If you're the kind of person that hates labor unions because they spend too much time protecting people they shouldn't and put their own interests above the good of others then there are a few things you might want to know about the NRA.
Rather than act as an advocate for responsible gun use and fight for reasonable solutions that reduce the number of gun deaths they have become an organization that supports nearly unlimited access to any and all guns. Here are a few examples of what the NRA has fought for recently.
- The NRA has made is easier for convicted felons to have the right to own firearms reinstated
- The NRA is planning on suing the Tucson Police Department to stop them from destroying guns that they acquired as part of a buyback program.
- The NRA is attempting to repeal a Virginia law which would weaken the states background check requirements.
- Even though 100,000 guns are "stolen" from gun dealers ever year the NRA has made sure that the ATF cannot require dealers to keep a simple inventory of their guns.
- The NRA helped secure immunity to liability for gun manufacturers which has not afforded to knife makers, car makers, alcohol manufacturers, video game designers, film makers, and all of the other industries the NRA use to deflection attention.
- The NRA blocked any attempts to computerize the sale of guns making it so the ATF can't use computers to trace a gun. They also made it so the ATF can't do more than one spot inspection at a gun dealer.
- While the NRA has demanded a national database of individuals with mental illness they have successfully fought against a national registry for gun owners.
- The NRA has helped to make sure there has been no director of the ATF for over 6 years and that the number of ATF agents is at a four decade low.
- The NRA helped craft a law that requires the FBI to destroy background checks within 24 hours - a move the FBI claims "would allow 97 percent of criminal buyers to escape apprehension".
- The NRA has made it possible for individuals to avoid FBI background checks by fighting to keep the gun show loophole.
On top of this the NRA has erroneously decided to point the finger for Americans gun violence problem at Hollywood while hypocritically dedicating a wing of their museum to glorify the guns used in Hollywood movies.
The reality is that the NRA has gone way beyond being an entity that just protects the second amendment rights of "good guys" to a group that has put the survival and spread of their organization as their top priority regardless of the "bad guys" that are helped by their efforts.
The best example of this is their insistence that more guns are the only way to prevent gun violence despite evidence to the contrary. This is like Hostess claiming that the only way to reduce the obesity problem this country faces is for people to eat more Twinkies.
So when the NRA doesn't get the first invite to discussions on how to reduce gun deaths while preserving the second amendment, it’s not because the media, the government, and left wing nuts are out to get them. It’s because the NRA's own actions show that this is a mantel they no longer carries.
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