This article captures the truth about what the country owes to the National Rifle Association. After the criminal attack in Colorado, rational people came forward and kept the usual knee jerk reactions from capturing the day. The one group that did the most in this fight for the right of the people to keep and bear arms is the National Rifle Association.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78991.html
Thank you NRA, future generations of Americans owe you a great debt.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78991.html
No one can doubt the enormous clout of the NRA. But it comes about it the right way. It represents millions of members including lots of union members and rural Democrats. Its supreme act of influence is defeating officeholders in free-and-fair elections. And its signature victory over the past two decades has been to bring about a sea change in public opinion on gun control.
The NRA won the argument. Its influence is a function of its success in the art of democratic persuasion.
How successful? In the aftermath of the Aurora massacre, with the NRA taking its usual ritualistic beating in the press, the White House scuttered away from the slightest hint of support for new gun laws. Spokesman Jay Carney averred that the administration doesnt want new laws it only wants to enforce the ones already on the books.
Never mind that this isnt quite right. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder said the administration supports reinstituting the lapsed assault-weapons ban. It is, nonetheless, a sign of how far the cause of gun control has fallen.
In 1959, Gallup found that 60 percent of people supported banning handguns. Now, Gallup doesnt even show majority support for banning assault weapons. The case for gun control collapsed on the lack of evidence for its central contention that tighter gun regulations reduce crime.
Forty-one states have right-to-carry laws, up from 10 in 1987. Some 80 million people own guns, and about 8 million have conceal-and-carry permits. Yet violent crime is at 40-year lows in the U.S. If the proliferation of guns were the cause of violence, the country would look like Mogadishu.
The nations highest-profile champion of gun control is a mayor who presides over a metropolis where guns are all but prohibited though hundreds of people are killed by them each year. If that hasnt made New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stop and think, nothing will. After Aurora, he challenged President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to be as unreflective and preening as he himself is on the issue.
Thank you NRA, future generations of Americans owe you a great debt.