Anyone still maintaining that the NRA is a mainstream organization devoted to gun hobbyists, gun education, and take-your-pick should probably take a gander at the special NRA magazine's special
election issue and then kindly
shut the hell up.
A paranoid column from National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre appearing in the gun group's magazine fearmongered about terrorist attacks and "angry mobs" rioting "just for the sheer hell of it" in the United States before calling on supporters to "vote our guns" on Election Day.
As part of a "special two-cover election issue," the NRA's magazine, America's 1st Freedom, depicted a flag and gun-toting ISIS fighter along with the headline, "Chaos At Our Door?"
In addition to ISIS being at our door, or more specifically at
your door, right now, or possibly in the pantry or in the spare room if you haven't hung garlic and crosses in all the right places, the
Vote Your Guns issue's primary editorial seems to list every far-right militia theory, every ammo-hoarding survivalist mantra, every xenophobic conspiracy theory, and so on.
Any possible way for America to be destroyed is listed, so long as it can be used as guiding scenario for why you may someday need to murder large numbers of other human beings and why government should get out of your way as you steadfastly prepare for that eventual day.
Among the things LaPierre told readers to be afraid of:
• An electromagnetic pulse attack (EMP) that could kill "as much as 90 percent of the population of the U.S." by bringing about the reemergence of "Third World" diseases like "amoebic dysentery, typhoid, [and] cholera -- killing our youngest and frailest family members."
• A cyber attack that would put "our economy into a tailspin" and possibly become "deadly" if hackers took over a dam or oil processing facility.
• An attack "along the lines of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, where terrorists launched a dozen coordinated attacks, gunning down innocent victims at hotels, a bar, a train station, a hospital and a movie theater," killing 164 people.
• An incident similar to a 2013 terrorist attack on a mall in Kenya where "[f]our armed terrorists linked to al Qaeda were able -- thanks to Kenya's strict anti-gun laws -- to spend four days torturing, mutilating and gunning down shoppers with almost no fear of reprisal."
Jump below the fold for more madness.
Take your pick, after all, it's all the same. The NRA wants you to be prepared to confront the collapse of America as a nation no matter how it comes about, and the fortunate coincidence is that all possible scenarios revolve around you saving the day by shooting people, whether it be organized bands of mall terrorists who will be no match for you, John P. Homeowner, or just your starving neighbors asking whether you can spare any canned beans. Sooner or later, the official NRA editorial proclaims, you're going to have to murder lots of people. You're going to need a bigger clip. You're going to need a more powerful gun. The government may try to stop you from having those things, and doesn't that prove that they, too, are the enemy? In this coming election, "Vote Your Guns."
(Note how each of the possible disaster scenarios ends with an implicit or explicit and then you will start killing people. It might be a meteor strike, a solar flare, Muslims, mall terrorists, Internet hackers, crop failures, roving Mexican drug gangs—the end prescription in every case is the same. Killing people is the NRA aspirin for whatever might ail you.)
Can you imagine how depressed Wayne LaPierre will be, lying on his eventual deathbed, if it turns out America has not been burned to a cinder? If roving hordes of robot monkeys have not seized control of the Midwestern states, and if Muslims have in fact not placed the Gulf Coast states under sharia law? He would be devastated. Wayne LaPierre lives for the eventual day when America will be destroyed by something, anything, and when he can ride forth into the flames screaming I-told-you-this-day-would-come at the unrepentant, insufficiently ammo-flush masses.
All right, we may need to revisit our existing theories of what the NRA has become and how far it will continue to degrade before lawmakers the press begin to realize en masse that these people are not right in the head. That the NRA is a far-right conservative group is self-evident. That they are steeped in often-xenophobic, always-paranoid conspiracy tropes is also undeniable. The distance between Wayne LaPierre and, say, Cliven Bundy is indistinguishably small; the distance between the rhetoric of NRA editorials demanding the supposed American right to take up arms against their own government, if necessary, and the men on highway bridges aiming their rifles at the agents of that government because they think it's now necessary is likewise blurred. The National Rifle Association obsession with the American End Times, however, is particularly notable.
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Note this, because this is important: The National Rifle Association isn't telling their members to vote for gun-friendly candidates this election season to protect your right to hunt or your favorite shooting sport or even for home or personal defense. The National Rifle Association is telling you to vote for the most gun-friendly candidates this election season because someday, possibly someday soon, you may have to kill a whole hell of a lot of people and you don't want any goddamn government interfering with your preparations to do that.