Guns, gun rights, the NRA

From an RBB discussion:

I think, Ken, that you know some things about some things -- but there's very little point in arguing any more with you personally on things of which you are obviously ignorant: guns, gun rights, and the NRA.  You take your cues from that component of the "liberal family" that's obviously increasingly effete as the years pass. [Hence, it often lashes out into McCarthyism.]  But, for others, I will again reiterate:

The NRA is a single issue organization: individual gun rights.

Its political endorsement policy is simple:  if an incumbent gets an A on gun rights, it gets the NRA endorsement.  Since many Demos wound up in the gun control camp during the Clinton period, NRA currently endorses more Republicans than Democrats.  But it endorses many Democrats.  About two months ago, I posted an ABC piece which discussed heated Republican attacks on the NRA for endorsing many Democrats in the 2010 elections.  No one on RBB commented on that.  You probably didn't even bother to read it.

Here's an interesting case in point.  When the Democratic Nebraska senator, Johnson, good on gun rights, was running for re-election a few years ago, he was opposed by a very conservative Republican.  My son, Peter of Lincoln Journal Star, followed the campaign closely.  A key NRA vice president traveled with Johnson all over Nebraska endorsing him at every stop.  That was consistent with the NRA political endorsement policy.  The Demos are slowly losing their enthusiasm for gun control and there'll be more NRA endorsements of Democrats in coming years.

Dave Kopel wrote a good piece which was based directly on my article involving armed community organizers in the Deep South during the Movement era.  As I pointed out yesterday, the article mentioned the left wing SCEF, my activism, and the fact that my article had initially appeared in the "revolutionary" journal, Against the Current.  This obviously didn't disturb the NRA which placed the Kopel piece [and thus me etc] on its NRA/ILA website and kept it there for at least 18 months.  Doesn't sound very right wing to me.  Few "liberal" websites would ever do that.  By the way, who in Hell decides what's right wing and left wing?

Eugene McCarthy was a Life member of NRA and so is Howard Dean -- and many other genuine liberals.  And, obviously, "radicals" like myself are in its ranks.

Again, if anyone wants to listen to the effete twaddle from anti-gun outfits, that's their business.  But don't pretend to know about guns, gun rights -- and the organization which, in the face of intense opposition, has successfully protected  a key component of the Bill of Rights.  For the record, I like ACLU also and, thanks to Cornet bringing it to my attention, the Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.  We sent money to each the other day.

Hunter Bear

Our very full webpage on guns and gun rights -- including the Kopel article -- is http://hunterbear.org/BLOODSTAINED%20TRAIL.htm


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis 
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Expanded and with more photos in June, 2012.)
 
For the new, just out (11/2011) and expanded/updated
edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- 
with a new and substantial introduction by me.  We are now at 
the 50th Anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of
1962-63.  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

And see My Community Organizing Mini-Course -- brimful
of practical, down to earth how-to material from decades of
personal experience. Updated into 2012:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm