The NRA Is More Interested In Selling Assault Weapons Than Protecting the 2nd Amendment

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In 2004 the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) enacted in 1994 reached its sunset date and expired without being renewed at the behest of the NRA, and it was curious why an organization that boasted their advocacy for firearm safety and hunting was adamantly opposed to banning weapons created for the battlefield and not duck hunting or home protection. Since then, the NRA actively promoted assault-style weapon ownership and spent no small sum of money paying congressional representatives for their votes to oppose any gun safety laws the NRA considered a direct assault on the United States Constitution Republicans are loathe to acknowledge as the law of the land. Throughout the NRA’s lobbying efforts to arm every man, woman, and child in America, reasonable Americans wondered if the NRA had an extrinsic reason for pushing the proliferation of assault weapons in the population, and if they were concealing a different intent from their stated reasons of protecting the people’s right to defend their homes and shoot birds.

When reports that a new gun advocate was taking the reins of the NRA from outgoing president David Keene, it appeared it was just another gun fanatic no reasonable American would want living in their immediate vicinity, and it appears no American except neo-confederates would welcome incoming National Rifle Association President Jim Porter into their neighborhoods. Porter is not the run-of-the-mill gun-zealot, he is a Southern fanatic who is still smarting because the South did not prevail in the Civil War, and in 2012 he appeared to reveal the NRA’s ulterior motive in arming the population with assault weapons, and it is not to shoot pheasants or for home security.

When Porter was addressing the New York Rifle & Pistol Association in 2012, he assailed President Obama as a “fake president” and emphatically labeled Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly un-American.” The racial element to Porter’s rant became evident when he called the war to end slavery the “War of Northern Aggression.” Porter reiterated to New York gun fanatics that even though they “might call it the Civil War, we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south,” and it is an odd statement considering that it was the Confederate Army that began the Civil War by attacking and seizing a United States military installation at Fort Sumter. The resulting war killed at least 750,000 Americans and decimated the South’s infrastructure and obviously, Porter is disappointed at the outcome.

Porter explained that the NRA was started because “some Yankee generals didn’t like the way my southern boys had the ability to shoot,” and that they started the NRA “to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm. And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our most greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so that when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it.” Thus, the NRA’s push to arm Americans with assault weapons is to train civilians in the use of standard military firearms so they are “ready to fight tyranny,” because if Americans are called to fight for their country, it is apparent to Porter that the United States military is ill-equipped to train one-time civilians in the use of the standard military firearm to use under the aegis of the United States military; so the NRA will train them to fight tyranny.

The idea that the government under an African American President is tyrannical did not originate with Porter’s 2012 rant; the teabaggers began crying tyranny shortly after the health care reform debate began in 2009. Since then, a quick perusal of the Internet will garner thousands of neo-conservative, teabagger, and gun fanatic articles decrying the tyranny of the Obama Administration with no basis in fact, but for disaffected revolutionary sycophants and angry neo-confederates, facts are irrelevant to their cries of tyranny. The teabagger standard, the Gadsden flag, is the revolutionary war symbol of opposition to tyranny and it is no coincidence that the incoming NRA leader made it quite clear that the organization’s new direction is to train civilians in the use of military firearms to fight tyranny Porter appears to claim is the purview of the “fake president” conservatives spent over four years asserting is stealing Americans’ rights to unrestricted ownership of weapons fashioned after “the standard military firearm.”

It is possible the NRA missed Porter’s neo-confederate rant against the North’s war of aggression the rest of the nation knows as the Civil War, but the new message cannot be any more direct and threatening to the security of the United States. And Porter’s call to arms for civilians to arm themselves with replicas of the standard military firearm to be ready to fight tyranny cannot be misconstrued as anything other than the real drive behind the NRA’s rampage to arm the entire population. Gun fanatics claim assault rifles are simply “long arm rifles” used for hunting and home protection, but they directed the American Legislative Exchange Council to create templates for states to ban restrictions on machine guns and altering semi-automatic assault weapons into fully automatic “standard military firearms.”

The incoming NRA president is a bad omen for the new direction the NRA is bound to take as they ramp up opposition to gun safety laws and push for every American to stock up on assault weapons and inordinate amounts of ammunition that belie their use as personal protection and shooting rabbits. That Porter is still angry about the outcome of the Civil War and referring to 1871 military leaders as “Yankee Generals” who “didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot,” and his number one goal of training civilians to use standard military firearms to fight tyranny of “a fake President” is a real danger considering the assault weapon frenzy and fear mongering that Americans’ liberties are under assault. Porter is living breathing proof that the NRA and their gun-crazed supporters threaten the security of every American not lusting for civil, racial, or revolutionary war, and there is little doubt that America is inching closer to violent conflict, and front and center are Republicans blocking any chance at reining in the proliferation of military-style weapons or the angry gun zealots ready to use them.

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Rmuse

Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.

Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.

Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.