Dems & the NRA

[TexasBill]

74. Because the National Rifle Association became the Nuts and Rednecks Alliance

It wasn't 50 years ago, but it's been more than 40 years since I passed my NRA Hunter's Safety and Marksmanship courses and became a proud member of the NRA.

I am a current NRA member because I support the NRA Foundation, which is still about firearms safety, education and promoting the shooting sports. Federal law prohibits the Foundation from engaging in political activities and the folks in my area are adamant about it. You want to talk about firearms? They're all over that. You want to talk politics? Leave 'em at the door.

On the other hand, I think people leave the NRA because the NRA's political machine drives them out.

While I have an unbroken record of not donating to the NRA's Political Victory Fund, I get mailers at least every other week urging me to send money so that "We Can Defeat Obama." I didn't join the NRA to become a shill for the radical right and I have every intention of voting to re-elect the President. I also get the mailers about the nonexistent UN treaty that don't mention that any such treaty would have no impact on Second Amendment rights. I didn't join the NRA to have my intelligence insulted.

The reality is that, willingly or not, Barack Obama has done more for gun owners in about 3.5 years than George Bush and the Republicans did in the six years they held sway over the White House and Congress. In fact, he did more for gun sales than any politician in recent history, though not one bit of the hysteria turned out to be justified.

I came very close to quitting when a recent NRA national convention presented Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Oliver North as paragons of American values. A philandering sleaze who was the first Speaker of the House in American history to be censured; a fairly incompetent politician whose ignorance and malapropisms should have been as much of an embarrassment at home as they were abroad; and a former military officer who should have stood trial for treason. These were the NRA's draped-in-the-flag champions of freedom. The mental leap (plunge?) required to accept such bilgewater still astounds me. This is Kool-Aid deLuxe!

Make no mistake about it: I like guns and I really do believe that gun control has a proud, and unblemished, history of not producing the desired results. But I would willingly drop the NRA for an organization that would accept that as their brief and resist stuffing hysterical baloney down my throat. Maybe they could take over the NRA Foundation and return the whole group to its original purpose.