The NRA is a Dangerous Terrorist Organization

"In a 1995 fund-raising letter, the executive vice-president of the N.R.A., Wayne LaPierre, called federal law-enforcement agents “jack-booted thugs,” and suggested that “in Clinton’s administration, if you have a badge, you have the government’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens.”

"In Texas, where the police ambush occurred, an open-carry advocate last year urged the killing of state legislators if they do not approve a more relaxed policy. (“They better start giving us our rights or this peaceful non-cooperation stuff is gonna be gamed up . . . We should be demanding [Texas legislators] give us our rights back, or it’s punishable by death. Treason.”)

"At the annual N.R.A. convention last year, the board member Ted Nugent said, “Our government has turned on us.” Stopping short of calling for violence, he urged members to focus their ire on “the bad and the ugly.” He said, “It’s a target-rich environment. If it was duck season, there’d be so many ducks, you could just close your eyes and shoot ’em.””

Evan Osnos discusses the dangerous contradictions of the NRA in the New Yorker A must-read. Worth sharing with a few elected representatives.

The point Wayne Lapierre was making ought to be applied to the NRA, whose members, unlike our police and federal agents, have never sworn to respect anyone’s rights:

“...if you have a gun, you have the NRA’s go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens."

How should we categorize the NRA? What kind of organization are they? A dangerous one. A powerful one. Is it a religion? If it is it’s a fundamentalist and intolerant religion.

What terms apply?

Calling for the violent overthrow of our democratically elected government… what’s that called?

Rationalizing the murdering of police officers… what’s that called?

Urging people to shoot their elected representatives like ducks… what would you call that?

If the NRA were an organization of black Americans they would be shut down and the leaders would be prosecuted for incitement to violence––at least. But more likely they’d be prosecuted for complicity in murder. Having a white face makes the NRA immune.

The American public is being held hostage by the NRA. Being heavily armed with high-capacity fast-firing military style weapons gives them the right and the power to tell everyone else to shut up and sit down.

The NRA holds America hostage like a repressive religion. Not almost like, exactly like. They intimidate and threaten us the way fundamentalist regimes do all over the world. Not only is their gospel holy and absolute, it is compulsory. In Khomeini’s Iran people were afraid to oppose the regime because they might be jailed or deported. In this country we are told that opposing the NRA means you deserve to be gunned down.

Joke. Nugent and his gun-worshiping friends are just kidding.

Men with machine guns telling jokes are not telling jokes.

Another Sad Story About Gun Rights

“It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semiautomatic handguns.” ~Christy Sheats, Texas gun advocate who murdered her two daughters with a gun over the weekend.

Here is the story in TIME.

Here's the story in the Houston Chronicle.

A lot is unclear about this family birthday party that turned violent. The one thing that's clear is Ms. Sheats' handgun killed the family it was supposed to protect. Having a gun in the home increases the risk that the people living in that home will die from gun violence. In other words, guns don't tend to protect the people who own them, they tend to kill them.

This article by Susan Perry, the health reporter at MinnPost, is worth reading for a better understanding of the lethal effect of guns on their owners.