The National Rifle Association has had some legal trouble lately, and Wayne LaPierre, the guy who has run the NRA since forever, is finally resigning. I don’t know the details about it — you can google them if you want — because I haven’t really paid attention to the NRA in years.
Now, I used to be an NRA member. I paid a yearly membership dues and had a sticker on my car. That’s because gun rights have always been important to me since they’re the scary right. It’s a good test of whether someone understands rights at all. If someone is like, “Well, I like freedom and all, but guns are too scary,” then no, you don’t like freedom, and you can go to Commie-land, you dumb Commie.
And it used to be a lot scarier for gun rights. You had cities that banned handguns entirely and politicians openly talking about registration and full gun bans. It’s like in the long, long ago when politicians would openly say, “Segregation, now and forever!” — people were that comfortable being hostile to rights.
And who was standing up to this? Well, the NRA. And they did a great job. It even looked pretty bad for a while during the Clinton years when you couldn’t get a decent AR-15 (well, not a new one) and had to get these dumb magazines that could only hold ten rounds (or pay an arm and a leg for a pre-ban regular-size Glock magazine). But the NRA fought that away. They were powerful and good and were fighting for our freedoms.
But then, they made the one mistake an advocacy group should never, ever do: They won their issue.
That Clinton “assault weapon” ban was the last gasp of the anti-gun people. They’ve not successfully passed any laws since then to even annoy gun owners. If you look at the past half-century, gun rights have only gone in one direction, both in public perception (a majority used to be for handgun bans, and now the most left-wing politicians won’t even dare suggest such a thing) and laws (back in the 1980s, only nine states let everyone get a permit to conceal carry, now all states allow that and half of them you don’t even need a permit). The Supreme Court finally completely backs up the 2nd Amendment as much as it has the First, knocking down legislation even in the bluest states.
To me, a turning point was Sandy Hook. Democrats tried really hard to turn that tragedy into legislation but weren’t even able to pass completely pointless universal background checks. The whole “something scary happened, and now we have to restrict rights!” completely doesn’t work anymore. We’re past that stupidity. No one thinks anymore you can just arbitrarily take some rights away from people because you’re a scared idiot.
So where does that leave the NRA? I have no idea. I stopped paying attention to them over a decade ago. I can go to the corner store, buy a new gun, and stick it in my pants and walk out without a permit and it’s all completely legal. What else do I need? What else is the NRA supposed to fight for? Not stop until there is constitutional carry in Massachusetts? I don’t care about those losers.
Oh, but they have to keep fighting, or the Democrats will bring back gun control. No, they don’t. Those guys are broken on this issue. Every once in a while, they’ll say they’ll bring back the assault weapon ban, but that is just an echo of a dying cause. It’s like a few KKK members telling themselves any day now, we’ll bring back segregation (well, they have a bit more hope if they advocate for DEI and critical race theory).
So what does the NRA even do now? I have no idea. I’m guessing what is happening to it is what happens to a lot of other groups: Instead of being focused on gun rights, it becomes a general right-wing advocacy group going on about wokeness or whatever is the trendy cause. But no one needs that.
Here’s what the NRA can do: Declare victory and close up their political arm. “We’re done; we won,” they can announce. Then, they can go back to just teaching firearm safety. You don’t need a big political wing for that, so it will go back to being this tiny little thing that can talk of the glory days of how it helped secure America’s freedom.
And you know what the Democrats will say? “No! You didn’t win! Come back here!” But we can all say, “Shut up!” and wave our guns at them (which we all legally have).
The only other option is to exist as this weird zombie thing that no one really needs but has to pretend there’s some crisis going on it’s needed for even though nothing in particular is going on. And we already have plenty of grifters like that on the right; there’s just so much competition if you want to gin up crises out of nothing to make money. And there’s no way the old NRA can compete with all the new, innovative grifters.
So, set an example for other advocacy groups: When you win your issue, ride off into the sunset.
Also, “Wayne LaPierre” sounds French, and I never trusted the guy.
Don't get me wrong, I largely agree with the rest of your post, but...
"The whole “something scary happened, and now we have to restrict rights!” completely doesn’t work anymore. We’re past that stupidity. No one thinks anymore you can just arbitrarily take some rights away from people because you’re a scared idiot."
Uh... COVID? Did you forget COVID?
This is terrific. Advocacy groups throughout the spectrum become useless monsters once their cause is won.