Follow Up On the NRA

So I feel like it's time to follow up on this piece I wrote a few months ago, about how the NRA and AIPAC are analagous in that they have both achieved policy victory and now seem to have difficulty honestly riling up their bases given that their positions are so entrenched in both parties.

On gun control, the Democrats have completely given up attempting to push any gun control legislation at the national level. A calculation has been made that the love of guns in the west and in rural appalachia is so strong that no legislation can pass and Democrats will lose if they do anything about this. So the NRA has taken to putting out dire warnings that President Obama has a secret plan to take your guns, because they can't find any evidence that there's an actual plan. The latest thing I just heard is the theory is that Fast and Furious project is really a secret plan to build justification for gun control through the back door. Crazy stuff.

But the NRA has to justify its existence- they don't want to pack up, declare victory, and leave Washington; so they have to find some reason to keep pushing.

Well, that was before Newtown, and now it looks like the ground is shifting suddenly in the debate on Gun Control.  The NRA has responded to calls for very minor gun laws (closing the Gun Show Loophole, background checks, banning high-capacity magazines) with absolutely crazy statements asserting that the only way for Americans to protect themselves is to go out and buy our own guns.  Rather than stop mass killers from getting assault weapons, they want to turn mass killing sites into pitched battles between various "good guys with guns" and the bad guy, hoping it will all work out OK.

So there is some momentum for these sensible gun proposals, all of a sudden, though the House may still block them all.  But in many ways, the overall situation still hasn't really changed.  We're talking about really small-bore actions to stop very specific purchases.  The basic tenets of the Second Amendment are not even slightly in danger.  In fact, maybe the NRA's cartoonish radicalization is really a Crazy-Like-A-Fox strategy to make us fight for obvious stuff like closing the Gun Show Loophole, so we never get anywhere near threatening basic gun ownership.  Maybe they're not so dumb after all..... but they sure are crazy.