Uh-huh.
Posted on 04/21/2004 11:24:52 AM PDT by beaureguard
There is a reason I am not a member of the National Rifle Association. It's not that I dislike firearms - quite the opposite is true, actually. The loaded musket next to my bed is a decent enough testament to that. It's not that I dislike hunting, either; I've spent many an hour killing, dragging, gutting, skinning, processing and eating animals in my day. I agree that there are few deterrents to crime more potent than the Second Amendment, and I can cite many examples where gun ownership may have saved someone's life from a criminal attack. Heck, I even like Charlton Heston.
So where do we differ? It's quite simple: Politics. The NRA is organized, operated and staffed by a bunch of Republican nitwits, starting with its titular head, Wayne LaPierre. He may be the only person on Earth with a "French-sounding" name whose jackboots would be licked by fawning conservatives, who would no doubt wait in line to do so. The NRA and the GOP have been engaged for so long in a lustful and symbiotic affair that all lines have been blurred when it comes to America's heritage relative to weapons of mass production.
Last Saturday, at the NRA's 133rd annual convention (held in Pittsburgh), the oily Dick Cheney was presented with a vintage flintlock rifle, courtesy of LaPierre and his ultra-partisan cohorts. The vice president took the occasion to lash out senselessly at Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, saying the Massachusetts Senator's "approach to the Second Amendment has been to regulate, regulate, and then regulate some more."
From an outsider's scope, it seems that John Kerry probably knows a hell of a lot more about guns than Dick Cheney ever wanted to know. It was Kerry, after all, who picked up an M16 and went off to fight for his country. Cheney had the opportunity to do the same thing, and avoided military service with all his might (as did Karl Rove, who manages the re-election campaign for Cheney and his professional dummy, George W. Bush). So when it comes to "regulating" the sort of military-style weapons that are currently banned in this country - stemming from a mass murder at a schoolyard in, of all places, Texas - Kerry might know a thing or two about how they work.
This is another arena in which politics divides Americans, a fundamental point on which we should all be able to agree. Our Constitution grants us the right to bear arms, in accordance with the traditions that drove the British from our shores in the first place. Yet it is the Republican Party today which most resembles the Redcoats of yore, what with the Patriot Act forcibly violating our Fourth Amendment rights every day at airport terminals all across the United States, and with the imprisonment of Jose Padilla lighting fuses under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
As sporadic as those Constitutional violations may seem to conservatives (who refuse to heed the advice of Ben Franklin, that those who choose security over liberty deserve neither), it is their very behavior toward their fellow Americans that will forever keep me at odds with the NRA. Need an example? Of course you do. From the Associated Press's coverage of the convention:
Earlier in the day, Tom Mauser, whose son, Daniel, was killed with an assault weapon in the Columbine High School killings five years ago, tried to enter the convention hall, seeking to urge Cheney to support extending the assault weapons ban... Mauser was turned away by a security guard as several conventioneers applauded. A couple of conventioneers yelled, "Get a life" and "Vote for Bush."
While he's likely no more worried than I am about Bush's chances for re-election, I'm confident that Tom Mauser would desperately like to "get a life" - or rather, to get one back. He was probably thinking about the life of his son, whose murder was a direct result of someone having unfettered access to a Tech 9 semi-automatic pistol, which found its way into the hands of a pair of seriously deranged teenagers, who killed and wounded scores of innocent youths in Littleton, Colorado.
The NRA, naturally, was principled enough to hold one of their little conventions in Denver just a few dozen hours after all the blood had been mopped up. I'm sure there are a good many NRA members who were horrified by the disgusting, asinine catcalls hurled toward a man who had lost his child to gun violence.
Still, there's no point in talking sense to some people about this issue. Some people simply do not have the capability to listen, or to reason, or to think. It surely must be a coincidence that they all happen to be registered Republicans.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, if only those psychos hadn't had access to a Tech 9, then they would have been deterred from ever doing anything bad to anyone. [/sarcasm]
Several members of the Senate are in this category.
Stating one little truth, while not stating the rest of the important facts surrounding that truth, is the same thing as a lie in my book.
Yeah, that hit me like a ton of bricks, too.
This idiot doesn't know what he's talking about. The banning of "military-style" weapons didn't stem from any schoolyard mass murder in Texas. He may be thinking about the one at a daycare center in California.
As for the author's ludicrous assertion that Kerry's extensive 4-month military adventure in Viet Nam provided him with more firearm knowledge than Cheney and Bush, there is NO QUESTION who is better to defend our second amendment rights or who I would rather have covering my back in a firefight.
What an idiot. The Patriot Act isn't violating anybody's fourth amendment rights; and it would probably be a good idea to pick someone other than a traitor who conspired to smuggle a dirty nuke into the country as his poster-child for innocent victim of GOP human-rights abuses.
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