguisher like they buy a lottery ticket, they're doing it because they think there's a non-trivial chance that they'll need to use those purchases.

Can you point to any evidence of this at all? Any advertising, any flyer, any e-mail chain that's come to public knowledge, anything? This feels a lot like you're saying, "I assume this is what goes on there," which is actually kind of ironic, but not particularly helpful. Where do you believe it is the NRA talks about big scary black guys? Meetings? Magazines?

Sorry, it's been too long. Back when I used to be more interested in guns the thing that drove me away from those forums/blogs/etc was the level of fear of scary black men/liberals/etc and a disturbing hopefulness that they'd get a chance to self defense those people to death. Which is something that has the potential to become more than just talk when it influences how the gun owner in question evaluates the level of threat in a situation and decides whether or not to use that gun.

And, again, I'll concede that Kanluwen's use of the NRA as a specific example of the origin of those ideas may not be accurate, but I'm sure you can find an appropriate pro-gun group to make the broader point about hate groups true.

 Ouze wrote:
I mean, the Army is awfully interested in keeping up with the latest fashions, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Funny, huh? 5 billion here, 4 billion here, eventually you're talking about real money. But, lets get back to talking about the important stuff.

That was a beautiful drive-by, right down to the Daily Beast source. They're who I always turn to for procurement news. gak, I bet they hate the F-35, and that's as sure a sign as any that a rag knows what it's talking about.


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 Peregrine wrote:
Sorry, it's been too long. Back when I used to be more interested in guns the thing that drove me away from those forums/blogs/etc was the level of fear of scary black men/liberals/etc and a disturbing hopefulness that they'd get a chance to self defense those people to death. Which is something that has the potential to become more than just talk when it influences how the gun owner in question evaluates the level of threat in a situation and decides whether or not to use that gun.

I'm afraid I don't buy it. I've been shooting since I was 13, much of it done in the South, and I've been lurking various gun forums on and off since I started getting serious about getting good at it. Antipathy towards liberals is obvious and a no-brainer, but I believe you're taking that and extrapolating it out to racism, which I think is remarkably unfair and disingenuous. While I've no doubt that someone has said something racist on a gun board before, suggesting that's all we need for hate group classification means that 4chan - not to mention Dakka itself - is also a hate group.

And, again, I'll concede that Kanluwen's use of the NRA as a specific example of the origin of those ideas may not be accurate, but I'm sure you can find an appropriate pro-gun group to make the broader point about hate groups true.

So it's down to me to prove y'all's thesis, eh?

Let's flip the script on this a little bit. If I was trying to convince you that, say, atheist groups were hate groups, and all I could come up with to back that up was, "Well, I've been on some of the forums, and I get that impression," how credibly would you treat that assertion? The NRA has way more stuff on record than most secularist societies, and thus way, way more to point to and go, "See? Le voila. Proof!" but we can't seem to do that with any of it.

Which might suggest we're barking up the wrong tree, and single-issue advocacy groups that focus exclusively on gun rights can only be defined as hate groups if you don't agree with them and are simply looking to slander.

I know it causes some of us physical pain not to discuss gun control in every single thread but could we take the NRA stuff elsewhere? I'd like to see the defenders of this hate group explain why they are defending a hate group.

 Da Boss wrote:
I know it causes some of us physical pain not to discuss gun control in every single thread but could we take the NRA stuff elsewhere? I'd like to see the defenders of this hate group explain why they are defending a hate group.

I don't think it is that they are defending a hate group so much as they have trouble believing there could be such a thing as a Christian hate group. Intellectually I think they know that there are many different manifestations of Christianity, but whenever they hear that a Christian group is added to a list the "us vs them" mentality kicks in and suddenly it is a homogenous group; it is an emotional response, not a measured, thoughtful one.

Didn't we just have this same thread a month of so ago?

 Seaward wrote:
If I was trying to convince you that, say, atheist groups were hate groups

But I never said the equivalent of that. It's obviously absurd to argue that all pro-gun groups are hate groups. All I'm saying is that it isn't necessary unreasonable to classify a pro-gun group as a hate group just because the supposed issue it is advocating isn't explicitly aimed at hating a particular group.

Now, if you wanted to argue that some atheist groups are hate groups I'd agree with you. There are self-declared atheists and atheist groups that cross the line into hate speech (including against their fellow atheists), and how to handle them is a subject of a lot of debate within the atheist community as a whole.

