The name Ackerman McQueen may not ring a bell for you, but you've heard their catchy slogans: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," and "I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands," growled out by Charlton Heston.
The first is patently preposterous. No unarmed person can enter a school or church or assembly hall and kill or maim more than one or two people. If you want to kill or wound a lot of people you have two options: a bomb or a gun. Guns are far easier to obtain and use, and are the obvious choice. Guns kill people because people use them for that purpose.
As for the "cold dead hands," it's so outrageous I laugh out loud when I hear it.
Ackerman McQueen is the public relations firm that dreamed up those phrases for the National Rifle Association, the self-appointed guardian of Americans' right to bear arms. A&M, or Ack-Mac, is headquartered in Oklahoma City, the capital of a state where anyone over 21 can openly carry a gun without a permit, where machismo runs in the streets, and the mascot of the state land-grant university is a gun-toting cowboy named Pistol Pete.
Founded in 1871 to foster the skill of rifle shooting, the NRA was a respectable organization for nearly a century. It became involved in lobbying and politics in 1934. From then until the late 1960s it was nonpartisan, and consistently supported gun control legislation.
Throughout the 1970s the organization grew more conservative and more heavily involved in lobbying. In 1977 a right-wing activist group within the organization took over leadership with the agenda of seeking expansion of Second Amendment rights and resolutely opposing any legislation with even a whiff of gun control. This was a 180 degree policy change and was the event that brought the NRA firmly into the slimy embrace of the Republican Party.
NRA marketing strategy shifted from the "Field & Stream" model to making up bogus threats to gun rights: "The government is trying to take your guns away."
That, my friends, is the Big Lie of the NRA's very own the-sky-is-falling conspiracy theory. It has been fed to the American people for more than 40 years and too many continue to believe it.
And let's not forget the Great NRA Politician Blackmail Con.
They called it The Political Victory Fund. The purpose of the fund was to support pro-gun candidates and to work against those who supported gun control. Political candidates at all levels were "graded" by the traditional letter-grade system, with A+ signifying a true believer and F grades going to sworn enemies of the cause.
"Now just be a good little Congress member and vote the way we tell you and we'll send you money to keep you close to power where you want to be. If you don't follow our suggestions, well, . . ."
In 2008 with District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court made gun control personal, ruling it legal to keep a loaded handgun in one's home for the purpose of self-defense. That was when the floodgates of the Second Amendment lie opened. Everything and everyone who even mentioned gun control was suspect.
Anyone who knows anything about the Constitution--and that should include every member of Congress--knows that warnings about threats to the Second Amendment are empty rhetoric.
No Amendment nor any part of the Constitution can be "stolen" or diminished in any way by the whim of a president or any group--not even Congress. Repealing an Amendment requires supermajority approval of Congress plus similar approval by two-thirds of the legislatures of the 50 states. That's 33 separate legislatures. It can be a lengthy process, and many attempts have fallen by the wayside. Moreover, as an element of the Bill of Rights, the Second is probably untouchable anyway--for better or for worse it's a genuine "third-rail" issue.The NRA became apologists for mass shooters, suggesting Trump-worthy remedies before the Orange Ogre was even in the frame. "Arm teachers!" "Arm students!" "Deny guns to the mentally ill!" "Surround schools with armed guards!" "Protect the sacred Second Amendment."
Guns, guns, guns, always more guns. The NRA has a morbid gun fetish.
As the organization became ever wealthier and influential it also became more corrupt. As Lord Acton noted, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
In 2017 the FBI found reasonable cause to believe the NRA had acted as a funnel for Russian money to flow into Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign and indicted a number of Russian nationals.
In 2020 the attorney general of New York filed a civil suit against the NRA alleging fraud, financial misconduct, and misuse of charitable funds by some of its executives. The DC attorney general simultaneously filed a similar suit. The New York suit sought the dissolution of the NRA for being "fraught with fraud and abuse."
The NRA mission has never been about "protecting" the Second Amendment; it has been about selling guns.
The NRA has had the gall to call itself a civil rights organization. It is not. The classes of Americans protected by true civil rights legislation are protected against discrimination based on personal qualities over which they have no control: e.g. their race, color, and sex.
Owning and using weapons is a choice made by each individual. One is not born with the genetic need to carry a gun. Under the Second Amendment we may have the right to keep and bear arms, but the Framers could never have imagined the proliferation of weapons in the modern world. It is a right that must be tempered if chaos and violence are to be overcome.
I place responsibility for every mass shooting and a great many street crimes since 1980 on the policies of the National Rifle Association and the political toadies who accepted their money.
They should--they must--be held to account.
La lutte continue!
--- Diogenes, 10/2/2021