Whoa, that was close! The National Rifle Association came dangerously close to shooting itself in the foot recently with a common sense editorial it posted online.
The group of rootin’-tootin’, bullet-spittin’, doctrinaire, guns-everywhere extremists finally saw something that even it considered too extreme. In Texas (naturally), worshippers of the Glorious Gun God have taken to shouting out their ideological absolutism in coffee shops, museums, chain restaurants, and other public places by having a dozen or more of their congregation walk in together with shotguns, assault rifles and other weaponry strapped onto them. “Any gun, anywhere,” is their message, expressed in an unsubtle, don’t-mess-with-us swagger.
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“Scary,” exclaimed the NRA editorial, calling the macho show counterproductive to the cause of gun rights, adding that such peacocking is downright “weird.” That is, of course, a sane response. But sanity is not comfortable turf for gun dogmatists, and the NRA was quickly hit with a barrage of fire from its own ranks, plus an explosion of rage from gun groups that are – believe it or not – even gunnier than the NRA. So the big, bad, never-surrender rifle organization quickly threw in the towel, recanting its momentary lapse into sanity, and cravenly blaming some unnamed lowly staffer for the incident of ideological impurity.
So, apparently, you can expect to see newly-sanctioned NRA gun strutters parading into cafes near you. But let me ask this: How would those strutters react if a band of African-Americans or Latinos strided into one of their cafes, armed to the teeth?
This is Jim Hightower saying… I’m with the President on this one: “There’s no reason,” he said, “why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” Oh, that wasn’t President Obama. It was Ronald Reagan.
“Much to its chagrin, NRA said something sensible,” Austin American Statesman, June 8, 2014.
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