Enter Stage Somewhere

Gummint, Politics, The Gun Thing

I see that the NRA has promised to “work with gun owners to swamp the first hearing of the Virginia Senate committee considering new gun bans”.

NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen told the Washington Free Beacon that the gun-rights group is mobilizing its members to appear at the first meeting of the Virginia Senate’s Courts of Justice on Jan. 13. The organization hopes that pressure from constituents will make newly elected Democrats, who helped the party capture control of the state legislature, think twice about supporting gun bans pursued by the state’s Democratic governor.

Uh huh.  Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but over the past three decades or so, whenever some state government has decided to crap all over the Second Amendment, the NRA has been more conspicuous in its absence than in its action.

I remember down here in north Texas, a long-established and much-loved gun range was being targeted by a housing development, whose new residents were aghast that there was a working gun range a whole mile away from their backyards.  So said developers put pressure on the TX legislators to declare the range a public nuisance / danger and force it to close.  As it happened, there was already a weak law on the books which prevented this kind of thing, but as it was a weak law (it’s since been toughened up) it required legal representation which the gun range couldn’t afford, and the Texas State Rifle Association couldn’t afford to cover, either.  So the TSRA appealed for help from the NRA but was told that the NRA had more important things to do with its money at the national level, and as such it was up to us locals to come up with the funds (from memory, the shortfall was just over half a million dollars, or fifty of Wayne LaPierre’s shiny suits).

The range closed six months later, bankrupted out of existence by lawyer’s fees;  despite raising a goodly amount (I donated nearly a grand, as I recall), it wasn’t nearly enough and so they just said “fuck it”, moved over fifty miles away into the boonies, and we all lost a fine range and an excellent little gun shop located on the premises.  Every time I drive past the place (now a nondescript strip mall standing between the road and the McMansions of the development), I want to toss bricks through the windows of every single one of the buildings.

If I were a cynical man, therefore, I would suggest that the only reason that the NRA is suddenly so interested in what’s happening in Virginia is because that’s where NRA HQ is located, and most of the guns in their basement museum would become illegal overnight and have to be either moved or handed in.

Not so fucking funny when it happens to you, eh, Wayne?

7 comments

  1. Old Wayne has spent about a decade, if not more, too much time throwing NRA money down the drain and the recent shift from Ak-Mac to Brewer just accerelerates the spin because good old Brewer who appears to be running the show is a long time Democrat, sanctioned lawyer, blood sucker in Dallas who sole purpose in life is benefit himself. Before the dust settles the NRA will probably owe Brewer so much in fees that he will end up taking over the building and selling off the collection of guns and then getting appointed to a high level government position if the Democrats ever win the presidency again.

    The NRA has annoyed me for years and that was when I had no idea how much rot was going on inside, leeches, termites, maggots, mold, mildew and dry-rot, when that happens it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.

  2. NRA took their sweet time even acknowledging the VA situation. VCDL has been all over it for two months with a big protest rally scheduled for lobby day. NRA then schedules their event the week before with no coordination. NRA is more concerned with the organization than it is with gun owners or gun rights.

    1. My thoughts exactly. When it looked like VCDL was going to get a large turnout (and headlines) the NRA jumped right in.

      “Which way did they go? Which way did they go? I am their leader and I must find them”

  3. If by some chance the VCDL manages to get some concessions from the gun-grabbers, the NRA will come in, start throwing elbows under the basket and promptly give them back.

    Then claim credit for “keeping the resulting laws from being worse than they turned out.”

    Then launch a fundraising campaign to “get these onerous laws repealed.” (Q: When was the last time they managed to do that?)

    FTNRA. They lost me forever when they endorsed Whorehouse Harry Reid over a viable Republican challenger because Harry got a few thousand dollars of tax money jarred loose for a gun range in Nevada. (Have you ever been to Nevada? 99 percent of the state is a gun range.)

  5. The NRA is very active in states, like my own, that don’t need Second Amendment lobbying. They are a money making organization that fights amongst itself. Gun Owners of America is a way better operation.

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