Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [c--w--r] at [ssd.intel.com] (Rich Cower)
Subject: NRA Off Target - editorial Mesa-Tempe Tribune 5/19
Date: Sat, 21 May 1994 12:56:04 GMT

The following is the text of an editorial by Vin Suprynowicz which
appeared in today's (May 19) Mesa-Tempe Tribune.

OFF TARGET
NRA shirking its role in defending Second Amendment

>From Friday through Tuesday, the board of directors of America's largest
gun-control organization will hold its annual meeting in Minneapolis.

The Eastern press likes to ridicule the National Rifle Association as a
radical group that opposes even "sensible" gun control, parodying them in
editorial cartoons and TV sketches as overarmed hunters desperately
trying to prove their male bravado by slaughtering defenseless Bambis
with fully-automatic machine guns.

In fact, the NRA routinely endorses gun-grabbing politicians.  The NRA
has actually helped write many pieces of gun-control legislation.  And
the NRA has invited the systematic amputation of the Second Amendment by
adopting the doomed "legitimate sporting weapons" test.  Voila: America's
largest gun-control organization.

Aaron Zelman, executive director of the Milwaukee-based Jews for the
Preservation of Firearms Ownership, has been invited to speak to the NRA
board in Minneapolis Monday.  "They've gotten some real bad advice on
strategy," he says.  "They've been suckered into talking about sporting
purpose of firearms, which is language that comes from the 1928 Nazi
weapons law.  It was designed to justify systematic confiscation.
Senator Thomas Dodd had it translated from the German by the Library of
Congress and adopted as the Firearms Act of 1968.

"The purpose of the Second Amendment is to have an armed citizenry that
can overthrow a government gone bad.  If the NRA isn't going to say that,
it'll have a hard time justifying its continued existance," Zelman says.

The JPFO points out that the groundwork for every 20th century genocide,
from Armenia to Russia to Nazi Germany to Cambodia, has been laid through
a law disarming the civilian populace.  This is the outfit that recently
ran a full-page ad in the _Washington Times_ (after it was rejected by
_Roll Call_, the federal government's idea of a newspaper), featuring a
portrait of Adolf Hitler giving his Nazi salute and urging "All those in
favor of gun control raise your right hand."  Members are welcome
regardless of ethnic background; call 414-769-0760.

Sandy Harmon, former state chair of the Nevada Libertarian Party, has
been a life member of the NRA since 1968.  Yet when Harmon ran for the
Nevada Legislature is 1988 and again in 1990, the NRA rejected his
request for an endorsement, explaining the group had to endorse non-NRA
members as "the most viable candidates."

In 1988 they spent millions of member dollars supporting Republican
candidates who promptly turned around and voted to ban the import of
so-called 'assault weapons' because they have no 'legitimate sporting
purpose'," Harmon says.

"The most recent example was when the NRA pushed to have a five-year
limit on background checks put in the Brady Bill, after which it will
shift to an instant check," says Mike Dugger of the Phoenix-based group
The Second Amendment is For Everyone (SAFE).  "That was how they made it
acceptable for Republicans to vote for the Brady Bill, which is gun
registration.  It's gun control."

But the NRA's full-time Washington staff argues such tactics are
necessary to maintain credibility among middle-of-the-road pols.

"So much for that theory," snorts Harmon in Nevada.  "Our guns are almost
gone."

Larry Pratt, of the Washington-based Gun Owners of America, probably the
NRA's biggest competitor for gun-owner support (though with only 100,000
members to date), has an even better example:

"In 1992 in a Maryland congressional race, a man named Roscoe Bartlett
decided to take his first shot at political office.  He was a hard-line
Bill of Rights defender who everyone knew couldn't win.  He was just a
nice old man.  His opponent was a Democratic state senator named Thomas
Hattery who had voted for gun control.  He had voted to register
semi-automatic rifles.  But the NRA endorsed Hattery.  Not only did they
endorse him, they worked for him actively.  They said they endorsed the
Democrat because he was sure to win, and they have to back winners to
have access in Congress... Well, we worked for Bartlett, and the funny
thing is, Bartlett won."

"The NRA is weak, cowardly, and timid," says science fiction writer L.
Neil Smith of Colorado, whose latest novel, _Pallas_ (Tor Books, $23.95
hardcover), is a libertarian paean to handgun ownership and the liberty
it guarantees, even in outer space.  "It's their weakness that's got us
here."

But maybe NRA members will elect a slate of board members with stiffer
spines in Minneapolis, I suggest, including Smith's friend, Washington
gun lobbyist and _Guns & Ammo_ columnist Neil Knox.

"Every five years the NRA goes through a fake palace revolt and they
claim it's all going to be better now, but they never say what they ought
to say, which is 'No, the Constitution says you cannot restrict firearms,
and if you don't listen to us we're going to do our best to put you in
jail'," Smith responds.

The Feinstein Amendment banning certain one-shot-per-trigger-pull rifles,
couldn't have passed without the votes of 38 GOP congressmen, cast with
the blessings of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, Smith points out.

"So the only hope America has right now is the Libertarian Party, which
is the only party whose platform expressly opposes 'all laws restricting
or controlling firearms',"  Smith figures.  "It's a frail hope, but so
was the Continental Congress.

(Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the _Las Vegas
Review-Journal_.  His column is syndicated in the United States and
Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, PO Box 4422, Las Vegas, Nev.
89127-4422)