NRA’s slippery slope full of holes
As expected, I heard an earful about my column last week on a new gun group that opposes the National Rifle Association’s hard-line views and allegiance to the Republican Party.
NRA loyalists from around the country sent me e-mails echoing the organization’s claim that a small rival, the American Hunters & Shooters Association, is just a “front” for gun-control activists. They said that anything that weakens absolute Second Amendment freedom is a slippery slope that will lead to the nation being disarmed.
I believe just the opposite is true — and I think many gun owners realize it.
There’s a lot of money and power to be had by representing gun enthusiasts. Nobody knows that better than the NRA and its many competitors. With guns in nearly half of all American households, these organizations know that fear — “sneaky liberals want to take away your guns!” — is a powerful recruiting tool.
Both Democrats and Republicans love to exploit wedge issues that will energize their base. Republicans have become masters of the technique, courting factions that feel so passionately about hot-button topics — guns, gay rights, abortion, prayer in schools — that it has become difficult to find common ground on many important issues in American life.
I don’t know whether the American Hunters & Shooters Association is a good organization or a bad one. What I found interesting was its willingness to say what many “pro-gun” Kentuckians like me think about this endless debate: that we need some intelligent compromises to protect responsible gun ownership and make communities safer.
Many law-abiding Kentuckians want guns for self-defense or farm use, or because they enjoy shooting, hunting or collecting. Or they believe that America would be less safe if responsible, law-abiding citizens were disarmed. Members of the NRA and similar groups are generally the most responsible gun owners and shooters out there.
Guns were an important part of the frontier heritage that helped make America great. And Kentucky, after all, was the nation’s first frontier.
But gun violence and crime are serious problems. The no-compromise crowd has kept law enforcement agencies from having some tools they need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and crazy people. And that has led to some over-reaching, such as when police in New Orleans illegally seized hundreds of guns after Hurricane Katrina.
Without some intelligent compromises, each new tragedy, like the Virginia Tech or Columbine massacres, will prompt more emotional calls for banning guns. All guns. There are zealots on both sides.
The NRA and other gun groups could learn something from the horse industry.
High-profile deaths of horses in Thoroughbred racing and eventing have created some public backlash against those sports. Rather than stonewall, though, horse industry leaders are aggressively working to make their sports safer. They love horses, sure, but they also realize that their sports could live or die with public opinion.
As society becomes more diverse, we must regain the lost art of compromise. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to deal with complex problems in ways that protect everyone’s rights. Polarization may be good for special-interest groups and political parties, but it’s bad for America.
If Second Amendment absolutists keep standing up and daring others to pry their guns from their “cold, dead fingers,” eventually somebody’s going to do it.
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May 25th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Good article, but it remains to be seen if horse industry leaders are really “aggressively working to make their sports safer.”, or just throwing up a PR smoke screen until Big Brown wins the Triple Crown and the general public forgets about the entire issue until next years K. Derby.
Human nature being what it is, I suspect we’ll see many more horses die on the track (though not as high profile as Eight Belles) before real reform takes place.
TvNB
May 27th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Isn’t that the whole thought behind Polytrack? I think the jury is still out on its effectiveness, but I think that represents a pretty significant effort toward making racing safer for horses. So you can’t say the Horse industry isn’t trying to make the sport safer. RE: guns, nice post and clarification/defense of the previous NRA and AHSA post.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:33 am
My sense is that - depending on what exactly the Supreme Court says next month in the DC v. Heller case - just this sort of middle ground could soon be available to the country.
What if the Court says that (1) there is an individual right to own guns for private purposes, protected by the Second Amendment but (2) reasonable restrictions of that right are Constitutional?
Background checks on all gun purchases, limits on bulk purchases of handguns, enforcing strict gun dealer regulations, restricted civilian access to assault weapons… all very popular items, and all could be defined as “reasonable restrictions” depending on what the Court says. But the slippery slope to gun confiscation would be gone, because the Court would have cut it off.
We’ll have to wait for the Court’s opinion, but a balanced decision that allays the fears of law-abiding gun owners about what are otherwise popular gun laws - ironically by taking the slippery slope argument completely off the table - holds enormous opportunity. We’ll see soon enough.
Doug Pennington, Bradycampaign.org
May 27th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Yah,bans on semi-auto guns, $1000 a year registration fees on every gun you own, the power of any law enforcement agency to enter your home at any time if you have a registered gun. I’m sure the brady coalition to ban guns would deem all those “reasonable restrictions”. How about nationwide recognition of any concealed carry license, opening up registration of new full auto guns to qualified civilians and dissolution of BATFE? I would consider those all “reasonable regulations”. Think the brady coalition would “negotiate” on those terms?
May 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Sir, I have to say that you are an idiot. While you are entitled to your opinion that there should be greater gun control (tragically misguided though it may be), you are not entitled to your own facts. As a ‘journalist’ you should be aware of that fact.
While your piece is opinion, you stated as fact that the NRA is an organization that refuses to compromise. This shows me that you are undeserving of your journalistic credentials, whatever they may be. You failed to do even 30 seconds of research, to find out just how much compromising the NRA has done over the years, or what real “hardliners” think of the NRA.
Take a look at this organization
http://www.gunowners.org/
and this letter from Larry Pratt Executive Director of GOA.
http://www.gunowners.org/ldp2nra.htm
Then there’s “Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership
http://www.jpfo.org/
And this little exchange between them and the NRA
http://www.jpfo.org/pdf/nraletter.pdf
I, for the life of me, can not conceive how anyone who calls himself a journalist could present an editorial with opinion based on outright lies. You do not deserve to call yourself a journalist. From where I sit, there are two possibilities. You are either in the bag for the gun control zealots, who have tired to LOOK more reasonable lately, but the underlying rhetoric is the same, OR you are completely incompetent as a researcher. five minutes of internet research would have at least told you that there are many gun owners who think that the NRA is a non-compromising organization in much the same way that France is a military superpower. Either way, you are no journalist, and I hesitate to even glorify you with the title of hack.
Clearly you may have an opinion, but when you present that opinion, make sure you back it up with reality or you look like a moron.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I am so sure NOT that Mr. Eblen will be happy to give up a corresponding degree of his First Amendment right to free speech!!! Of, course, Mr. Eblen would insist THAT is different. Of course it is, in your eyes Mr. Eblen, since you are an sniveling namby pamby feel-good leftist. You do write well, but the content of your column is sophmoric and soooo predictable. Classic Marxist dialectic we got here boys.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Musculature says : I absolutely agree with this !
May 30th, 2008 at 7:29 am
It’s after midnight, you are awakened by the sound of breaking glass. You rise from your bed and pick up your shotgun (kept for hunting only of course) and step quietly through the bedroom door when suddenly, in the darkness a voice commands “Put down your gun or I will shoot”. Who complies may determine who lives and who dies. You and the fake gun owners groups who really only want to incrementally take away one right after another will leave the bad guys with guns and the innocents unarmed. So in the dark who puts down the gun? According to you it should be the gun owner, because the voice in the dark could be the gun police, could be a rapist, or could be a crazed killer. The proper answer to the demand in the dark is “You want my gun, you come get it. You want to live, put down YOUR gun.”
May 31st, 2008 at 6:16 pm
The problem is that having the government determine what constitutes “reasonable” restrictions on guns effectively violates the spirit of the intended purpose of the 2nd amendment, namely to aid hypothetically oppressed Americans in killing politicians who become tyrannical (like, what if FDR had taken that one extra step to become an American Mussolini?).