“The Guys with Guns Make the Rules”

Wayne LaPierre, Chief Executive Officer, National Rifle Association

Or take this little exchange at a hearing of Senate Judiciary Committee on January 30, 2013:

DICK DURBIN (D-Ill): Mr. LaPierre, I run into some of your members in Illinois and here's what they tell me, "Senator, you don't get the Second Amendment." Your NRA members say, "You just don't get it. It's not just about hunting. It's not just about sports. It's not just about shooting targets. It's not just about defending ourselves from criminals," as Ms. [Gayle] Trotter[, senior fellow with the Independent Women's Forum] testified. "We need the firepower and the ability to protect ourselves from our government--from our government, from the police--if they knock on our doors and we need to fight back." Do you agree with that point of view?

WAYNE LAPIERRE: Senator, I think without any doubt, if you look at why our founding fathers put it there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny.

Although the vast majority of Americans are really clustered around the political center, advocates from right and left seem to embrace a mythology that the majority of Americans are on their side. We are indeed becoming a nation of immigrants and minorities, who in the aggregate currently are a much, much larger demographic segment than socially conservative white traditionalists. But somehow, American-born governor (whose parents emigrated from India), Bobby Jindal (R-Louisiana) believes that as a member of clear ethnic minority himself, he can convince the GOP ultra-right wing that he understand and represents their interests. Perhaps, but if Bobby can’t get his way through the gerrymandered ballot box, he seems to be suggesting that it may be necessary to overthrow those left wing Fascists (a bit of an oxymoron, I admit) in Washington.

I’d elaborate, but Governor Bobby does it so much better than I ever could. Speaking in late June at an three-day annual conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group led by longtime Christian activist Ralph Reed, attended by more than 1,000 evangelical leaders, Jindal said: “I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States, where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren… I am tired of the left. They say they're for tolerance, they say they respect diversity. The reality is this: They respect everybody unless you happen to disagree with them… The left is trying to silence us and I'm tired of it, I won't take it anymore.”

Take a good look, a really good look, at the assault rifle pictured above (the infamous Bushmaster - AR-15). It has been used in several mass killings, most notably the Sandy Hook massacre that took the lives of 26 people in December of 2012. It’s not a hunting weapon. It’s a bit much as a weapon for home defense. But man, if you need to take out a look of people who disagree with your political points of view, and you really think they are destroying everything you believe in, it is really a great weapon of choice. Oh, and it is legal in a whole pile of American states! Read the above. Look at the gun. Figure out what folks who want assault rifles really want to do with them.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the marketing arm of the American small arms manufacturing industry (aka the NRA) seems to be creating an even scarier world where the left might just be forced to get guns to defend themselves from the right?!