Some months ago, probably at the time of one of our several mass murders during 2012, I recall speculating -- admittedly without knowing details of the organization's internal history -- that the NRA had clearly been hijacked at some point by a gang of extremist zealots who turned it into a political lobbying arm for their personal distorted worldview, and eventually for the Republican Party. That was the only possible explanation for how it had changed since my youth, when I recalled it was a fairly typical "interest group" organization with a constructive and apolitical agenda of firearm safety and better conditions for gun sports.
It seems my guess was right, as today's review by several journalists outlines in considerable detail. I recommend it as essential reading, particularly for those hundreds of thousands of NRA members who don't share the outlandish and anti-legal views of the organization's leaders.
The article is also useful because it puts the spotlight on the NRA's absolutist tactics, which (to my mind) are dictated more by the ur-reptilian brains of a handful of leaders than by any real interest in the Second Amendment. In fact, those of us who think there is more to life than guns should be thankful for the Second Amendment, which protects us from the NRA because it does at least force us, as a nation, to deal with guns in a legal and constitutional framework; the NRA, despite all its bluster about protecting #2, would prefer to do away with it.
Lastly, the trends in the organization's development that are detailed in this piece can only bolster my view that the NRA's intransigence and its descent into an unapologetically political single-party lobby will accelerate its driving itself into obsolescence. As with the party with which it has allied itself, the NRA will need to reform or die. The choice is up to its members.
That's not to say there isn't room for an organization with a mission to understand, defend, and monitor our rights under the Second Amendment. It's just that the NRA isn't it anymore (if it ever was). The new super-PAC founded by shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords and her husband may help pave the way to a more rational national discussion of this whole issue.
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