Reply #119: allow me to introduce you ...

[iverglas]

Now I have a B.A. in English, but even without one it would seem that the words "they," "their," and "people" refer not to an organization, but to the members that belong to said organization, e.g. yours truly.

... to the concept of collective nouns. (Part of my BA is in French lang & lit rather than English, but the principles are remarkably similar, and I actually do the work often done by English majors.)

Now, in this instance and context, a singular pronoun might indeed have been the best choice for referring to "the NRA". But me, I don't actually expect the rest of the world to speak/write English that is not in need of my editorial assistance, and to know the fine points of when to use singular pronouns/verbs for collective nouns and when to use plural; and I generally don't have much trouble figuring out what people mean even if the form in which they say it isn't quite perfect. I thought it pretty evident that the speaker, in this case, was referring to the NRA qua organization, and not qua herd of cats, as it were.

And hey, it's interesting that you should say, after what you said (emphasis added):

Do I agree with everything the NRA does? No. I wish they'd show a bit less obeisance to the small minority of gun owners who hunt, for example, and I wish they'd take a more intellectual tone at times, but as far as their positions on gun issues go, they are in line with the mainstream gun-owning community.

I'm going to guess that you were talking about the NRA qua organization, there (given how you used the singular verb to start with, and how your comments were really quite plainly about the actions of the organization and not about the herd of cats that makes ... make? ... it up) -- and yet you used the plural pronoun. Oops!! You know what award that gets you.


http://users.rcn.com/rostmd/winace/pics/


Unlike most (all?) of the anti-gun organizations, the NRA is run by the membership via a democratically elected Board of Directors, so ultimately it is gun owners (and not industry reps, or politicians, or whatever) who set policy.

Yasss. Just like it is the great USAmerican public that sets the policy adopted and implemented by the Bush Administration ...