Saturday, June 20, 2009

NRA being stupid

No one would argue the government's terrorists watch list is perfect. It's well into the hundreds of thousands, and it's known many on it are the names are wrong, outdated, or something other than be correct and accurate. And there are frequent stories of innocent people being added to the list mistakenly or being misidentified as someone on the list. It's needs fixing.

But the NRA's stupidity is about the study which found 90% of those on the terrorists watch list were legally allowed to get and did buy guns. As the New York Times reported,

"Gun rights advocates said showing up on a terrorist watch list should not be grounds for being denied a gun."

“We’re concerned about the quality and the integrity of the list,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association. “There have been numerous studies and reports questioning the integrity, and we believe law-abiding people who are on the list by error should not be arbitrarily denied their civil rights” under the Second Amendment."

The NRA doesn't mind criminals having guns - yes, notice they don't argue for criminal background checks, won't allow restrictions on guns show sales, or argue for better laws against crimes commited with guns, but now we know they don't mind terrorists having guns.

It really is all about the guns. The NRA doesn't care about life and property and especially people. They only care about having the unrestricted access to and ownership of guns. That's all they care about, not you or I, and not our right to be safe and secure in our lives. Nor do they care about our country or national safety, the whole of us to be safe and secure.

They would rather everyone walk around with a gun and if anyone decides to use it for whatever reason, that's ok because they had the gun to defend themselves and their rights and they had the right to use it. The NRA believes that's what the Second Amendment guarrantees, except it doesn't.

The Supreme Court got it wrong and forgot the historical context when they wrote that into the Constitution, as many historians and legal scholars have written. It's about context, but a conservative Court said the NRA and people have the full right to be stupid with and about their guns. The country and people be damned, they effectively wrote, guns rule and the NRA rejoiced.

Some day we'll grow up and as adults put guns in their place, but I won't see it in my lifetime. And despite all the crimes commited with guns, the NRA doesn't seem to want to grow up either. I don't know what will change them except maybe someone stickes a gun in their face to see the reality and stupidity of it all.

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