NRA ramps up fear mongering machine at Chicago convention

Wayne LaPierre at CPAC

The National Rifle Assn. (NRA) took its, “Let’s scare hell out of our somewhat daft members so we can squeeze more money from them” act to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that was held in Chicago last Friday.  It is interesting that the NRA’s head lunatic, CEO Wayne LaPierre, should choose this location to rant and rave over how President Obama and other progressives want to take away his precious guns.  They don’t.

But current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel thinks Chicago should have a gun registry, an idea that is as old as the senior Richard J. Daley’s administration in the 1960s.  A gun registration law was considered by the state in 1965 and Daley called for the state legislature to pass it again in 1966, saying, "There can be no question that the great increase in juvenile crime has been accompanied by a similar increase in the possession of guns."  It was voted down.

Richard J. Daley

Senior Daley’s son, Richard M. Daley, in spite of the Supreme Court’s ruling in McDonald v. Chicago, which struck down the city’s ban on handguns, remained solidly in favor of somehow controlling gun ownership in the city.  The younger Daley was a part of New York Mayor Richard Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns and hosted their convention in October of 2006 in Chicago.  I bring this all up because I wonder what Richard J. would have thought of LaPierre?

My gut tells me that the senior Daley would have had some choice words for the head gun nut, while organizing his precinct captains, possibly even the Chicago police force, to insure “minimum” interruptions at the conference site.  I can say this because I lived in Chicago during the Mayor’s regime. 

Josh Horwitz, Exec. Dir., Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), writes in the Huff Post, “The NRA is not only a sponsor of the conference, but also hosting a panel entitled, ‘Defending Self-Defense: The Liberal's Shadow War on Second Amendment.’”  George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and the subsequent uproar over the stupid Stand Your Ground Law, has provided the NRA with all the ingredients necessary to perpetuate its fear mongering machine.   

Horwitz points out how ridiculous the NRA tirade is over maintaining its gun rights by pointing out that, even though the Democrats—they’re supposed to be for some kind of gun control—control the White House and the Senate, the gun worshippers have gotten just about anything they wanted in the last several years.  But you can’t blame it all on the progressives with a GOP that has been anti-Obama on every issue the President has presented in the last three years.

CSGV video of LaPierre bellowing at CPAC:

Wayne LaPierre, the head parasite at the NRA who makes $970,300 annually by acting like a maniac over gun rights, and his overpaid minions work laboriously to protect their gold mine and generate more power from the group’s 4.3 million members, most of which don’t have a clue what is really going on at the organization.  LaPierre found a potential cash cow when he took over in 1991 and has milked it ever since to the delight of an often addled membership. 

As former NRA lobbyist, Richard Feldman remarked, "They [aren't] interested in actually solving problems, only in fueling perpetual crisis and controversy. That [is] how they [make] their money."



LaPierre ready
to go into action



LaPierre’s Chicago cry in “The NRA’s Circus of Fear” is, "We have nothing to fear but the absence of fear," designed to muddle the minds of a pathetic bunch of members who cheer at anything this screwball says.  I can see LaPierre now as the circus ringmaster under the big top with his whip commanding all 4.3 million members to jump through the hoop.  They do, and the NRA’s master of ceremonies walks away with that normal smug, arrogant look on his face.

Horwitz closes with, “The NRA's ‘Circus of Fear’ depends on misinformation and myths to generate attacks on politicians who have the gall to address the gun violence that continues to destroy families and communities every day in America.”  That’s right.  The NRA doesn’t have the balls to negotiate, because this would obviously lead to facts that would completely undermine what this gang of zealots has been spewing out for years.  Propaganda and lies.

Josh Horwitz’s CSGV also provides the following site for anyone wishing to take a closer look at the motivations and records on a host of issues with guns being only one: MeetTheNRA.org.

Gun nuts claim gun control advocates espouse an American Holocaust

This charge comes from a site called Front Porch Politics who says they believe in America.  Maybe, but as it turns out in this post and others like it, it appears to me that they believe in a dark America shaded by radical conservative causes.  As an example, another recent post was, “Barack Obama’s Lawyer Admits Birth Certificate is forged.”  I Googled the title and came up primarily with a bunch of wacko sites that appear to have little credibility.  Sites like TeaPartyTribune.com.

The blame for this accusation goes to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) and its Exec. Dir. Josh Horwitz who is quoted as saying: “The concept of a ‘monopoly on force’ might sound foreign or even frightening to Americans that take great pride in our revolutionary beginnings, but it is the fundamental organizing principle of any political entity, including the United States.”  What could anyone find wrong with that with even a minimum trust in government?

But the Front Porch fanatics do by calling Horwitz’s statement “foreign” and “frightening,” then proceeding to rewrite the Revolutionary War to show why every individual in America should be allowed to own and carry a gun, anywhere they want, and with absolutely no training whatsoever.  With the gun worshippers it always comes down to that.  Don’t you brain dead people understand that we are no longer fighting for our freedom.  Like the Civil War, it’s over.

