Nra Gun Quotes

One only wishes Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander's last meal.

I'm tired of the whole anti gun thing. Saying that Guns cause Murders is like saying Steering Wheels cause car wrecks

Our love affair with guns has nothing to do with tyranny, or militias, or self-preservation. Just ask any NRA member the following: If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns -- or the one we live in now? If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious. But it's not about life and liberty. It's all about the sheer hard-on of owning a gun.

When a country with less than five percent of the world's population has nearly half of the world's privately owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world's mass shootings, it's time to stop saying guns make us safer.

To all my fellow Americans who simply insist on hangin' on to those guns ... Two things: 1) Enjoy 'em! 2) Please keep them hidden in a safe, secure place where the young 'uns can't get at 'em (I'd suggest the same place you keep the textbooks on evolution and global warming).

If guns don't kill people, why do mass killers arm themselves with guns?

Violence isn't a Democrat or Republican problem. It's an American problem, requiring an American solution.

The NRA kills more Americans than Muslim terrorists do.

We have a few chicken-shit senators who are afraid of the NRA and its ilk, but with the right tweaks, I still think you have a shot . . .

If you say guns kill people one more time, I will shoot you with a gun, and you will, coincidentally, die.

The NRA assholes will tell you that “guns don’t kill people, people do.” Yeah, Malone thinks, people with guns.

If you're one of those delusional 2nd Amendment types who believes you and your trailer park 'militia' might need to take on the Army, the Navy, the 101st Airborne and SEAL Team 6; not only should you be denied the right to bear arms -- but the right to your belt & shoelaces as well ... 'cause you're stark, ravin' batshit!!!

Guns kill far more quickly and efficiently than knives, or crossbows, or toenail clippers; and, unlike bombs, you don't need to build one in your basement -- they come ready-made! There's a reason why guns are the overwhelming weapon of choice among mass murderers.

I hate and fear violence myself, have always avoided barroom brawls, and tho' I'm a bit of a gun-nut, and a member of the NRA, I never shoot at anything but beer cans and mule deer. (In season.) And seldom hit either, except by accident.

Where is outrage from the National Rifle Association? Where’s the damned NRA? The NRA claims to believe the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States grants all of our citizens the right to survive and protect their families with any gun they want. I guess that’s only true when those citizens are Caucasian! Does the Second Amendment apply if you’re a black man driving through a white neighborhood?

When nearly 3,000 people died on 9/11, it was enough to create massive change in our society. Over ten times as many people die from guns each year. Where is the social change?

It takes a good guy with a gun, to stop a bad guy with a gun (unless the bad guy's a much better shot).

We don't have a gun problem; we have a math problem: ZERO GUNS = ZERO GUN-RELATED DEATHS.

Like the NRA says, it's better to have a machine gun and not need it than to need a machine gun and not have it.

When has a civilian ever stopped a mass shooting with an AR-15? An AR-15 is a perfect weapon for mass murderers -- not so much for self-defense. Would you bring an AR-15 along on a date? To your place of work? To the movies? If not, how can owning an AR-15 save your life in the event of a mass shooting? Why does the NRA keep telling us we need semi-automatic rifles for self-defense? Whose side are they really on?

I only wish the NRA and its jellyfish, well-paid supporters in legislatures both State and Federal would be careful to recite the whole of it, and then tell us how a heavily armed man, woman, or child, recruited by no official, led by no official, given no goals by any official, motivated or restrained only by his or her personality and perceptions of what is going on, can be considered a member of a well-regulated militia.

Just a thought for all you God-fearin', gun-lovin', Bible-thumpin' 2nd Amendment patriots. If it turns out Heaven's a gun-free zone, what's plan B???

The country is solidly behind the various proposals to limit access to dangerous weapons, especially high capacity automatic weapons. However, only a short time after the Bloomfield tragedy, it became clear that Congress and the President had other ideas and are still in bed with the NRA.

Our good friend and fellow sportsman George W. Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act into law back in 2005. Essentially, unless we make a terribly defective gun, the law creates a complete shield from liability. God bless Citizens United, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, tort reform, and needy and greedy politicians.

