To begin, let's fully understand what The National Rifle Association is not.
They are not Satan. They do not love shooting small children. They do not support gun violence. They are not gun nuts who need machine guns to defend their land from government helicopters.
Now that you're fuming, or ready to do violence yourself, or, maybe calmly agreeing with the above, let's now state what The National Rifle Association is.
The National Rifle Association is a business.
A small portion of America supports this business by electing congressional representatives who vote exactly how The NRA tells them to. There are enough representatives to block any sensible gun legislation and keep the business of making and selling guns, including semi-automatics, alive and healthy.
While this may make it sound like The NRA is a political organization, they're not. They talk about the second amendment, and the right to defend oneself and one's property with a gun, but these catch-phrases are not political; they exist solely to help allow firearms companies to sell their product like any other, during normal business hours and using U.S. currency to complete the transaction.
It makes no difference that this product is used to kill and maim human beings, as it did those six-year-old human beings at an elementary school. No matter what this product does now or did then, it is still just a product, and The NRA has a fiduciary responsibility to the gun manufacturers it represents to make sure that their product remains available for purchase by all and any Americans.
So, if you please. One more time. Say it out loud. The NRA Is A Business.
Once we know they are a business, we can easily defeat the NRA and restrict certain types of products they currently help firearm manufacturers sell. Yes, you read that correctly. The words used were easily and defeat.
It's a new idea that will take some getting used to, so let's begin right away.
In the past, efforts to defeat The NRA have failed miserably. That's because we've made threats and fun of them, or worse, we've tried to defeat them politically. The NRA loves when we try to beat them in Congress, because they always win. They will win the current political battle, even after twenty children were murdered a month ago and you can rest assured The NRA will win the next political battle, if, or more likely, when, sixty children are murdered next week.
What we can do, if we really want to win this battle, is treat The NRA as a business. When we treat them as a business, our goal is simpler: to make them fail as a business. We can accomplish that the same way we would with any other business, even one which builds products that kill human beings. How?
We boycott their products.
No, not guns. We cannot boycott guns, because everybody against The NRA already boycotts guns, to no effect. And nobody who now buys guns will stop buying guns. As The NRA was quick to point out after the massacre in Newtown, more people bought guns than ever before.
So we ignore guns entirely. What we do boycott are products made in the districts of those representatives who vote with The NRA.
We know where these products are made and grown and we know which person in congress represents these manufacturers and growers. We make it simple. Stop voting with The NRA, or your district will lose a giant share of its business.
The liklihood is, faced with a strong, national boycott, the manufacturers and growers of these products are going to talk with their representatives, as will the people who work for these manufacturers and growers. These voters will not want their livelihood taken away because an organization in Washington insists semi-automatic rifles and multi-round clips be kept available to all Americans.
In other words, they are not going to let a boycott drive them out of business. They can no longer and will no longer blindly support The NRA's policies after the boycott starts to hurt businesses where it counts; in the pocket, The NRA will be forced to allow its representatives to vote for at least some of the positive gun safety measures President Obama has asked Congress to enact.
So, by simply not buying avacados or pears or a Chevy or a certain brand of lug wrench, an average American who deplores gun violence can fight and defeat the representatives The NRA has purchased for their personal use. Once the boycott starts to work, they can no longer vote with The NRA and still represent the businesses and people of their district.
So, by all means, get angry at the senseless gun violence. But please, channel your anger in a way that will do some good. You can make a real difference, each and every time you go to the grocery store or the mall. Just refuse to buy a certain product and you will make it harder for people in congress to look the other way as our children and adults are slaughtered by deadly products The NRA insists should be available to all Americans. The way we can defeat The NRA and stop at least some of this gun violence is not political. It's not personal.
It's business.