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Is the NRA really the gun owner's best friend?
Not according to Kirby Ferris, in an article for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
In a piece entitled "It'll Never Happen Here," Ferris observes thus:
...the NRA long ago retreated into a reactive stance when it actually had the power to utterly defeat prior legislation, our so-called gun rights advocates will once again fall prey to typical “dialectic” maneuverings by the victim disarmament crowd. An insane bill is presented (thesis), reaching far beyond what our opponents actually want (at the moment), the NRA screams and takes a flaccid stand (antithesis) … and then compromises, and we get saddled with another sellout of our rights (synthesis).
What can be done? Petition the politicians who already ignore you? Petition the NRA Board of Directors, when it is blatantly obvious that the NRA was infiltrated by Bill of Rights saboteurs decades ago? No, all your letters and faxes and emails and phone calls won’t work with the two- faced connivers who are running things, both in D.C. and deep within the NRA. Forget the traitors and their dupes. Don’t waste your breath.
Outrageous as it sounds, this observation is difficult to refute. To give a few examples of egregious government over-reaching that has been ignored by NRA:
- BATFE harrassment of Red's Trading Post, Idaho's oldest gun shop.
- Maryland state police harrassment of Don Curtis, a law-abiding gun owner and collector.
- Baltimore City's arrest of Lovell A. Wheeler, who was imprisoned without bail for several months, over misdemeanor charges. Wheeler happens to be a White Supremacist, and many believe his arrest and incarceration had more to do with his political beliefs than any of his actions.
- The un-horsing of Sanford Abrams, a long-time gun dealer, NRA Board member, and president of the Maryland Firearms Dealers Association. Abrams lost his Federal Firearms License over allegations of hundreds of violations, many extremely technical and arcane. Rather than coming to his defense, the NRA board dropped him like a hot rock, and has written not a word about him.
While taking credit for gaining criminal judgments against New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, over the illegal seizure of firearms after Hurricane Katrina, NRA has declined to hold responsible the individual police and National Guard personnel who carried out Nagin's illegal order. One plausible explanation is that NRA depends heavily on police-folk among its membership and is unwilling to do anything that might potentially alienate those dues-payers, even to the extent of refusing to comment on bad police work.
This is not the main thrust of Ferris' article, which is well worth reading for the way in which the writer describes the "perfect storm" that appears to be leading towards the registration and eventual confiscation of all guns in civilian hands.