Over the past months I have been interested in the gun debate. You can see this in some of my previous posts. I am sometimes concerned that I pay too much attention to it and that by doing so – and then writing about it – I become just another one of those people who seem to have nothing better to do than piss and moan about something. Perhaps going on and on about anything a little too much is obsessive or fanatical. Religion, diets, exercise, pets, kids, sports, cars, books, science, guns… you name it. There is something out there that you’ve heard too much about and the same people seem to spew information on a topic to the point where you simply want them to shut the hell up or please, please talk about something else for a change. We are not all you and we do not all follow what you believe or think about with the same passion as you. For those who want to read something else I bitched about or some pictures I have posted, scroll back now and you can skip this.
Friday, May 3rd, I watched the NRA Annual Meeting speeches. I did it on purpose. I did it because I wanted to hear what these people have to say. Unfortunately, they have nothing new to tell me. I can’t help thinking that whatever it is that they do say is nothing more than the same old re-hashed diatribe they’ve used in the past. Also, unfortunately… it seems to work as we’ve recently seen as the gun legislation FAILED to pass Senate vote. The NRA considers this to be a victory. The only thing I hear that is new is whatever new twist or talking point they add to drive their point home. I should back up there for a second and say that sometimes an actual point is not made at all. The talking points are mentioned, the 2nd amendment is at the core and if you don’t agree with what they say… you are un-American. Please, one of you NRA people, give me a reasonable argument for why universal background checks and closing the gun show loophole is really a bad thing.
Things should be simple but the 2nd Amendment is not as simple as the part where “shall not be infringed” is written. The NRA speakers at this convention go as far as saying that if there is a change in gun regulation it COULD POSSIBLY mean that there would be a national registry and then the tyrannical government WILL POSSIBLY come and take your guns.
Nowhere in any proposed gun legislation is that the goal. They might as well suggest that the Earth’s orbit could be altered and place us in the path of an oncoming meteor. It is that ridiculous. Also, you sometimes have to question what they tell you. Glenn Beck gave the Stand and Fight speech at the end of the convention. Several times he would suggest that you go out and do your own homework.
I did.
At some point in his speech, Beck discusses Charles Manson. According to Beck, “Charlie Manson had his gun taken away. Charlie Manson didn’t use a gun. He killed with a knife.” Well, I can’t find any information on when, if ever, anyone took a gun away from Manson unless it was back when he was incarcerated prior to the Tate/LaBianca murders. What I do remember and find to be the case if I look it up: Manson did not kill anyone himself with a gun, a knife, a rock, a bat or even with a bad joke or food poisoning. At his instruction, “The Family” did the actual killing. As for using knives, yes, they did and it was very gruesome. As for no guns, we find the statements that “Manson roused the sleeping Leno LaBianca from the couch at gunpoint” and “Watson struck him (aspiring screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski) over the head with the gun multiple times, stabbed him repeatedly, and shot him twice” and “As Watson leveled a 22-caliber revolver at Parent, the frightened youth begged Watson not to hurt him, claiming that he wouldn’t say anything. Watson first slashed at Parent with a knife, giving him a defensive slash wound on the palm of his hand (severing tendons and tearing the boy’s watch off his wrist), then shot him four times in the chest and abdomen.”
So, Glenn… what was that all about? For someone who claims to speak nothing but the hard cold truth, I have to question your facts there.
As I watched and listened to the various speakers, I began to recognize the similar talking points in each presentation.
Add to all of this the idea that this is all for your children, to protect your children, to protect and preserve 2nd Amendment rights for your children’s future. My wife took her son to lunch over the weekend and at some point asked him if he was following the gun debate. His answer: “What’s the point?” I’m willing to bet that there are quite a few people out there who feel exactly the same way. We hear about some mass shooting and then another and another. We hear about the Boston bombing. The days and weeks go by and for most of us, our lives go back to normal. We go to work. We get back into our regular routines. We start to not think about those awful things as much as other items become the news of the day and then when we hear someone continue to go on and on about the gun issue we wonder why they can’t just give it a rest.
The point is this: The ability to own and possess a gun is not something that the government is planning to take from you. If you choose to own and operate a gun, you can do that. The NRA and all of the people funded by the NRA like every one of these speakers at the NRA convention want to continue to make money, be funded and live a wonderful life but do so by continuing to deliberately mislead you by suggesting that a tyrannical government is coming for you. They have Armageddon scheduled for a couple of days from now and the only way you can prevent this is to DO THE PATRIOTIC THING and arm yourself for the sake of your children and your neighbors. Anything less makes you almost a criminal. Of course, that is bullshit. Add to this that you’ll forget about how these douchebags at the NRA will continue do this day in and day out and eventually someone else will decide to make their point using a gun in a school, a movie theater or a shopping mall.
One of the other points that Wayne LaPierre tried to make was that he imagined that a lot of Bostonians had wished they had a gun during the search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Perhaps a few people thought that way. Perhaps a few were already prepared for the event. I’ve heard some of these radio people suggest that it was a government lock down and that people were cowering behind closed doors during the search. I did not see it like that at all. What I did see was the largest instant community effort ever. You did not hear about people running out to arm themselves. You did not hear anything about how the police had to stop looting or any other kind of uprising. I did see an image of a police officer bringing milk to a family who needed it. A million plus people united with local law enforcement to allow the trained professionals to find this guy. I think it was a success. The only people I hear talking about whether or not Bostonians should have been armed are the people at the NRA.
