The National Ruthless Association

“[One] of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative, in a 1991 interview about the NRA interpretation that the Second Amended was about individual gun rights versus any association with a militia

The National Rifle Association moved from its role as a promoter of gun safety and reasonable gun control laws to a post-1977 transfiguration into a clear gun-manufacturers’ lobby… promoting the maximum distribution of firearms with the fewest regulations and scrutiny possible. They have been wildly successful, a force that few of those elected to Congress will oppose, a power that also extends down into state legislatures and governors’ mansions across the land.

They were even able to ban the use of federal funds (under the so-called “Dickey Amendment” passed in 1996) to gather and report gun homicide statistics. Transparency is something that the NRA cannot tolerate, because just about every gun homicide statistic gathered by prestigious research groups contradicts about every single tenet espoused by the NRA, a reality reflecting official government statistics in other countries as well, like the numbers after the 1996 mass-shooting (35 dead) and resulting gun ban/buy back in Australia.

No matter how you look at it, outside of military conflicts, guns are able to inflict vastly more fatalities than any other form of weapons (explosives and other weapons of mass destruction, particularly in the Western world, are incredibly less-frequent because of severe legal restrictions). In the United States, for every justifiable civilian gun homicide, there are about 30 out-and-out unjustified gun homicides (murder, manslaughter, accidental discharges and suicide).

The October 6^th FastCompany.com (from writer Jeff Beer) provides a down and dirty summary of recent NRA history: “Hard to believe it’s from the same organization that helped draft the first federal gun controls in 1934’s National Firearms Act, and 1938’s Gun Control Act. That spot is from a year-long campaign called ‘Freedom’s Safest Place,’ that included a repositioning of the brand’s video content as ‘NRA TV.’ It’s a strategy that positions the organization as an alternative news outlet in a time of growing mistrust of mainstream media news sources, particularly among the NRA’s base.

“To get a sense of how we got here, let’s take a look back at the NRA’s evolution through 40 years of advertising… In 1977,  a group of conservative libertarians, led by Harlon Carter, took over the leadership of the NRA, and began publicizing the threat to gun rights by focusing on hunters. They favored an interpretation of the Second Amendment that emphasized individual, not just militia, rights to bear arms.” At first, as the above quote from Warren Burger suggests, the Supreme Court was unwilling to support that view, but as time passed and as the NRA pressed its cause across media, the social receptivity to that new and pretty obviously incorrect interpretation of the Second Amendment (above).

“The early 1980s saw the organization move to expand its membership by touting its diversity, the ads featured celebrities, kids, and people of various ethnicities under the banner ‘I’m the NRA.’ [see ad above]… In 1987, the NRA launched its first campaign focused on crime, using the same fear-mongering tone that the Republican Party used to help George H.W. Bush defeat Michael Dukakis with ads like ‘Willie Horton.’ Here are a few of the headlines featured in the NRA’s print ads at that time: … ‘Should you shoot a rapist before he cuts your throat?’… ‘If you’re attacked on your porch, do you want your neighbors to be opposed to gun ownership or members of the NRA?’…

“In the early 90s, the NRA evolved its Us vs. Them theme, portraying the government as a 1984-like threat to individual freedoms. During the 1992 election, Bill Clinton campaigned against George H.W. Bush by pushing both the Brady Bill, which tightened restrictions on handgun sales, and a national ban on assault rifles. The NRA reacted by warning against an encroaching police state…

“Fast-forward to the year after Sandy Hook, as President Obama introduced proposals looking to ban automatic weapons, limit magazines to 10 bullets, have universal background checks for all firearms buyers, and increase scrutiny of mental health patients, the NRA’s LaPierre said to get ready for the ‘fight of the century.’ Part of that was this 2013 ad, which led many to accuse the NRA of unjustly bringing President Obama’s kids into the fight. White House spokesperson Jay Carney called the spot ‘repugnant and cowardly.’” FastCompany.com. To many NRA members, a “police state” is simply one with which they have severe political disagreement; it is thus OK to use their guns to overthrow an unpopular (to them) government. Us vs. them. Wow!

Eventually, even the Supreme Court rather dramatically dropped any pretense that the “well-regulated militia” language in the Second Amendment mattered in two 5-4 decisions in District of Columbia vs. Heller (2008), followed by McDonald vs. City of Chicago (2010), clearly just focused on affirming an individual’s right to own guns. The conservative justices, pretending to be “strict constructionists” of the Constitution effectively ignored the plain meaning of the language of the Second Amendment itself, including the obvious legislative history behind it. The pro-gun tide pushed hard by the NRA finally found traction in the law.

In a world of “alternative facts,” a self-righteous NRA rails against anyone positing statistical proof that their basic assumptions were and continue to be wrong, dead wrong… against anyone opposing their self-imposed commitment to maximum guns sales with minimum controls. I’ve blogged about all the relevant mass killings in the past few years, most recently the carnage in Las Vegas, where the mere choice of automatic or semi-automatic weapons (with oversized magazines) multiplied the death toll manifold. And after every such shooting, guns sales skyrocket over fear that the United States might actually get some common sense and implement obvious limitations on such outrageous weapons. Don’t worry, gun buyers and wannabe mass murderers, there’s really nothing in the way of serious regulation in the cards. The NRA will stop that effort, dead in its tracks.

“[The] NRA’s annual lobbying budget is around $3 million, or about a 15th of what the National Association of Realtors spends. The N.R.A.’s biggest asset is actually the voice of its members. UCLA law professor Adam Winkler told Surowiecki, ‘N.R.A. members are politically engaged and politically active. They call and write elected officials, they show up to vote, and they vote based on the gun issue.’…

“On [October 5^th], NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to blame the organization’s opponents for politicizing the [October 1^st Las Vegas] tragedy… ‘This Hollywood crowd makes billions a year, every single day, teaching gun irresponsibility to the American public,’ said LaPierre. ‘The hypocrisy is beyond belief. They criticize me for saying people ought to be able to protect themselves from murders, rapists, and robbers, and then they make billions depicting every night those same situations. The hypocrisy coming out of Hollywood is beyond belief. The American public doesn’t buy into it.’

“A week after the mass shooting in Sandy Hook, in which 20 children and six adults were killed in an elementary school Newtown, Connecticut, LaPierre sent a series of e-mails to members warning them that anti-gun forces were going to use it to ‘ban your guns’ and ‘destroy the Second Amendment.’ He also held a news conference in which he said, once again, that the media, movies, and video games were more to blame for the violence than guns.” FastCompany.com.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the number of Americans killed by domestic and foreign officially-labeled “terrorists” is a drop in the bucket compared to civilian gun homicides… unless you also include the NRA as group fomenting domestic terrorism.