Jennie Young • Today at 8:15 AM
I understand why the NRA has for decades now supported and driven intractable opposition to any degree of gun control. The organization was founded to be, and for many years focused on being, a valuable community resource for responsible gun ownership, emphasizing training and safety until it was lured into present form by the wealth and manipulative power of lobbying. Now it primarily serves greed and power, advocating for the least restrictive limits on gun purchases, enabling their important backers, the weapons manufacturers, to maximize profits.
The NRA has mastered the fear mongering of threats to gun ownership to whip up their base, which is actually dwarfed by responsible gun owners, for political action at crucial times, and has generated frenetic periods of gun purchase and stockpiling. They operate federal and state legislators with the skill of a puppeteer, with money and fear of what its political clout can do, leaving politicians fearful for their jobs.
I’m sure they regret the loss of innocent life when some misfit, mentally ill or just supremely angry and vengeful, uses his handy rapid-fire, high-capacity weapon to shoot up a classroom of 6-and-7-year-olds, theater and concert goers, church congregations, or teens and teachers in high schools. I hope the regret is for more reasons than the black mark on their image. One of their more extreme adherents said on The Federalist.com, “the 2nd Amendment is worth dying for,” calling the mass murders “sacrifices enabling liberty-loving Americans to maintain their option of armed rebellion.” Though I’m on the rebellious side myself, in our present context that sounds sick to me.
Could the NRA have met its match? Who’d have thought a group of grieving teens, jolted awake by the horror visited on them by a vainglorious coward, would rise up and steal his glory? Who’d have thought a group of teens could so effectively rattle the NRA to the point its highly polished defenses aren’t so shiny this time, and making it reveal the ugly underside to its tactics?
They may have discovered a path to fracturing the money connection between the weapons lobby and politicians. If they don’t give up, and it doesn’t seem they have any intention of that, they‘ll succeed. Politicians recognize in these young people a growing and powerful voting block, more savvy than any group about the power in social networking. They have both time and energy, and enormous public-appeal and support. They trust in their message and don’t seem the type to “drop out” and hope. That’s why politicians are recognizing their cozy arrangement with the NRA might have limits.
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