However, the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) has managed to embed in these peoples’ minds the fact that we are once again fighting the U.S. Government in a 21^st Century reenactment of the Revolutionary War.  We aren’t.  As an example, FP compares Josh Horwitz’s citing of Max Weber, a German political economist and sociologist as an example of extreme right politics because of Weber having been associated with Karl Marx.  So has Barack Obama which is also absurd.

If you want to see who Max Weber was, see it here on Wikipedia.  According to Wikipedia, Weber is often cited, with Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.  The gun craze phenomena can certainly be considered an integral part of modern social science.  Horwitz is focused on his belief that if the Constitution is working, and we must admit it is except when we consider Congress, peaceful means should be used.



Arizona immigration sweeps



Horwitz’s opinion was in answer to a tweet that asked the question: “So govt rounding up citizens based on relig/ethnic id would not warrant armd resistance if courts bless as constitutional”  They do this every day in Arizona, at least pertaining to Hispanics, and so far I don’t see the gun lobby’s militia coming to their defense.  FP, quoting an Examiner.com writer by the name of Kurt Hofmann, would have Latinos in Arizona take up arms to fight their battle.

Arizona’s anti-immigration mess is tragic, but at least so far they have elected to take the peaceful way.  And that is in spite of the Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s and Russell Pearce’s who alone could provoke a revolution.  FP states that we have a “sacred” duty to check our government; there goes that biblical connection again.  We do and if we don’t like what it does, we vote to change things.  That’s where the Constitution works and if you don’t like it, change it. 

And of course no article about guns could be complete without waving the 2^nd amendment in our faces.  FP says, “we possess a Second Amendment for a reason and it isn’t for hunting. It is for self preservation, for the protection of life and property and to keep tyrants in check.”  The last time I looked, we had a police department and the U.S. military to do that.  And where I come from they do it very well.

But here is a Front Porch statement that is alarming: “When they step outside of their bounds we must hold them accountable.  This is not that we take up arms against them every time they violate the Constitution. On most occasions, we simply seek to do it peacefully at the ballot box.”  It almost sounds like the initiation speech for a group of militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. Government.  Probably not but they bear watching.

Stories behind the mindless side of the gun rights movement

Sometimes you can’t resist illustrating just how far the marginally intelligent will go to attempt to prove their point that anyone should be able to own a gun and take it anywhere they want.  I question their IQ quotient because in a couple of the instances below, the people must be dealing with double digits or less.  If not, they are clearly a menace to society and should be under the observation of mental health specialists.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican (what else?) from Kentucky has placed his political support behind a gun group’s email campaign that has an image of a rifle pointed at President Barack Obama’s head.  It is funded by the National Association of Gun Rights (NAGR) based in Virginia, who also has bolstered the conspiracy, along with the National Rifle Assn. (NRA), about the alleged government plans to take weapons away from American gun owners.

Ladd Everitt, dir. of communications for The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, says that death threats against Obama are up 400 percent compared to former President George W. Bush.  Considering the complete ineptness of GWB’s administration, you might wonder if this is based on the fact that most guns are in the hands of conservative Republicans.  Either that or is there another underlying factor which centers on Obama being the first black president?

Trayvon Martin target

And then we have this crackbrained entrepreneur from Orlando, Florida who has come up with the ludicrous idea to sell targets for the gun range, made in the image of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager who was shot and killed by George Zimmerman.  Supposedly in a self-defense situation, Zimmerman was charged with 2^nd degree murder.  Even Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara said, "This is the highest level of disgust and the lowest level of civility."

What says even more about the gun nuts that bought the targets is the fact that they sold out in 2 days.  This scrapes the under-belly of the barrel of bad taste but is representative of a group whose priorities are so far out of whack that they cannot see beyond the barrel of their gun.  The National Rifle Assn. (NRA) has turned these poor souls into a lunatic fringe for their guns, convincing them they have the right to do anything they want with their weapons.

The targets were offered for sale on a popular firearms auction website and the sellers said they "support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug."  No mention of supporting Zimmerman’s case from the proceeds of the sales of the targets, rather, it appears that these slime-balls have just decided to profit off the death of this black teenager.  This incident provides perfect insight into the mentality of an extremely dark side of the gun rights movement.

Finally, one for the books.  With Mexico overrun with weapons, did you know that there is only one legal gun store in the country?  If you’re a Mexican looking for a gun, you must go to the one store that is housed on a military base run by the army.  That’s if you want to do it legally, because Mexico has some of the strongest gun laws in the world.  But if you want a weapon from the so-called black market, you look to the U.S. just like the drug cartels do.

The ATF estimates that at least 68,000 guns found in Mexico by their government have been traced back to the United States.  Now, did you know that there are 20,834 gun stores on the U.S. side of the Mexican/American border?  Coincidence?  With the weak gun laws in this country, these stores are free to sell to whomever they please and in quantity.  Not losing a step, Republicans and the NRA still oppose any laws resisting the sale of assault weapons in the U.S.

Added to the above, it was reported by the Brady Campaign that gun dealers “lost” more than 62,000 firearms since 2008.  Described as “A Criminal’s Delight,” they also report that gun manufacturers, the biggest supporters of the NRA, lost more than 16,000 firearms since 2009.  Pennsylvania leads the nation when it comes to guns missing from gun shops.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t Arizona.