Every day is blame the NRA day

It's likely that many, if not most, of my posts in this blog will be about the Gun Guys. I don't necessarily disagree with them any more than I disagree with any of the better known "destroy all the guns" websites, like the Brady Campaign, VPC, etc., but those other sites only get updated on an extremely rare basis. The Gun Guys (or perhaps just Gun Guy--I get the sneaky impression that it's actually just one paid gun control "cheerleader") at least post some new stuff most weekdays, giving me a rich vein of material to poke gaping holes in. Sure, it's not much more than links to, and quotes from, articles about various gun issues, interspersed with snide comments and variations on "Stop the evil NRA," but at least they bother to type something. Actually, that brings up something of an interesting point. They love to claim that the NRA is not truly a grassroots organization, and that all its lobbying power comes from gun industry money, and that the anti-gun groups reflect the true will of the people. How is it, then, that there seems to be so much more volunteerism among gun rights advocates than there is among the gun rights deprivation lobby?

Anyway, the Gun Guys hate the NRA. It seems to be something of an obsession with them. Maybe kids wearing NRA t-shirts used to beat them up and take their lunch money when they were school children, or maybe their mothers used to pistol whip them on a regular basis--but these guys have real issues. Their message seems to be that every firearm death that has ever occurred since the discovery of gunpowder, anywhere in the universe, is the NRA's fault. They attribute vast power to the NRA (while at the same time calling NRA members--all 4 million of us--a minority fringe group of extremists). When a state (or the federal government) passes a law these Gun Guys don't like (which is quite often lately--it's a bad time to be a gun rights deprivation jihadist), they call it "the NRA's law," as if the NRA somehow has the power to enact legsislation on its own. I'm not sure where these guys went to school, but wherever it was did them a grave disservice in whatever they taught them about the way the U.S. government works. They almost seem to have problems with the First Amendment, as well as the Second (I'll talk later about their nutty views regarding the 2nd Amendment--that's worth an entire post of its own)--judging from the way they talk about the need to remove the NRA's access to the political process. It's hard to avoid the suspicion that they would like to get the NRA banned as a "terrorist group," or something.

As a gun owner who is currently paying off a life membership to the NRA, I would take exception to the assertion that the NRA is little more than an industry lobby group, if the assertion weren't so laughably, demonstrably false. As it is, a shake of my head and an indulgent chuckle at their cluelessness would seem to be the more appropriate response.