Violence Policy Center: The NRA is The Firearms Industry’s Bitch

[HTML1]

Yesterday, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Average Americans from Owning Firearms—sorry, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence posted a video demonstrating how not to shoot a Glock with a “happy stick.” Sorry, they posted a video warning people that high capacity magazines help mass killers kill. Well duh. Today’s piercing glimpse into the obvious comes to us via the Violence Policy Center. The VPC wants it known that the National Rifle Association (NRA) is in the pockets of the death merchants known as the firearms industry. Big Tobacco. Big oil. Big Guns. Geddit? If not, click here for the pdf making their case.  The question is, who cares? Well . . .

We know the Violence Policy Center does. If fact, we can assume that the VPC assumes that an NRA beholden to the firearms industry works against the interests of the American public. I’m not sure I agree.

In fact, I don’t agree. I see the interests of the firearms industry and the American public as aligning perfectly. But then I support the Second Amendment as a right that shall not be infringed, as does the NRA. As do gun manufacturers, obviously enough.

The VPC knows they’re on shaky ground. Hence a bizarre turn in the opening of their polemic, switching from the fact of the firearms industry’s support of the NRA to, wait for it, a spree killing.

The NRA Round-Up program, created by MidwayUSA founder Larry Potterfield, allows buyers to “round-up” their purchase to the nearest dollar with the difference going to the NRA. For “a second consecutive year” MidwayUSA,  which claims to stock “[j]ust about everything for shooting, reloading, gunsmithing and hunting,” is serving as “The Official Sponsor of the NRA Annual Meeting and exhibits . . .” being held in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Spring 2011. One Pittsburgh resident who apparently took part in the NRA’s s Round-Up Program through MidwayUSA was concealed carry an LA Fitness Center in Collier, Pennsylvania, killing  permit holder George Sodini, who in August 2009 opened fire at an LA Fitness Center in Collier, Pennsylvania, killing three women and wounding nine others before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life. A copy of the e-mail receipt sent to Sodini from MidwayUSA for his purchase of 9mm and .45 ammunition includes a donation of 74 cents from the mass murderer to the NRA via the Round-Up Program.

Huh? So if you accept 74 cents from a future spree killer you’re somehow culpable for the carnage that follows? I’m so not feeling that one.

The VPC’s main point—that the NRA can’t serve two masters (the industry and gun owners, ’cause they really care about gun owners)—is a problem because . . .

The mutually dependent nature of the National Rifle Association and the gun industry explains the NRA’s unwillingness to compromise on even the most limited controls over firearms or related products (such as restrictions on high-capacity ammunition magazines) and support of legislation that clearly favor gunmakers over gun owners (such as legislation limiting the legal rights of gun own) killed or injured by defective firearms).  The NRA claims that its positions are driven solely by a concern for the interests of gun owners never mentioning its own financial stake in protecting the profits of its gun industry patrons.

Again, this is a problem why? Now that I’d like to read.