 Peregrine wrote:
But I never said the equivalent of that. It's obviously absurd to argue that all pro-gun groups are hate groups. All I'm saying is that it isn't necessary unreasonable to classify a pro-gun group as a hate group just because the supposed issue it is advocating isn't explicitly aimed at hating a particular group.

No, that's not unreasonable.

What is unreasonable is asserting it without proving it. If you're going to call something a hate group, you need have more than just personal dislike of the group's goals or a "feeling" to back it up.

 d-usa wrote:
Didn't we just have this same thread a month of so ago?

Sort of. Last time it was a specific Catholic group being added to a hate group list, which of course had the thread title of "Catholicism listed as hate group", or some nonsense like that. It is strange, we only get these threads when Christian organizations are labeled as hate groups, but not all the other types (Muslim, White Power, Black Power, ect).

 Seaward wrote:
What is unreasonable is asserting it without proving it. If you're going to call something a hate group, you need have more than just personal dislike of the group's goals or a "feeling" to back it up.

I didn't assert that a particular pro-gun group is a hate group. And I certainly didn't assert that all pro-gun groups are hate groups. All I was trying to do is extract a more reasonable argument from Kanluwen's exaggerated nonsense about "most gun owners": that pro-gun arguments can cross the line into hate speech even though they don't explicitly say "kill all the black people", and an organized group making those arguments could be classified as a hate group even though they aren't as obvious as the KKK. It's an objection to an excessively narrow definition of "hate group", not an assertion that any specific group is one.

 Jihadin wrote:
Think the instructor bolo the delivery of the subject matter at hand. Me myself and I would have clarified a bit more on "Hate" group and Extremists. Just to avoid later on of "portraying" the Bible as "Hate" material.


edit

Isn't Southern Poverty Law Center extremely liberal?

Yes indeedy. Like PETA, they started off good but expanded into just being their own little fringe group. Anyone who's conservative is pretty much a domestic terrorist in their eyes.


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 Ahtman wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Didn't we just have this same thread a month of so ago?

Sort of. Last time it was a specific Catholic group being added to a hate group list, which of course had the thread title of "Catholicism listed as hate group", or some nonsense like that. It is strange, we only get these threads when Christian organizations are labeled as hate groups, but not all the other types (Muslim, White Power, Black Power, ect).

Well Central Dachshund Rescue is clearly a hate group. In addition to being radically exclusionary (they never rescue badgers...ever!), they actively solicit support for and advocate for, anticat canine activists. If thats not a hate group I don't know what is. Their members hate squirrels too, and have been known to try to eat chickens that get into the yard.

 LordofHats wrote:

Honestly. That's more of an argument that the criteria is shoddy than that the NRA is a hate group.

501st Legion;

1) Check
2) Oh hell yes. Check.
3) No. But we can just ignore that one.
4) Well they seem savvy enough from their website.
5) Maybe.
6) They seem pretty Middle America but lets face it, Middle America is the generic America.
7) They want to purge the Jedi.

501st Legion is a hate group. The guys who march for tolerance, help the Salvation Army during Christmas, run local charities all year long, and attend conventions like the nerds they are.

 Seaward wrote:
Of course, the anti-gun Brady Campaign meets a lot of those same criteria, too.

Its like those really loose criteria for what defines a cult, most of the jobs I've had tick a substantial number of those criteria


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 Kanluwen wrote:
the FBI compiled this list of characteristics of organized hate groups:

1) Group structure is loose on a local level and highly structured internationally.
2) A substantial number of members are white males under the age of 30.
3) Leaders tend to project a mainstream image.
4) Many are technologically savvy and use venues as cable television and computers to promote their rhetoric.
5) Group members are often loosely affiliated and take inspiration and direction( e.g., Skinheads).
6) Groups focus on issues of concern to Middle America as a way of cloaking and marketing hate.
7) Members of these groups believe in an inevitable global war between races.

1) Possibly applicable to the NRA
2) NRA does not give a demographic breakdown of members by age
3) Very vague criteria, and works on the assumption that owning a firearm is a fringe belief not mainstream
4) Sounds like every group that ever existed, so again very vague
5) Not really applicable
6) What hate is the NRA cloaking and marketing?
7) If they do then they have managed to keep it remarkably well hidden

So in short only the vaguest possible criteria can fit the NRA, but then again these can also be applied to many other groups too. What should be the most telling criteria for a hate group (actual hate) falls short by a significant margin when you attempt to relate it to the NRA.

