NRA: The new face of the American right?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

De National Riffle Asssociation - In Nederland zouden we zeggen de
wapenlobby, maar dat gaat in de USA toch niet helemaal op.

Nu stonden de rijen 5 dik om het stadion heen om toch vooral maar wapens
en munitie te kopen zolang het nog kan.

In januari heb ik over soortgelijke situaties gelezen. De munitie was toen
al een week uitverkocht. Voor onze begrippen ongelooflijke toestanden.

Ook verhelderend het commentaar van de professor hieronder, dat 'de
partijen' stuivertje hebben gewisseld.

Groet / Cees

from the May 18, 2009 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0518/p02s04-ussc.html
NRA: The new face of the American right?
Key GOP leaders came to woo the NRA's annual convention this weekend, one
sign of the group's growing clout.
By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Phoenix

When Kirby Warner, a trusty Ruger pistol strapped to his hip, sat around
and shot the breeze with his fellow gun owners here at the National Rifle
Association's annual meeting this weekend, they weren't just chatting
calibers and cartridges.

Nor did they stop at other tried and trusted fare, such as President Obama
and gun control. This year, taxes, bailouts, and the general direction of
the country was all on the docket. He remembers reading a sign at one of
the national tea parties: "If First Amendment fails, see Second
Amendment."

"I like that," he chuckles.

The 47,000 gun-loving Americans who attended the 138th NRA Convention bore
the hopes of many disgruntled, mostly white Americans who seek to check
what they see as Washington's liberal trajectory. They represent one of
the most organized and entrenched groups opposed to the Obama
administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress, so it's no
coincidence that Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, potential Republican
presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and GOP chairman Michael Steele all
spoke Friday at a leadership forum here.

Moreover, they are growing: Membership is booming, gun registrations are
skyrocketing, and ammunition stores are back-ordered by the millions. This
success is giving the NRA significant clout in an electorate polarized by
issues ranging from gun control to government bailouts. In addition, it is
threatening to merge the organization's firebrand rhetoric – which,
critics say, sometime verges on paranoia – with a broader band of
political discontent.

"This is armed conservatism, backing political beliefs with guns, and I
think that's the key of its emotional appeal," says Joan Burbick, author
of "Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy." "The gun has
become the symbol of the conservative vision of freedom."

Going back to the 1977 "Cincinnati Revolt" that launched the modern NRA,
the gun lobby's membership has ebbed and flowed with the political tides,
cresting under Democrat presidents. "If President Obama can be credited
with one thing, it's the boom in gun sales," says Chris Cox, the NRA's
chief legislative director.

This weekend, NRA leaders were keen to lay out in stark terms the threat
they see in the Obama administration. Gun owners face "the slickest, most
aggressive anti-gun White House in history," said CEO Wayne Lapierre.

Other NRA brass predict that the Second Amendment could be repealed within
the next five years.

They are statements that, by many measures, are at odds with current
trends in statehouses and Congress. High-ranking Democrats, including
secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Attorney General Eric
Holder, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of
California, have promised to "pick the time and place" (in Senator
Feinstein's words) for more gun restrictions. The NRA points to such
statements as proof that the Second Amendment is under attack. Conversely,
they can also be seen as underlining the current strength of the gun
lobby, which has won several important victories on the legal, political,
and electoral front.

•Polls show that Americans are increasingly cautious about gun
restrictions, with support for an assault-rifle ban falling by about
one-third in the past 18 years.

•A proposal for the Army to stop selling spent shells to reloading firms
was quickly overturned this spring.

•Mr. Obama stunned gun-control advocates last week when he upheld rules to
keep gun-buying data secret, reversing a campaign promise to victims of
gun violence.

•The Supreme Court's Heller decision last year said the Second Amendment
guarantees the individual's right to own a gun, and the NRA recently won a
similar court fight in San Francisco.

Despite these successes, Mr. Lapierre, the NRA CEO, spoke almost in
doomsday terms this weekend about opponents of the Second Amendment. "The
bomb is armed and the fuse is lit," he said. "They are going to come at us
with everything they've got, and we are going to be ready for them. If
they want to fight, we will fight."

To critics, it is rhetoric completely out of proportion to the current
threat. "Despite the fact that they won their Supreme Court case, they act
as if they lost," says Josh Sugarmann, founder of the Violence Policy
Center in Washington. "The NRA uses language as if things occur in a
vacuum – in the abstract. But for every guy that takes it as inspiration,
who gets involved in local politics, who believes that the government is
coming for his guns, there's a growing idea that it's the guys with the
guns who make the rules."

Saul Cornell, author of "A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers
and the Origins of Gun Control in America," has simpler take:

"Even when [gun owners] win, they freak out," he writes in an e-mail.

Yet the NRA's ability to mobilize opposition is also one reason that a
proposal introduced to Congress last week to cut down on gun-show
"loopholes" that allow "paperless" gun sales will face major hurdles.

The concern is that the amplitude of the rhetoric on the issue of gun
rights is creating a certain hysteria. At a major gun show in Phoenix two
weeks ago, Daniel Guier, a gun owner from Chandler, Ariz., witnessed an
entry queue that snaked around an entire coliseum, people standing five
abreast.

"There's a paranoia now that I've never seen before due to the
unpredictability of Washington and the idea that, sooner or later, Obama
will put up the fight," says Mr. Guier. "Unfortunately, that means that a
lot of people who probably shouldn't be owning guns are buying guns."

But Bill Peets, for one, isn't buying the argument that gun owners are
overreacting. The California gun dealer says that liberals want to
undermine America's gun culture, not with another assault-weapons ban, but
with "a barrage" of new rules. The theory echoes down every aisle of the
convention as attendees tell stories of law-abiding citizens – including a
disabled Iraq war veteran – who were caught up in Byzantine gun rules and
thrown in jail. Meanwhile, real criminals are getting off scot-free, they
say.

"The fear is that the government is going to come in and nitpick your
rights away," says Mr. Peets.

Barry Brummett, who studies rhetoric at the University of Texas at Austin
and is a gun owner, says he's fascinated by the political shift over gun
rights in the past half century. In the 1950s and ’60s, he says, it was
liberal activists who spoke publicly about arming the population for a
revolution, and "nobody on the left seemed the least bit trouble." At the
same time, he says, conservatives "were all scared about ordinary people
getting themselves armed."

Now, Professor Brummett says, "firearms rights and ownership is largely in
bed with the political right, and that mystifies me, frankly."

Republicans are keen to tap into NRA member's natural distrust of
Democratic leadership – particularly now, when the party is casting about
for new ideas and direction. In this context, the NRA could emerge as an
organizing force among the ranks of mostly white conservatives.

"In itself, the NRA can't win an election, but in any kind of close
election, they can swing it," says Brian Anse Patrick, a communications
professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio.

Indeed, for many gun owners, this year's NRA show isn't the beginning of
any armed insurrection, but rather a part of a conservative soul-searching
as an out-of-power political minority seeks a new role.

"I want us just to relax and be Americans and not be at each other's
throats like this all the time," says Junior Sampson, a gun owner from
Tucson, Ariz. "At the same time, I think a good government is one that is
slightly scared of its citizens."

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