All Quiet On The NRA Front

Since Friday, when the Sandy Hook shooter murdered 27 people, there have been so many things said by so many people, your humble correspondent included. 

One outfit has been strangely silent -- the National Rifle Association.  Usually outspoken, combative and fanatical, the NRA has suddenly gone quiet.  They shut down both their Twitter account and Facebook page.  A friend sent me an account of a person who phoned NRA headquarters for a comment on the shooting.  The employee who answered said the NRA had nothing to say and  "nothing to apologize for" and hung up.

Golly, NRA, why so reticent?  Cat got your tongue?  Where's the usual high-volume bullying and belligerence?  Where's the old actor shaking a rifle at us?

It seems that the NRA has decided that now would be a good time to shut the fuck up!

But it won't last.  They'll be back soon enough with their standard PR campaign of lies:  The feds want to grab all your guns!  (No, they don't.)  The Second Amendment guarantees your individual right to an RPG launcher.  (No, it doesn't.)  The best way to prevent gun violence is more guns!  Everyone should be armed!  (Total horseshit.  The opposite is true.)

The NRA is not a "people's" organization.  The NRA's real purpose is to make it as easy as possible for makers of lethal weapons to sell as much product as possible, regardless of deadly consequences.  Those companies are the NRA's source of funding and hence their real constituents, not the individual members of the NRA.

I heard a statistic today that 75% of the NRA's 4 million members would be in favor of more gun restrictions and better background checks.  Not bad -- the members are far more reasonable than their own rotten organization!

So let's ask those members to take the next logical step, and quit the damn NRA.  What do you really get for your NRA dues?  Lies, scare tactics, and a shitty magazine.  That's all.  Who needs it?

Then let's put pressure on our elected representatives to do the same -- refuse all NRA support, financial and other.  Do you really need their money to stay in office?  The NRA is a paper tiger, not nearly as influential as they'd like you to believe.  Their top priority was to defeat Obama?  Not even close.  Their other liberal targets?  Reelected.  Can they honestly say they made a difference in any race? 

The time has come for members of both parties to leave these assholes behind, fix the gun problem, and move on to better things.

Fuck the NRA!