Rejoinder on the NRA

Editor,

The emotional response to my critical view of the NRA reinforces my argument that the NRA and many of its members conflate gun ownership and use with specious positions on constitutional history and interpretation, along with nativistic politics and obsessiveness about self-defense. This is, indeed, a dangerous and unhealthy mix. Whereas recent rulings of our notoriously “conservative” Supreme Court are supportive, if not definitive, regarding “individual” as opposed to “collective” rights regarding the ownership and use of firearms, the NRA and its adherents employ these as weapons to fight gun control, including background checks, and to promote the indiscriminate purchase and use of firearms primarily for so-called “self-defense” purposes. 

Not surprisingly, as the writer’s statement clearly illustrates, the promotion of such aims is also linked to a xenophobic fear of immigrants from south of the border. In the nineteenth century, similar views justified the use of the six- shooter and the repeating rifle by Anglo interlopers against the native Mexican inhabitants of Tejas during the process of its conquest and incorporation into the United States of America. History does repeat itself. 

For what it’s worth, a few decades ago as a participant in competitive club pistol shooting in Connecticut where I then resided, I was for a brief time a member of the NRA – until I realized that the organization had been infiltrated by right-wing crackpots bent on subverting its educational agenda with a political one. By the way, the National Rifle Association is a misnomer; it should be renamed the National Association for the Promotion of Firearms at any Cost or NAPFAC.

Scott Cook