New Yorker magazine has an interesting article about history of 2nd amendment, NRA and gun control

[Atypical Liberal]

43. OK, I have read the whole thing. I want my 20 minutes back.

I kept waiting for some meat and potatoes argument, and it never came.

The article is mostly factual, shows a definite anti-gun bias, and a lamenting over how liberal firearm rights have become.

The entire article is basically a history of gun rights interspersed with a history of some high-profile shootings, in an attempt to paint the right to keep and bear arms negatively.

The following passages struck me in particular:

"The American Firearms School sits in an industrial park just north of Providence, in a beige stucco building topped with a roof of mint-green sheet metal. From the road, it looks like a bowling alley, but from the parking lot you can tell that it’s not. You can hear the sound of gunfire. It doesn’t sound like thunder. It doesn’t sound like rain. It sounds like gunfire."

Ah, the horror, the horror, gunfire sounds like gunfire.

"Inside, there’s a shop, a pistol range, a rifle range, a couple of classrooms, a locker room, and a place to clean your gun. The walls are painted police blue up to the wainscoting, and then white to the ceiling, which is painted black. It feels like a clubhouse, except, if you’ve never been to a gun shop before, that part feels not quite licit, like a porn shop."

Never miss an opportunity to link firearm rights with illicit sexual gratification.

"The idea that every man can be his own policeman, and every woman hers..."[/i

The idea here really is that every man and woman has a right to self-defense.

"We got earplugs and headgear and ammunition and went to the range. I fired a hundred rounds. Then Dietzel told me to go wash my hands, to get the gunpowder off, while he went to clean the gun.

...

I opened the door, and turned on the tap. T. J. Lane had used a .22-calibre Mark III Target Rimfire pistol. For a long time, I let the water run."

How dramatic. As if she had just touched something unspeakably unclean.

"Between 1968 and 2012, the idea that owning and carrying a gun is both a fundamental American freedom and an act of citizenship gained wide acceptance and, along with it, the principle that this right is absolute and cannot be compromised; gun-control legislation was diluted, defeated, overturned, or allowed to expire; the right to carry a concealed handgun became nearly ubiquitous; Stand Your Ground legislation passed in half the states; and, in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that the District’s 1975 Firearms Control Regulations Act was unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” Two years later, in another 5–4 ruling, McDonald v. Chicago, the Court extended Heller to the states."

This of course is meant to be a lament, to me it is fantastic!

"That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left."

This hand-wringing is, of course, untrue. People who carry concealed weapons (people like Zimmerman not withstanding) are not out to "patrol the streets". They are simply prepared in the unlikely event that they are involved in a violent crime.

Violent crime is continuing its decades-long decline. In those terms, civilian life continues to get better and better.

When good people stand up to bad people, this is not an act to be mourned, but an act to be celebrated.

"The Bill of Rights, drafted by James Madison in 1789, offered assurance to Anti-Federalists, who feared that there would be no limit to the powers of the newly constituted federal government. Since one of their worries was the prospect of a standing army—a permanent army—Madison drafted an amendment guaranteeing the people the right to form a militia. In Madison’s original version, the amendment read, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”"

But, of course, there were several drafts of the second amendment, and in the end, the founders enumerated the right of the people to keep and bear arms, not the right to "form a militia". Moreover, the right to keep and bear arms was specifically enumerated to the people, and not the states, nor the states' militias.

I should probably be skeptical of the author's account of history but I'm willing to go along with it pretty much at face value, as it seems fairly factual from what I know.

Regardless of what transpired to make the NRA form it's legislative action branch in 1975, I'm glad that it has been around to protect the second amendment. They've done a great job. As the author notes, "Between 1968 and 2012, the idea that owning and carrying a gun is both a fundamental American freedom and an act of citizenship gained wide acceptance and, along with it, the principle that this right is absolute and cannot be compromised."

The NRA is a huge, huge reason for that.