I have been a life member of the NRA for about 45 years. As such, I am at a loss to explain why Barack Obama votes for firearms control every chance he gets, yet has probably never touched a firearm in his life, never has done any target shooting, and was never in the military.
But, I am equally perplexed by the NRA's pre-failed attempt to elect John McSame.
The NRA says they are not party-oriented. Instead, they support candidates based solely upon their Second Amendment voting record. So, the NRA is going to spend 40 million dollars to in an attempt to defeat Obama this fall. This type of thinking, though, demonstrates a level of inflexibility and, frankly, partisanship, which smells strongly of old fish and old Republicans.
The NRA's original charter was based on teaching kids how to be safe with firearms; just like the Boy Scouts. Now they are simply wasting money that could be better spent on education.
Gun control isn't about guns. It is about control. We pro-gunners, who spent our careers carrying firearms to protect the public, and are often hurt in the process, don't believe that a "War on (anything)" has ever been successful. America's attempt to 'control' something usually just leads an inflation of the problem, or generates an even more disastrous situation.
Learn the lessons of history, folks. All Prohibition did was create a huge, organized criminal empire. The War on Drugs did the same thing. The War on Terror has merely trained those kids at the TSA to suspect every American of being a terrorist, and to treat us so. It is now impossible to conveniently fly on an airplane.
The president's War on Terror, the actions he's taken to control terror, is exactly what the terrorists would want an American president to do. Bush has made himself a dictator, ("The Decider," he calls himself); he has decreed that he is above the law; he spies on Americans to insure he remains the dictator; he's ruined our economy.
Good job, Mr. President. Your attempt to 'control' terror means that your legacy is written in lies and torture.
Likewise, gun control laws have not helped America become safer; they have not kept guns out of the hands of people who might do harm with them. Almost every American who wants a firearm has one. Some are bad guys. The good guys outnumber them by about 10,000 to one. It's the good guys who abide by gun control laws, not the criminals.
Instead of spending millions of dollars to defeat Obama, a candidate who at this point seems unbeatable, the NRA should try spending that money on firearms education, in accordance with its original charter.
Send Obama a nice firearms collection; invite him to spend a week at the FBI or Secret Service training academies; ask him to talk to kids who are on their High School Shooting teams. People are always afraid of things they don't understand. Let's open up America's minds to understanding.
Just as a Democratic president doesn't spell disaster for pro-gunners, a Republican one doesn't guarantee the preservation of our rights.
When I came back from Vietnam, there was no such thing as PTSD; if you had been sprayed with Agent Orange -- Hey! It's a war zone. But, veterans were courted by police and fire departments; we had already seen the worst of the worst, and we could do our job amidst chaos. Now it's a different story. Bush just passed a new law that prevents any veteran who asks for counseling, or any veteran who can't keep track of his or her finances, from owning a firearm, because he or she might have PTSD. That's how we thank them for volunteering to be in the military, for sending them to Iraq over and over again until they certainly do have PTSD. In order to be adjudged a 'prohibited person' a veteran doesn't have to do anything violent; they just have to ask for counseling at a VA center. Once a veteran requests counseling he or she can never own a firearm again. That's crazy. That's Saddam Hussein crazy. That's Idi Amin crazy.
Look it up. The Veteran's Disarmament Act. Why wasn't the NRA spending 40 million dollars to stop that? That's America, folks. Tyranny in action. Common sense is down for the duration.
Obama '08. Something has got to change.