He will never support you. Ever.
Bowing to the NRA will, if you are a Democrat, gain you nothing. Sen. Mark Pryor voted against expanded background checks after the Newtown murders and
the NRA still endorsed his opponent; Alaskan Sen. Mark Begich voted against it and still faces anti-reform attacks from his opponent because Begich voted for Obama's judges,
and those judges are probably anti-2nd-Amendment anyway.
After the vote, many commentators—including some liberal ones—argued that Begich and Pryor had done the politically prudent thing, even if it meant contributing to a big setback for a key issue in the Democratic agenda.
I remember that. It was hilarious. But what it didn't take into account was the NRA's status not as a "gun rights" organization but as a gun-funded conservative conspiracy and propaganda machine (Knockout games! Collapse of society! United Nations coming to spay and neuter your pets!) that just happens to think an obsessive devotion to their sponsor's products is the only solution to each and every problem America faces, real or imagined, and that includes the problem of what to do about so many unstable people with guns.
“Quite frankly, [the endorsement of Pryor’s opponent] is a precedent that’s going to help us,” said Everitt. “You have a guy like Pryor who tried to bend over backwards to do everything for the NRA and then was turned around and screwed by them. It’s going to change the dynamic in the future. If they’re going to turn around and screw you and endorse the Republican, what’s the incentive to stand with them?”
This ought to be a blazingly obvious thing, and yet it's still somehow not. Think back to any recent NRA convention—they're peppered not just with Republican speakers, but with a particular brand of
hard-right conservative Republicans. Watch any
Wayne LaPierre speech, and it's indistinguishable from a World Net Daily or Allen West or Michele Bachmann conspiracy rant. Wayne may be the only person left in America who still lives in fear of the supposed "knockout game," and he peddles it regularly as part of the NRA warnings against the "urban" dangers coming for your family. It's a lily-white organization that
premises itself on the dangers presented by criminal blacks and drug-running Latinos and terrorist Muslims. It's a
paranoid, proto-survivalist group that constantly warns against trusting
the government to protect you when you should be stocking up on ammo and waiting for the day when government fails.
If you haven't checked in on the NRA in the last thirty years, in other words, you may have missed out on the news that the NRA is now fully stocked by nuts. It's not a "gun rights" group, it's a conservative anti-government group with a gun fetish. If you're a Democrat you can load yourself up with as many assault rifles as you like and they're still not going to endorse you because You. Are Not. Conservative.
Get a clue, politicians. At least do yourself the favor of watching a tape of the people you're so deathly afraid of.
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