1) Group structure is loose on a local level and highly structured internationally.
mmm. International bank
2) A substantial number of members are white males under the age of 30.
Yep, international bank still meets
3) Leaders tend to project a mainstream image.
Yep, international bank again.
4) Many are technologically savvy and use venues as cable television and computers to promote their rhetoric.
Its like I’m stuttering…
5) Group members are often loosely affiliated and take inspiration and direction( e.g., Skinheads).
Yep, Internaitonal bank
6) Groups focus on issues of concern to Middle America as a way of cloaking and marketing hate.
Well that’s kind of subjective isn’t it? Must be the competition
7) Members of these groups believe in an inevitable global war between races.
There can be only one uber international bank!!!!

(feel free to substitute WalMart, McDonalds, Facebook, or the Red Cross)

Yeah, that FBI list is equal parts bigotry and cold reading. Anyone who would claim that appearing to be a member of mainstream society or having mainstream concerns is a warning sign is an idiot or a con artist.

I think we can all agree it was remarkably, if not impressively, misguided to try and assert the NRA is a hate group.

It does perhaps inadvertently bring up an interesting point, though, in that shouldn't we have some sort of solid definition for such a thing that we can all use? I'm not saying we should, necessarily - I generally don't agree with the whole "hate crime" thing, and I tend to fall into the camp that says as long as you're not committing crimes, you can freely associate with like-minded people and spout whatever vile stuff you want.

However, if the bulk of society's going to buy into this stuff, shouldn't it at least know what it's talking about? Right now we seem to be using the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it!" approach.

 Frazzled wrote:
(feel free to substitute WalMart, McDonalds, or the Red Cross)

Or college sports teams like football, or how about PETA?


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 Seaward wrote:
I think we can all agree it was remarkably, if not impressively, misguided to try and assert the NRA is a hate group.

I don't know, I mean Kan really managed to prove that it was a group. Its just that the whole hate thing was noticeably absent

 Seaward wrote:
It does perhaps inadvertently bring up an interesting point, though, in that shouldn't we have some sort of solid definition for such a thing that we can all use? I'm not saying we should, necessarily - I generally don't agree with the whole "hate crime" thing, and I tend to fall into the camp that says as long as you're not committing crimes, you can freely associate with like-minded people and spout whatever vile stuff you want.

However, if the bulk of society's going to buy into this stuff, shouldn't it at least know what it's talking about? Right now we seem to be using the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it!" approach.

I think this is one instance that lay people have taken a definition and tried to test it's elasticity by trying to apply it to groups that they do not agree with. I'm sure that the FBI has some further direction on the definitions, and their own jurisprudence on what is applicable, but without this it just becomes a meaningless tool for attacking those who do not agree with you.

 LordofHats wrote:

 sebster wrote:
But that'd be Janet Reno for you. She was just really bad at her job, wasn't she?

Judging from that list I'd assume so but I'm also not ruling out that the FBI has a more nuanced application of that list, hopefully one employing common sense.

Well of course it has a 'more nuanced application'. That list is used after you've actually looked at a group from the beginning, looked at their ties to other organizations, looked at their overall membership and other factors.

You don't simply look at the group in a vacuum. If you do that, then as you illustrated anything can be considered a 'hate group'. Also bear in mind that the categories and definition that I listed came about in the wake of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing when the FBI started looking very hard at militia groups that made a point of being in the public eye. There is also as I mentioned a bit of consideration to the overlap between members of one umbrella organization which espouses certain views and then a more 'violent' organization which has no direct ties.

 Seaward wrote:
I think we can all agree it was remarkably, if not impressively, misguided to try and assert the NRA is a hate group.

It does perhaps inadvertently bring up an interesting point, though, in that shouldn't we have some sort of solid definition for such a thing that we can all use? I'm not saying we should, necessarily - I generally don't agree with the whole "hate crime" thing, and I tend to fall into the camp that says as long as you're not committing crimes, you can freely associate with like-minded people and spout whatever vile stuff you want.

However, if the bulk of society's going to buy into this stuff, shouldn't it at least know what it's talking about? Right now we seem to be using the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it!" approach.

I agree.

All the general organisational stuff can be applied to Tesco's Club Card Club, the Boy Scouts and my local rowing club.

The problem with classifying "hate" groups is classifying "hate". Perhaps we might look at the definitions used in European and US law to define hate crimes.