Call me elitist, but it’s always been hard to understand how so-called rugged individualists, armed to the teeth with as many weapons and bullets they want, can possibly position themselves as defenders of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They align themselves with far right hate groups and, as in the case of the NRA leadership, with corporate power, especially the power of the oil industry and the gun manufacturing industry.
How many deaths will it take for Americans to wake up to the underlying reality of the lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association? How many people just going about their lives, trying to have a good time, raising their kids will have to die before any politician dare comment on the true nature of the NRA? How much clearer does it have to get than Bill Moyers’ commentary of July 21st in which Moyers called out the NRA’s misleading and deadly analysis of the second amendment?
It is the rallying cry of the NRA and, you might notice, of the extreme right wing of America to be able to purchase, keep, and use as many weapons as they feel necessary to uphold their right to bear arms. Well, here’s the second amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The intended meaning of the 2nd amendment is always debatable. But in 1791 it most certainly did not mean you could possess assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols or any other weapons of mass destruction on your person or in your home. They were talking about the ability of the Federal government, just constituted, to call on people to be quickly organized for the protection of the country. Thus the Militia reference. And, in 1791, that meant that the people had the right to keep a rifle that could not be confiscated. A rifle, by the way, to which you loaded one bullet at a time.
“Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and perhaps as many as 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S.” Bill Moyers said in his commentary. There are almost 300 million guns owned in the U.S. Living in a rural area in this country, you do come to understand the need for a firearm, usually a rifle, to protect you from the possible intrusions of the mountain lion or the bear. Most people who are buying guns already own guns. Most people in urban areas recognize that a gun in the home is much more dangerous to the people you know and love than to the rare intruder.
So why do the NRA in general and Mr. Wayne LaPierre in particular continue to use fear tactics to convince people that they not only need to have guns but also need to defend their right to have guns no matter what kind or how many? When you uncover to whom and to what organizations Wayne LaPierre and the NRA leadership are connected, a pattern begins to emerge. What ties Grover Norquist’s American Conservative Union to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to people like Wayne Anthony Ross, an NRA board member who has been linked to the far-right Patriot movement? Far right extremism connected to an uncaring libertarianism that labels any concern for your fellow human beings wimpy and/or elitist.
Wayne LaPierre loves to scare people about President Obama. He tells NRA members, “If President Obama gets a second term, America as we know it will be on its way to being lost forever.” [Alternet, May, 2012] He is talking about scaring people into buying more guns. It is certainly unclear to me what about America will be lost. He never says specifically. But it’s a good scary line. Everything the NRA leadership talks about drives a wedge between people in our country, fostering the kind of disrespectful venom we heard spewed out at town meetings and election campaigns in 2010. Don’t get me wrong, though. There are plenty of people who own a gun who are not right wing and who don’t agree with the conclusions about our country as presented by the NRA leadership.
Wayne LaPierre has no interest in bringing Americans together.
The NRA is no longer interested in simply teaching gun safety. It is teaching radical politics for its own purposes. Those who agree with the conspiracy theories and the absolute right to buy and own whatever kind of weapon you want, never seem to connect the dots between the NRA, the far right and the power of corporate capitalism. Wayne LaPierre, for instance, received a salary of between $970,000 and $1.2 million, not exactly the salary of the average American worker.
But the fear tactics seem to work – fear of any kind of difference in opinion, fear of any kind of difference in education, and certainly fear of any racial group not their own. Once people are afraid, they don’t care about how much money LaPierre earns or who pays him. They just want to be safe. And this is how fascism begins.
AlterNet reported in one of its articles on the NRA, a “plumber in a small town in rural Illinois” said, “Being a white Caucasian who believes in the Constitution – I’m going to be in the minority…Do you understand?”
Well, not really. But my guess is he is somehow referring to his guns with respect to his fear of being in the minority. And putting guns together with fear is bound to bring about another shooting incident we just can’t seem to understand.
“A well regulated Militia,” I envision to be the armed forces of America in these modern days and time. Assault rifles and other high powered instruments of death should not be available to the general public. I find fear to be derived from untruths – that’s my opinion.
Agreed. But with the political reality of the power of the NRA, I believe we should set our goals in little steps, such as outlawing private purchase of magazines that hold more than seven bullets for starters, all assault rifles second, and so on until only the sports-person’s single shot rifle is left.