By accepting the NRA’s presidential endorsement, Donald Trump bought into the gun lobby’s paranoid view of government and its distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment, writes Lawrence Davidson.
By Lawrence Davidson
What do opportunists and fanatics have in common? They both chronically exaggerate – the former often to con folks into doing their bidding, and the latter most often because they have already been conned by their own grossly distorted worldview.
There are plenty of both types of people in today’s America, and the uncertain political environment has brought a lot of them out of the woodwork. The recent marriage of convenience of the National Rifle Association (NRA) leadership (fanatics) and Donald Trump (opportunist) is a case in point.
Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
The NRA is one of the country’s most influential advocacy organizations, with a membership of over 3 million. Its worldview, which can be neatly summed up as “freedom equals unrestricted gun ownership,” almost certainly carries weight beyond its membership numbers. In the wilds of places such as Minnesota, Wyoming and Alabama, NRA principles might carry more weight than the Bible.
Wayne LaPierre is the NRA’s executive vice president and Chris Cox is the NRA’s executive director for legislative action. LaPierre and Cox are typical of NRA stalwarts and we can see them as representative of a good percentage of the organization’s members.
On May 20, both men gave speeches before the NRA convention in Kentucky announcing the association’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president. In his speech, Cox spent a lot of time painting a picture of the United States as a place about to lose its “freedoms” if Hillary Clinton gets elected.
Here is how Cox put it: the present political environment in the U.S. is mired in “dishonesty, corruption and contempt for everyday Americans” and the only thing that stands between those “everyday Americans” and “the end of individual freedom in this country” are “gun owners,” who must turn out…