The National Rifle Association claims to do some worthwhile work. It teaches people how to shoot, care for and safely store firearms.
Those are about the only worthwhile things it does, and if you think about it, they don’t really matter much. Even if there were no NRA, responsible gun owners would know how to shoot, care for and safely store firearms, and teach their children accordingly. It isn’t brain surgery or rocket science. Only the NRA would have you believe it’s a big deal.
The NRA probably knows it’s not a big deal. What is a big deal for the NRA is to block any sort of reasonable gun control legislation. In that effort, it does nothing for target shooters, hunters or people who want a firearm to protect their homes and families, because nobody in any position of potential authority over such matters objects to firearms for those purposes.
Nor does it do anything to protect the Constitution. The Second Amendment doesn’t mention assault weapons. The mass murderers and potential mass murderers whose right to own assault weapons is so zealously protected by the NRA aren’t part of any militia.
The NRA leadership says the appropriate response to the tragedy in Newtown is to put an armed security officer in every school in America. Fine. Then maybe the NRA will take the money it uses for lobbying against reasonable gun controls and give it to local school systems to help pay for those thousands of additional security guards. But it isn’t going to do that. Instead, it will continue to use its resources to try to assure that a mass murderer will have easy access to a weapon with which he could commit mass murder before an armed security officer could stop him. …
In fact, since the NRA does so much real, bloody harm and so little practical good, maybe it’s time for everyone who cares about public safety and the safety of children to stop paying dues or otherwise supporting the NRA. Just get rid of it. America would be a safer, saner place without it.
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