Two shows to catch: Guns on NPR, supermarkets on CNBC

On NPR’s Fresh Air this afternoon:

The History and Browing Influence of the NRA

4:00 p.m. locally on KUNR. Check local times and listings.

The shootings in Tucson reopened a debate on one of the most contentious issues in American politics: gun control.

Political scientist Robert Spitzer says that, in the wake of the Tucson shootings, improving record-keeping to block sales to the mentally ill stands the best chance of moving forward — but we’re unlikely to see any other gun laws tighten.

“Similar events in the past have changed the calculus of how the government has responded to gun violence, but the political atmospherics of the first decade of the 20th century very much run against the idea that there will be any significant change in federal or state gun laws as a result of the Tucson shooting,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, “even though there are some clear public policy changes [concerning gun control] that could be made that have or will be introduced into Congress soon and that most people seem to agree with.”

Spitzer, the author of the book The Politics of Gun Control, has written extensively about the history of the NRA, historical and current interpretations of the Second Amendment and the history of gun control laws.

Read more here ….

On CNBC, Tyler Mathisen has this piece that is so important to the weekly bottom line for our familes …

Supermarkets Wage War for Your Dollars

9:00 p.m. local time on cable. Check listings.

In every aisle of every supermarket, it’s the commercial equivalent of war.

The competition for the $1.5 billion a day Americans spend on groceries is cutthroat, with the battle playing out on the shelves in front of you. The stakes are so high because the profit margins are so low — 1.5 to 2 percent is typical.

In a typical supermarket, nearly 50,000 products fight for your attention: all those bottles, cans and boxes raising the same battle cry — “take me” — without saying a single word.

Every day, at virtually every one of the nation’s more than 35,000 stores, merchants employ a dizzying array of high- and low-tech tools in their struggle to grab a bigger share of the $500 billion spent every year at U.S. supermarkets.

When you enter a store today, you’re being watched, trailed, and analyzed, in ways you’d never imagine. From heat maps tracking which aisles you walk down, to video monitoring, to the loyalty card on your key chain, supermarkets use every method they can to learn as much as they can about you.

To wind up in your cart, every product has to communicate the right message.

Read more here …

Just a little research goes a very long way

Another one of ‘those’ emails came the other day. The “ohmygawdthey’regonnatakemygunsaway!” rants, and it had all the hallmarks of urban legend, but the well-meaningsender was guilty of a lack of due diligence,launching it to his usual blast list anyway.

The funny irony of this one was,not only did the mainstream sites, like Snopes.com and About.com: Urban Legends, say it was complete baloney, but I easily found a wealth of fringe Second Amendment sites that said exactly the same thing.

As usual, it took me less than five minutes to find this out. What I can’t understand is why friends, and in this case one who is retired law enforcement, couldn’t take the same deep breath before hitting the Foward button.

Here’s the email, so you’ll recognize it:

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Broken only by gunfire: The silence of the gun rights crowd

Just a quick aside regarding the recent tragic shooting incident at the Holocaust Museum: that same day, I got another forwarded email from an aquaintance who worries a lot about the right to bear arms … lots of them, of any type.

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