NRA chooses self preservation over leadership

With the recent atrocity at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown Connecticut, the NRA had the opportunity to prove that they are not only an organization who stands for protecting the rights of responsible, law abiding gun owners but also a group that takes their leadership role seriously.

Instead the NRA settled right back in to their paranoid bully role. First they act like they are the victim in all of this and that “media conglomerates” are “complicit co-conspirators” in the acts of a few troubled individuals. Then to deflect attention they blame video games, movies and the media for gun violence in the U.S. I guess the idea is that while guns don’t kill people, movies, video games and the nightly news somehow do.

Contrary to their rhetoric the vast majority of people who actually watch the news (old and educated) are not the same people who commit gun crimes (young and less educated). And if young adults were so easily influenced by the media, why have we not seen a spike in suicide bombers here in the U.S., since the coverage of such incidents is practically a nightly occurrence.

Of course this logic also ignores a number of other facts. If simply seeing more gun violence leads to more gun violence, then increased exposure to sexually explicit material in European countries should lead to more teen pregnancy and sexual crimes than in the U.S., yet the opposite is true. This is also the case with countries that have more liberal drug laws than the U.S.

It should also be noted the other countries with significantly less gun violence, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, happen to have access to the same video games and movies that according to the NRA are the root cause of the issues here in America.

While liberal gun laws may not be the reason the U.S. is one of the world leaders in gun violence, data shows that where there are more guns there is more gun violence.

The reality is that if the NRA were truly the ombudsman of the second amendment they pretend to be, they would demand accountability when those rights are abused, they would avoid baseless fear mongering, and they would work with the government to fashion solutions to a gun violence problem that by their own admission exists in the U.S. Unfortunately the NRA’s response of self pity and childish finger pointing shows they are more concerned with protecting their own best interests than protecting the rights of responsible gun owners and the lives of law abiding citizens.