One Comment on Good for you!

Stutz on Sat, 6th Feb 2010 11:04 am


I’m what you might call the seemingly very rare “leans-liberal gun nut.” This is mostly because I don’t see gun ownership as necessarily a political stance (for me it’s mainly just the awesomest pastime on the planet), and because I don’t relish the thought of casting my lot with the kind of angry-about-everything, anxious-about-the-gays, science-denying folks who gave us 8 years of Dubya — which created the fertile ground for the country to get understandably excited about a change, and in turn allowed those same folks to turn around and make fun of Obama for trying to be a “savior”, which is both unfair and childish. Not that anyone here necessarily fits that description (you seem to be the thoughtful type of conservative), but I’m just saying.

That intro probably hasn’t won me any sympathy. But I think I do have a valid critique of the NRA. Don’t get me wrong: I have no desire to see my collection of firearms become illegal one day, and I do think we absolutely have a right to own them in this country and to defend ourselves and others. But I don’t want to join the NRA precisely because I hate that they’re the “500 pound gorilla”, the only real game in town. I hate that their paranoid rhetoric and insidious lobbying are considered my voice, that they speak for me, because I am a gun owner. I hate the implication that it is the NRA (and not the 2nd Amendment) that guarantees my gun rights, and that I am some kind of fence-sitter at best, or traitor-to-the-cause at worst, for NOT joining. I hate that people who don’t own or particularly care about guns think that a true depiction of gun owners in this country is nut-job NRA members, epitomized by that image of Charlton Heston holding a rifle over his head and proclaiming “…from my cold, dead hands!” And the constant assumption that liberals hate your guns and want to take them away drives me nuts, when a reasonable person ought to admit that the gun-control movement is, in general, a woefully misguided but mostly sincere and well-meaning effort to curb violence. I have a distaste for the NRA in pretty much exactly the same way I have a distaste for the ACLU: I agree with their goals, but their methods and rhetoric are often ludicrous and totally off-putting. If you think the ACLU is a bunch of jerkoffs, does that mean you don’t support the 1st Amendment and freedom of speech?

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