I tried to put a couple of bumper stickers up for sale on the do-it-yourself sites Zazzle.com and CafePress.com, but they wouldn’t touch them due to threats of lawsuits from the NRA. If you don’t see many anti-NRA bumper stickers, this is why. It would be totally legal if you have your own press and distribution system. Oh well.
I’m updating this post yet again. The Parkland shooting seems like decades ago, and the latest, in Sante Fe, TX, is briefly in the news along with Ollie North being named as the new face of the NRA. Ollie freaking North! Once again, the NRA and the GOP are blaming “mental health” as the reason, and Ollie even suggested it was Ritalin causing all the shootings.
This page is mainly a songwriter demo to get musicians playing the song. I wrote about the origins of this song here twice before, but this time I’ve changed the title from “Blow the NRA Away” to “Vote the NRA Away” and have rewritten the first verse to make it more contemporary. Perhaps the changes will encourage more musicians to record the song and influence public opinion on the issue of gun control.
© Scott Morrison • Skeptico Music–BMI • WilliamScottMorrison.com
‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’
Vote the NRA Away
Scotty and The Skeptics
Well America’s got a problem
About how we deal with guns
Can you pack heat anywhere you want
Just to have some fun
Do you need an Army weapon
So you can play pretend
What’s it gonna take
To make America safe again?
Every Army soldier knows
Grunt lesson number one
Your weapon is for killin’
Your gun it is for fun
Army weapons made for killin’
In full-out total war
Some say they’re so thrillin’
Guns ain’t fun enough no more.
CHORUS
Vote the NRA away
Vote the NRA away
You know if they could do it
They’d legalize grenades
Flame-throwers and bazookas
Even tanks would be OK
To the loony tune palookas
Runnin’ the NRA.
War toys are so thrillin’
They make you feel so brave
Some people make a killin’
Catering to the craze
They promote the cult of violence
‘Cause there’s money to be made
Politicians quake in silence
In the sights of the NRA.
The NRA it lobbies
It pays and pays and pays
They’ve bought off most Republicans
Who always vote their way
They say war toys are just hobbies
No threat to you and me
But they’re a clear and present danger
To our Democracy.
CHORUS
America’s Founding Fathers
Said people could bear arms
So that state militias
Could keep us all from harm
They saw state-run militias
Well-regulated and ready
Drillin’ every Saturday
Down on the village green
America’s Founding Fathers
Showed how to make our laws
Based on the Constitution
‘Cause people have their flaws.
It’s clear our Founding Fathers
Would say the NRA is wrong
Well-regulated means just what it says
And they’d second this loud and strong.
Vote the NRA away
Vote the NRA away
America’s a’prayin’
For that happy day
When there’s no Saturday Night Specials
No Glocks, no Uzis
No AK 47’s, no Mac 10’s
No AR-15’s
Vote the NRA away
Vote the NRA away
America’s a’prayin’
For that happy day…
Gun Math
I wrote a version of this about ten years ago when I was still living in Petaluma, CA. The statistics are based on the 2000 Census.
Lets apply some elementary math to the claim that there are _AT LEAST_ 2.5 million crimes prevented every year by law-abiding citizens brandishing guns.
According to the Census Bureau, there were 281,421,906 Americans as of April 1, 2000. Dividing 2.5 million by the total population yields a percentage of .00888 (rounded down). If the gun supporters are correct, to get an idea of how often someone in your area is saved by a gun, simply multiply .00888 by your area’s population, then divide by 365.
I’m writing this from Petaluma, California, population 54,478, a town so typical of the rest of America that Ronald Reagan shot (no pun intended) the parade for his famous “Morning In America” re-election campaign commercials here, and blockbuster movies such as “American Graffitti” and “Peggy Sue Got Married” were filmed here just because it is so “typical.” I submit that if any town is likely to be considered a valid statistical model for the average American town, Petaluma is it. It has an ethnically diverse population, and also has its share of crime, including the nationally televised Polly Klaas kidnapping/murder case of several years ago.
So lets run the numbers for this “typical” town. Multiplying 54,548 by .00888 yields a result of 484.38 crimes that were allegedly prevented here last year, or an average of 1.32 every day (rounded down). Given what I know of this area, and attempting to apply common sense in evaluating these results, the numbers claimed by gun supporters seem to me to be about as valid a reflection of the reality which surrounds me as a Mother Goose fairy tale.
I have no hard data, but common sense tells me that if guns do prevent crimes here, it happens maybe once every couple of years, and certainly not 1.32 times every day, 9.24 times every week, 39.6 times every month, or 484.38 times every year. Looked at another way, if the gun supporters are correct, in the twenty years I’ve been in these parts 9,680 Petalumans have been saved from crimes by guns.
This is not to say that there may indeed be cases in Petaluma where brandishing a gun has prevented a crime, but neither I nor anyone I know has ever heard of one.
Scott Morrison
PS–Always remember–guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people.