It infuriates me when I hear “reporting” and editorializing about “the powerful Gun Lobby” and “the intransigent Gun Lobby” and sometimes even “the evil Gun Lobby,” as if we were a handful of rich fat cats in safari shirts sitting in a mahogany-lined room full of leather, stuffed animals, and cigar smoke plotting how to increase our profits by increasing crime. We are the people! We are the 80 to 90 million people in this country who own guns and the tens of millions more who do not own guns, but fully support our right to do so.
Jeff Knox
December 17, 2011
I Am The Gun Lobby
[This excellent rant should become a classic. Please read the whole thing and remind those who refer to the NRA as “the gun lobby” that we are the gun lobby.
H/T Say Uncle.—Joe]
If they want to fight against the gun lobby, or the gun industry, that’s fine, but its not going to be who defeats them.
I have no problem with my enemy exposing his flank.
Actually, Weer’d, that’s pretty much exactly what happened in 1999-2000 with the Clinton regime’s S&W deal, followed by a boycott that turned the tide against the anti-gun forces.
If the gun lobby is so powerful, why was there any questuon about how Heller would be decided?
Nor am I quite sure how we went from Washington DC High School having a Women’s Rifle Team as of the 1930’s to “gun-free” (unless you plan to shoot people) mentality.
“…a handful of rich fat cats in safari shirts sitting in a mahogany-lined room full of leather, stuffed animals, and cigar smoke plotting how to increase our profits by increasing crime.”
I listened to Radio Moscow (U.S.S.R.) back during the Cold War, and to Radio Havana (broadcast in English of course, and delivered in perfect, “favorite uncle” American accents). The bigoted caricature above reads exactly like those coming out of the communist world propaganda machines decades ago, to describe the free world in general and America in particular. Now it seems that the same sentiment has been fully adopted and embraced by some in the U.S. Then again, it has always been embraced by some Americans, hence the problem.
They can’t attack human rights openly and honestly, nor describe their end goal of absolute power, so they create straw men to attack, pretending to stand up for that which they seek to destroy.
Thanks for the compliment Joe.
I have to give my brother Chris some of the credit as he refined the rant substantially for me.
Did you ever see the movie “Runaway Jury”?
It was a good movie, well played and well put together, but with a very bad premise and message – crime victim sues gun companies and clever anti-gunner gets on the jury and turns them to deliver a crushing blow to the evil gun companies and their Gun Lobby cronies…
Their depiction of the gun guys is what I see every time I read a press report about the Gun Lobby, and I think that’s what a lot of people see as well. We need to correct that image and make the uneducated understand that the Gun Lobby is their next-door neighbor.
Jeff
http://www.FirearmsCoalition.org