Why The NRA is Nuts
THIS OPINION PIECE LOOKS AT WHY THE NRA OPPOSES PROTECTIVE LEGISLATURE ON GUN CONTROL ISSUES.
Gun control debate in the USA. (canstockphotos.com)
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. At Marquette Magazine we believe it’s important to start dialogues on sensitive subjects as a crucial component to the creation of positive solutions. Community engagement is key. Ignoring an issue won’t make it go away!
I grew up playing with guns and hunting critters for most of my early life. I think private ownership of guns is a legal guarantee within the Constitution and guns are invaluable for protecting one’s home and property. Despite the NRA’s irrational fears, I absolutely doubt that right will ever be eliminated by federal law. The paranoid notion of many gun owners that some government run organization is going to send goons to every household to gather up weapons is patently absurd, yet that’s the level of idiocy on which the NRA operates today. In the wake of yet another horrific shooting, Wayne LaPierre, speaking for the four million members of the NRA, declared unequivocally that more laws will not keep guns out of criminal hands. That’s because the NRA exists for only one reason: to facilitate the sale of as many guns as possible to the private sector. They want to arm everybody. But if gun ownership equals safety, why ain’t the ghettos safe?
It stuns me to think that a handful of target shooters who feel a compulsion to blast away with thirty-shot magazines or hundred-round drums would lobby so ferociously for their God-given right to own these violent toys. Do they not care about the safety of others? Is inconveniencing a handful of rednecks and gun nuts worth arming everyone else for protection? This worked so well in the nineteenth century we may as well try it again, right NRA?
The NRA doesn’t want to give up selling any of their toys. That’s who they work for; hundreds of gun manufacturers. And that’s exactly what these military-style weapons are in private hands: violent toys. They aren’t best for home defense – a shotgun is much better. They are only used for shooting targets or people. You don’t hunt deer with hundred-round drums or even 30-shot clips – the law in many states only allows six-shot clips for hunting game. Deer get better protection than schoolchildren in the eyes of the NRA.
Oh, the NRA wants to help with the school shooting problem. Their solution is to sell even more guns. Arm everybody in the schools from teachers to janitors. Hire a retired cop to patrol the hallways.
OK. Let’s take a look at their proposal. The I.B. Dolt Public School Board has recently hired a retired police officer. People are now armed within the schools. Crazy Guy diabolically scouts said school out for weeks, figuring out a way to sneak inside. Crazy Guy finds retired constable Barney snoozing in the hallway chair during second period. Crazy Guy quietly smashes Barney’s skull with a fire extinguisher and takes his automatic weapon away from him. Crazy Guy goes about his heinous mission having saved himself $1,200 on an assault rifle.
Another scenario: Rotten Ritchie has to go to the bathroom…again. He leaves his fifth grade classroom; angry because his step father gave him such a cuff this morning and the teacher embarrassed him over arithmetic problems… again. Angry because it’s his third try at the fifth grade… hey, there’s Officer Barney, snoozing… again. He barely has a grip on that gun of his. I’ll show the rest of those snot-nosed bastards and that damn teacher they can’t mess with Ritchie…
Still another scenario: Crazy guy gets into school and starts blazing away with his AR-15. Barney, on the other side of the building taking a dump, is trying to figure out what’s going on. The shooter knows – he’s been casing the joint and he has a plan. The cops finally arrive; confused, knowing there’s at least one shooter on the grounds. Officer Hawg enters the side door, Glock in hand, and sees Charley, the science teacher, brandishing his .38 just like the NRA says he should, shaking in his boots but determined to stop the killer. Officer Hawg doesn’t know that Charley teaches science – he thinks he’s here to shoot kids so he drills Charley through the head with two well-placed and well-intended shots.
I don’t believe arming schools is going to help anybody, anywhere. I think the NRA is nuts, preying on the machismo of insecure manhood by offering old white guys an extension of their phalluses.51 Yippee-ki-yay! I’m Clint Eastwood now. Make my day. When you think about it, a gun is lot like a phallus. You can play with it. You can shoot it. I understand the allure. I don’t understand the NRA-fueled paranoia against sensible gun controls.
