The Problem With the N.R.A.

We've Got Your Problem Right Here: Wayne LaPierre

Ana Marie Cox went to last week's National Gun Manufacturer's Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis and put her finger on the core problem with the NRA:  it's leadership, specifically its craven loon of an executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, and those around him:

"I ask you," LaPierre grimaced at the end of his litany of doom. "Do you trust this government to protect you?" 

This is not one of the items the membership voted upon. Indeed, Wayne LaPierre's confidence in making this question rhetorical is one of its most frightening aspects, though of course it's his prescription that truly alarmed me: 

"We are on our own. That is a certainty, no less certain than the absolute truth – a fact the powerful political and media elites continue to deny, just as sure as they would deny our right to save our very lives. The life or death truth that when you're on your own, the surest way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!" 

You cannot defend this as anything other than the dangerous ravings of a madman. LaPierre’s description of the world is demonstrably untrue, and not just in concrete, objective terms. To cite just one example: crime rates in the US have been falling for 20 years – a statistic that some gun rights advocates brandish as proof of the selectively defined cliché, “more guns, less crime.” Just as troubling is LaPierre's internal inconsistency about what it means for NRA members to be "on their own". [snip]

Anyone backing with full faith the argument made by LaPierre likely made up their minds long before they ever stepped on a target range or fired a round. The problem with the NRA lies with the people who lead it. 

Cox spent time "undercover," meaning she was able to interact with some of the 70,000 (!) attendees, many of whom she found to be friendly and sensible (perhaps because they felt unthreatened in a sea of people of like interests).  But it was LaPierre, with his dystopian, eliminationist, anti-government ravings that set the overall tone of the gathering.  LaPierre, with the backing of the gun manufacturers that run the NRA (while purporting to be the voice of the sportsman), has turned the NRA into a far-right wing of the Republican Party:  an absolutist, unceasing fear machine telling whoever will listen that [fill in the blank] is comin' to getcha, so you better be packin'!  Of course, it's not just LaPierre and his coterie;  if he didn't exist, the gun manufacturers would just go out and hire another cast of sociopathic creeps.

So as long as the gun manufacturers value profit uber alles, vicious loons like LaPierre will be around doing their dirty work.  Do any of you see that equation changing?

BONUS:   Jon Stewart covers all the crazy (video and transcript here).