Agenda

It’s as if the NY Times had a conclusion, tried to find evidence to support it, failed, but published it anyway:

Beyond Guns: N.R.A. Expands Agenda

The N.R.A., long a powerful lobby on gun rights issues, has in recent months
also weighed in on such varied issues as health care, campaign finance, credit
card regulations and Supreme
Court nominees

In the health care debate this year, for instance, the N.R.A.’s lobbyists
worked with the Senate majority leader, Harry
Reid, to include a little-noticed provision banning insurance companies from
charging higher premiums for people with guns in their homes.

The N.R.A. worked out a deal last month exempting itself from a proposal
requiring groups active in political spending to disclose their financial
donors. Its push this spring for greater gun rights in the District of Columbia
served to effectively kill a measure — once seemingly assured of passage — to
give the district a voting seat in Congress.

With a push from the N.R.A., a popular bill last year restricting credit card
lenders came with an odd add-on: It also allowed people to carry loaded guns in
national parks. And the gun lobby put potential supporters of the Supreme Court
nominee Elena
Kagan on notice this month that a vote for her would be remembered at the
ballot boxes in November.

The N.R.A.’s expanding portfolio is an outgrowth of its success in the
courts, Congressional officials and political analysts said. With the Supreme
Court ruling last month for the second time since 2008 that the Second Amendment
guarantees an individual the right to have a gun, the N.R.A. now finds that its
defining battle is a matter of settled law, and it has the resources to expand
into other areas.

The NRA had success in the courts? What national level gun rights cases has the NRA won recently? Neither Heller nor McDonald were NRA cases. I suggest you ask the lead attorney for both those cases, Alan Gura, what he thinks of the NRA getting credit for those wins–I would advise that you be prepared to treat your ears for blisters afterward. The NRA certainly supported the decisions (as far as they went). But the organizations that deserve the credit in those cases are the Cato Institute and the Second Amendment Foundation.

The NRA’s defining battle is settled law? The right to keep a handgun in your home for self-defense was the defining battle for the NRA? Not even the GOA sell the NRA that short.

Would it be considered “expanding their agenda” if the NAACP or the ADL pushed through laws that prohibited their members from being discriminated by insurance companies, enabled them to visit National Parks, opposed Supreme Court nominees hostile to them, and fought laws that inhibited their lobbying?

The reporter claims the NRA is expanding their agenda but only supplies facts that support the conclusion they are pursuing their agenda–protecting the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. As we all know, being a bigot means the facts don’t matter when they conflict with your agenda. And here the NY Times clear shows they have an agenda and they are bigots.

Update: Sebastian has similar thoughts.

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