If assault style weapons are banned and high-capacity magazines are removed from private ownership, what is the loss? Don’t give me that slippery-slope crap, either. We already have limits on the ownership of weapons and I think everybody believes that’s a good thing, with the possible exception of the NRA. You can’t buy a bazooka. You can’t buy hand grenades. You can’t buy an M-60 machine gun. What we’re really talking about is redefining what private owners can buy and use. It is hard to justify any use for an AR-15 (and yes, I know the AR does not stand for “assault rifle”) other than target shooting. It’s even harder to justify the private ownership of high-capacity magazines. Making them rare might just save some lives if a shooter has to stop and reload a few times rather than marching forward and endlessly pulling the trigger. Getting rid of the assault-style weaponry might return some to the notion that rifles should only be used for hunting critters. Either way, it’s a small loss with huge potential gain.
About the only thing we have yet to try in this country is gun control, which, by the way NRA, does NOT mean gun confiscation or making guns illegal to own. By removing high-capacity magazines and assault-style military weaponry from private ownership there is no violation of Second Amendment rights. You may still have firearms – myriad firearms – to protect yourself, hunt with and play with. The social cost of allowing certain types of weapons is simply too great. Some toys just have to go away. Lawn Jarts were deemed to be too dangerous in the 1980s and were subsequently banned. So why does society allow people to have military toys which are the literal epitome of dangerous?
The NRA fought against requirements for minimum amounts of metal in gun manufacturing back in the 1980s. Making guns out of non-metal is another insidious act of irresponsibility. They appear to have no shame or sense to their political posturing. Metal detectors are used to find guns and if they can’t be trusted to work because the NRA and some shooting enthusiasts think they need plastic pistols for target shooting things may be beyond hope.
Suppose the NRA is right and an armed society is indeed a polite society. So why bother with carrying handguns? They are difficult to hit things with, spitting out one little slug at a time. A sawed-off shotgun can be easily stashed under one’s coat and brought to bear with a simple swing of the arm. And hitting things is no problem with a scattergun, hence the name. They emit a lethal fog that not only will vaporize your adversary; it will take care of any pain-in-the-ass bystanders that may try to refute your stand-your-ground defense.
So how did the NRA become so powerful? They are only 4 million gun owners out of some 85 million total, about .048%, yet they buy Congressmen with impunity. Why? They are well organized and have a passionately indoctrinated base of old, rich white guys who like cowboy movies. They promulgate hatred and fear among their membership and only have one real agenda: to sell as many guns to the private sector as possible. They call any law designed to protect people from guns an infringement of civil rights and present an ambiguous argument about the tyranny of government and how private citizens can protect themselves against their own government by owning guns. This is a laughably silly argument. I have news for you, NRA; the United States has cruise missiles that can fly through a camel’s asshole half-way around the world and take out a city block. If the government wants in they’re coming in.
So as much as I loathe the NRA, I do admire their political organization and the effectiveness of their ruthless scare tactics. They have been extremely effective in shit-canning almost every attempt at reigning in gun possession, even among criminals and the deranged. Their tactic is simple but effective; they scare the shit out of small-town politicians, especially in backwoods America. Anybody daring to oppose the NRA will find themselves on the ugly end of a mail and phone campaign and bloc-voting that can cost an election or drive someone out of office. The NRA believes that preventing a nut case in or near a big city from buying a handgun somehow infringes on a rancher’s right in Nevada to own a varmint rifle.
Alas, no gun laws will eliminate the incredible amount of firearms that are in private hands in this country; over 300 million by some estimates. The guns will never go away thanks to civic minded organizations like the NRA. As long as they are continued to be manufactured and disseminated without proper restrictions on type and ownership, there will be an ample supply of guns available for every nefarious crime. It is simply too late. But we can at least curtail the type of weapons that the public can legally purchase to reduce that supply in the future. For gun owners, their property will become more valuable as the supply dries up. It’s simple economics and presents a win-win situation for gun owners as well as potential victims.
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