Causes of Our national Gun Crisis, Part 4

Until the mid 1970s, the NRA was a useful organization, promoting responsible and sustainable hunting, game conservation, and gun safety. Then under the leadership of Charlton Hesston and Wayne La Pierre, it quickly morphed into a snarling beast pushing of all kinds of guns, false claims of unwarranted government control, and a false interpretation of the Second Amendment. It has become a vicious, rapidly metastasizing malignancy claiming thousands of lives and threatening our democratic body politic. And if has taken advantage of all the developments cited in Part 3 to do so. It is the top reason for our gun crisis.

The NRA started out as anon=profit service organization; but changed to something entirely different. It began peddling a false interpretation of the Second Amendment, along with the equally false lie hat the federal government wanted to start taking away our basic civil rights, especially our “right to keep and bear arms.” It deliberately began a designed campaign to create fear and mistrust among the poorly educated and extreme libertarians. It used that fear and mistrust to advocate for gun proliferation. Realizing what a boon that meant to them, the gun industry poured many, many millions of dollars into the NRA. It also began to take contributions from Republican donors and amassed contributions from the libertarian right. In effect, it became a political bundling organization for political groups willing to be corrupted in their lust for power. That political group willing to be corrupted proved to be largely the Republican party.

The NRA hen used those funds to lobby politicians, particularly Republicans It poured money into gifts, lavish trips, direct campaign contributions to political candidates, and contributions to the Republican party, It funneled dark money into PACs. And it used “tax-free” funds to give their chief and other employees huge salaries and off-the-record percs.

As a result, Republican politicians have largely sold their morality, their patriotism, their real concern for people down the river. For fear of offending the most offensive elements of their base, they dare not speak out against the NRA or any NRA supported stance. Likewise, they have consistently blocked any meaningful legislation dealing with the gun crisis. As result, the number of mass shootings grows by the day, and the number of gun deaths in our country is more than eight times that of any other country and up to 100 times that of most developed countries. In effect, today’s Republican politicians sacrifice thousands of American lives simply so that they can maintain their political offices and partisan power. That is sheer corruption, sheer acquiescence to evil.

These are the causes of our national gun crisis. The next segment with deal with real solutions.