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I'll start to buy into that when corporations give up the legal benefits they have that individual people do not have (corporations exist solely to protect individuals from the possible negative consequences of their actions. They don't get to be a "person" only when it benefits would be my view.
Yes, corporations are essentially a collective of people (the shareholders) but the speech of a corporation is only secondarily a form of expression by those people as there is no requirement that the people speaking for the corporation be owners nor that they make any attempt to consult with the owners before making such expressions.
Heck, part of this suit (unsuccessful) was that corporations wanted to not have to report their involvement in the political process which would allow them to mask their speech from their owners.
Another consideration is that for most publicly traded corporations a significant portion of the "free speech" interest is held by non-Americans. Since when do they have a right to participation in our political process?
Mostly my objection (and I won't claim at this point it is based in constitutional reality, though the constitution has nothing to say about corporations, they are entirely legislative entities) is that when it comes to the "personhood" of corporations they seem to get to pick and choose how real that metaphor will be from situation to situation making for a form of "heads I win, tails you lose."
I do recognize that this creates a conflict. Why, for example, does the Tribune Company, a corporation, get to say whatever it wants about the political process at any time in the political process but Microsoft would not? It's a very valid point, but my gut feeling here is that this resolution to the question was in the wrong direction.
As for the NRA, since they are an incorporated organization I would say no, they're no different.
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