NRA Was Not Always So Fanatically Opposed to Any Regulations on Guns

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Second Amendment to the Bill of Right/Constitution of United States of America, 1789 

"The Gun Lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies – the militia – would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires."

– Warren Burger, Conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice

When most people these days think of the National Rife Association (NRA) in recent decades, they tend to think of a small band of gun fanatics. The two most visible individuals from the NRA in the past three or four decades have been the late Hollywood actor Charles Heston, and Wayne LaPierre. Maybe certain words and images, such as Heston holding up a gun and declaring, "from my cold, dead hands."

They champion a version of interpreting the second amendment that seems to go beyond what is actually stated. Instead of looking at what is said and how it is said, they seem almost to interpret the second amendment as a carte blanche for all American citizens, at all times and under all circumstances, to bear arms as a constitutional right. Nothing about a well regulated militia. Nothing about systematically shooting down (no pun intended) any restrictions or background checks or anything that polls reveal most people seem to agree are reasonable measures on restricting access to guns.

These days, one of the most popular counterarguments to sensible gun control laws focused on mental health. People who make this argument essentially say that it is not guns that kill people, but people that kill people. I guess that is an argument, but of course, it is not a particularly impressive one. In fact, it feels disingenuous. Yes, people kill people, obviously. But the easy access to guns makes mass murder a whole lot easier, and thus, more likely. Frankly, this country's track record for the past few decades now serves as a glaring example of this reality. We have more guns than ever before. In fact, we keep hearing that there are more guns than people in the United States today. There are more guns here and now than any other country in history has ever had. 

Yet, less than one-third of Americans actually report owning a gun, while less than half of Americans (44 percent, according to a 2020 gallup poll) live in households that guns. Simple math clearly implies that some people own multiple guns, and we all have heard about some gun fanatics who own rather unbelievable arsenals of weapons. The Las Vegas shooter a few years back was just such a man. 

To me, gun ownership seems related to fear. People who own guns might not like to state it in such a way, but they are clearly fearful. Some seem outright paranoid with sometimes wild conspiracy theories about a tyrannical government with an itchy trigger finger looking for any excuse to finally clamp down on all of our constitutional rights. Paradoxically, it is many of these same people who quickly relate this problem to a mental health issue who also use their paranoia as their rationale (if that's the right word) opposing any kind of government regulations or government run healthcare, which in turn prevents healthcare costs from lowering. I surely hardly need to remind anyone by now of something that we all have heard over and over again: that the United States has, far and away, the most expensive healthcare system in the world. We Americans pay the highest cost, and our privatized healthcare system is at least every bit as bureaucratic and inefficient as any other healthcare system in the rest of the industrialized world. Often, we hear brutal stories of people being denied the healthcare that they need, because they cannot afford it, and health insurance providers refuse to cover them. Another thing that we have all heard only too much is that the United States stands alone among industrialized country with thousands and thousands of people facing bankruptcy and losing everything because they cannot afford healthcare. 

So their own arguments as to the problem with excess gun violence in this country underscores another problem that they themselves also refuse to bend even a little to fix: the lack of accessibility and lack of affordability of adequate, much less good quality, healthcare. 

Here's the funny thing: it was not always like this. The NRA actually used to champion responsible gun ownership, and backed reasonable measures to gun ownership if there was just cause to think that someone might pose a danger. All of that changed just a few decades ago. Since then, the NRA and their frankly fanatical, often cult-like following have systematically (and sometimes violently) opposed anything or anyone that they believe might pose even reasonable restrictions to gun ownership. I suspect that the second amendment was a driving force for many of those thousands of Americans who stormed the Capitol building last year.

Take a look at the article below, which documents how the NRA changed from a fairly reasonable organization, to it's current incarnation as a fanatical fringe organization that realistically serves as a "special interests" lobbying group in Washington. I heard that one Washington lawmaker has been given over one million dollars by the NRA over the years. This is a topic that I will try and explore in the near future, with another post. For now, again, please take a look at the links below, from which I took the statistics used in this blog entry, and which help put the problem with gun violence in this country into a little better focus:

How the NRA evolved from backing a 1934 ban on machine guns to blocking nearly all firearm restrictions today Published: May 25, 2022:

https://theconversation.com/how-the-nra-evolved-from-backing-a-1934-ban-on-machine-guns-to-blocking-nearly-all-firearm-restrictions-today-183880

What Percentage of Americans Own Guns? BY LYDIA SAAD

https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx