Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, gave me a call at home the other day.
In the taped message, my friend Wayne warned me that unless I and other patriotic Americans stepped forward to stop it, the dastardly United Nations, with Iran, China, North Korea and other evil countries behind it, would soon come into our country and into our very homes, strip the Second Amendment out of the Constitution and “take away every pistol, and rifle and shotgun” that we owned.
Riiiggghhht. I just have one question though:
How is the UN going to accomplish this? Are they going to import little bulbous-headed men from Mars toting rayguns to take away our weapons?
Look, I recognize that the boundary between serious and seriously crazy has shifted considerably in recent years. But doesn’t this kind of nonsense still qualify on the fully crazy side of the ledger?
The ostensible cause of LaPierre’s hysteria is something called the International Arms Trade Treaty.
If ratified by the United Nations and then by the U.S. Senate, it would require countries exporting conventional arms to certify that the weapons aren’t being sent to a terrorist or organized crime group, such as Hezbollah, and that they aren’t being sent to a nation conducting genocide or to a nation under a U.N. arms embargo, such as Iran and North Korea.
It would have no effect whatsoever on domestic ownership, possession or purchase of firearms.
Such a claim is politically, practically, legally and constitutionally absurd.
So why is Wayne LaPierre calling me and others to pretend otherwise?
Money is part of the reason.
The United States accounts for 40 percent of the world’s exports of conventional arms, and the U.S. arms industry is nervous about legislation that might curtail their right to sell arms to whomever they wish.
Those manufacturers, not coincidentally, are also heavy donors to the NRA, which is trying to whip up hysteria on their behalf.
In addition, such hysteria is part of the NRA’s own strategy for raising money for its coffers.
Once the LaPierre robo-rant about the UN finished, for example, an operator quickly came on line to ask me to donate money to the NRA.
I politely declined.
Finally, it’s also a matter of increasingly delusional paranoia infecting the NRA.
Prior to the ‘08 election, the gun group warned its members that Barack Obama had a scret 10-point plan to end gun ownership in this country.
As you may recall, that bit of hysteria touched off quite a spree of gun-buying after the election, boosting the profits of the NRA’s sponsors in the gun industry.
In fact, as ammunition disappeared from store shelves, that itself was quickly cited as evidence that ammo confiscation was already underway. The NRA, in other words, played its own members for patsies.
Today, three years later, none of that has come to pass.
Obama has made no effort whatsoever to alter the nation’s gun laws. So, given their hyperbolic claims, you might think that would make LaPierre and others a little embarrassed, right?
Well, no.
In a speech at a conservative conference in Florida this month, LaPierre explained that by taking no action to implement his alleged 10-point program, Obama had actually proved that the NRA had been right all along.
http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-bl...ayne-lapierre/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog
