Whoa, Trigger! Slow down, hoss! On Sat, 15 Feb 2003, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
[snipped rant] > All sarcasm aside (yeah, right, me?), though, what _do_ you mean by a > "liberal version of the NRA?" Well, my tongue was partway in my cheek at the time. However, it would be nice to have an organization that, like the NRA, teaches gun safety and helps organize sporting & historical events and so on, but that, unlike the NRA (by which I mean its leadership chiefly, but also some of the rank and file), refrains from promoting the idea that any restrictions on gun ownership constitute a plot by the commies and the queers and the atheists to burn everybody's Bibles and turn America into a police state. (And yes, I know that not everybody in the NRA believes this. But Charlton Heston and Wayne La Pierre pretty obviously *wish* they all did.) Meanwhile, it would be nice if the far right-wing types who've been afraid of said police state for ages would recognize that such a threat can come from the politicians who've been pandering to them for years and make a fuss over things like Patriot II. (I guess a faith-based police state is OK.) And it would be nice if the Democrats would stop allowing themselves to be pigeonholed as the party that wants to take everyone's guns away. The existence of a liberal version of the NRA might help with that. (Personally, I think that guns are here to stay in America, and although I'm in favor of some restrictions on their sale and use, I think that the anti-2nd amendment crowd have a hopeless cause on their hands, and the Democrats need to stay away from that cause as much as possible.) IOW, it's not enough for liberals to demonize the NRA - we need to recognize that America is just the way it is and offer alternatives to NRA style politics that will help stifle the NRA's ability to fan the flames of "Gun control = commie queers stealing your Bibles and indoctrinating your children with Stalinism." So I agree that the "Guns are evil incarnate" attitude is stupid. A liberal version NRA - call it the Commie-Queer Bleeding Heart Rifle Association - would perform the positive functions of the NRA with respect to sport and safety without crawling into bed with the NRA's political bedfellows. I can see it now: promotional posters with the smiling images people of all color and creed and gender and sexual preference holding up their well-crafted American-made firearms -- with safety locks and what-not -- and a caption that says, "John Ashcroft's worse nightmare. As long as conservatives are armed, liberals can't afford not to be." PS - If an armed society is a polite society, why are westerns full of evil bastards? Marvin Long Austin, Texas Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Poindexter & Ashcroft, LLP (Formerly the USA) http://www.breakyourchains.org/john_poindexter.htm _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
