Soon after the Civil War, Union veterans Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate formed the National Rifle Association. These men had been dismayed by the poor marksmanship of troops in the war, and formed the association for the purpose of promoting "rifle shooting on a scientific basis."
The NRA has since been described as an organization of target shooters, hunters and gun collectors. They promote extensive training in the proper use of guns, and encourage participation in the challenges of target and skeet shooting, and other forms of recreation.
For their recreational and training programs they are to be highly praised. They do a lot of good in these areas.
A huge majority of NRA members follow the original tenets of the association. They enjoy the sporting and collecting aspects of gun ownership. There can be no argument with this.
This majority might well heed, however, the actions of their NRA minority. It is a fact that minority members have routinely misinterpreted the Second Amendment for their own purposes. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger decried the fraud perpetrated on the American public by the NRA's claim that there is an unlimited "personal right to bear arms." Boldly inscribed in front of NRA headquarters in Virginia is only one-half of the language in the Second Amendment, the half that suits their purposes. They don't care that the meaning of the sentence, as originally intended by its drafters, is lost. One is reminded of "proof texting" from the Bible by zealots with a point to prove.
Our U.S. attorney general, an NRA board member, has leaped from the executive to the judicial branch of government. On May 6, 2002, in two U.S. Supreme Court filings, John Ashcroft officially thumbed his nose at 40 years of bipartisan agreement and six decades of Supreme Court precedent by radically shifting the government's view of the Second Amendment from a collective; (i.e., well-regulated militia/national guard) right to keep and bear arms, to an individual right to do so. He single-handedly reinterpreted decades of case law about the Second Amendment so he can assert an individual "right to bear arms," to the delight of his NRA and gun industry friends.
Besides overstepping the ethical boundaries above, Ashcroft looks mighty suspicious, having received $375,000 from the gun lobby during his earlier senatorial campaign.
Intriguing, also, is the NRA/Ashcroft support for gun industry immunity from legal liability. Ashcroft and the gun lobby want no accountability to those harmed by the industry, no matter how faulty its products or reckless its behavior. A former lobbyist and lawyer for the NRA has revealed that the gun industry has consistently ignored sales of weapons to criminals by corrupt dealers. The truth is that the gun industry wants the right to flood the market with an inherently deadly product without any responsibility whatsoever for its end use. This is immunity that no other industry enjoys.
Meanwhile, Ashcroft has denied the FBI access to background records on gun purchases for investigation of possible terrorists. Also, he has denied the FBI the right to use the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in their search for potential terrorists, hypocritically tying their hands while simultaneously demanding they find the perpetrators of "September 11" and other terrorist events.
It is a fact that the NRA minority supports an exceedingly powerful "gun lobby" in the U.S. Congress, mainly funded by gun manufacturers. Profit-driven gun makers and their lobbyists have large numbers of Washington legislators in their pockets. Whether one likes guns or not, this should scare anyone who desires any fairness in government.
To bring all of this closer to home, Osama bin Laden could go to our frequent Carson City gun shows. He could buy whatever he wanted, without any check into his background. Members of al-Quaida, Hamas and Hezbollah are known to be freely buying guns and ammunition at U.S. gun shows nationwide. Then they ship them back to Afghanistan, the Middle East and scattered terrorist training camps worldwide. (Angry, disaffected U.S. citizens also easily get guns this way -- witness the teenage killers at Columbine High School). Meanwhile, legislators beholden to "gun money" repeatedly block rational gun laws, such as the one to plug the "gun show loophole" to criminal background checks.
It is anticipated that angry retorts will greet this column -- no surprise when such a controversial subject is raised. The truth can be unpleasant, especially when we're steeped in a culture that glorifies the gun and buys into the Second Amendment myth .
Thoughtful people must see that the price of easy access to guns is becoming terribly high, in loss of life at home and abroad. How much longer will we pay this price for a myth?
Susan Paslov is a retired attorney and student of the U.S. Constitution