Before you're allowed to own a .44, your IQ should be higher than .44.

He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. (Unless the other guy has a gun!)

The NRA brainwashes you into believing that you need to buy a bunch of guns, to protect yourself from all the people with guns.

And we have obviously failed on guns. Victims have engaged the public, and polls consistently indicate that huge majorities, including gun owners, support commonsense steps. Dr. Ochberg is frustrated, too. “Good people have tried to do good things but no policy has been enacted to reduce access of military weapons to kids,” he said. “No leader has had the guts to take on the NRA.” Nor has its own membership.

The NRA is an outdated special interest group. The Association’s membership does not have the best interests of our students or the safety of our schools in mind. Its’ influence must be diminished and ultimately destroyed. The NRA has our fallen friends’ blood on its hands.

Why do we still cling to the intellectually retarded notion that liberty can be obtained, maintained, or lost at the end of a gun barrel? When you're working 3 minimum wage jobs to make the minimum payment on a pair of socks you bought 12 years ago because your credit card company slapped you with an interest rate that would make a loan shark holler WTF! ... well, no one needs to hold a gun to your head. Your ass has already been sold down the river.

Remember: Guns don't kill! -- The dimwits who insist EVERYONE should have the right to own 'em do!

Forget 'pray the gay away.' I you're more turned on by an AR-15 than a pair of tits, time for some serious therapy. Time for all you gun-humpers to come out of the closet. Is this really about the 2nd Amendment and self-defense -- or just a pathetic fetish for guys with tiny pee-pees?

Mass shootings are all part of a vast Left-wing conspiracy to undermine the 2nd Amendment and deprive your 6-year-old of his God-given right to bring a Bushmaster to class for "show and tell" ... The one he got from his psychotic, meth-addicted uncle's trailer while the latter was out getting the Confederate flag tattooed on his face. Remember, guns don't kill: the dimwits who insist EVERYONE should have the right to own 'em do.

One only wishes Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander’s last meal.

To all the kids from the "special" reading class back in high school (the one where you tried to form words using wooden blocks) -- PLEASE stop telling me that I can't blame an "inanimate object" for the off-the-hook gun violence in this country. YES! ... I CAN!!! I blame all the "inanimate objects" in Congress who refuse to pass sensible gun legislation because they're too chicken-shit to take on Wayne LaPierre and the gun lobby.

We do wish they’d have the same fervor and monetary backing for, say, a group of black legal gun carriers in Ferguson, Missouri, as they do white folks.

Guns are useless against a tyrannical government with tanks and drones.

Capitalism is cruelty for money.

I could shoot the dick off a hummingbird but fuck the NRA with a prickly pear.

When the NSSF fights against legislation designed to prevent mass shootings because it “won’t work and is a violation of rights,” we understand that many people agree with that argument. But that’s not, at all, even a little bit why the organization lobbies so hard. It works hand in hand with the NRA and certain senators, and spends millions of dollars per year for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. And every time a shooting happens, it makes even more money. Yes. For real. When a mass shooting makes national headlines, the gun lobby purposefully stokes up fear and paranoia over proposed new gun laws so that scared citizens get out their checkbooks and buy a new AR-15 (or sporting rifle). So why would the NSSF have any interest in stopping mass shootings? Why would it engage politically and invest in compromise, a reform plan that attempts to make all Americans safer, or any sort of reckoning of the role guns play in gun violence? It won’t. However you feel about guns and their place in America—whether we’re talking about rifles for hunting or assault rifles, or anything in between—it’s undeniable that the gun lobby has refused to acknowledge or entertain any sort of regulation or reform aimed at making us a safer and saner nation. The reason why: because that does not make it more money. A customer base kept terrified at all times that this will be “the last chance before the government bans” whatever gun manufacturers are peddling is much more valuable. A customer base absolutely convinced that the just-about-anyone-can-buy culture we have is politically necessary without seeing that it serves those companies is what they’re after. They have achieved it.

Personally, I think we should remove the word "shooting" from the vernacular. It's an ugly, biased word that somehow creates the assumption that a gun was involved. Let's go with 'Interpersonal Ballistic Event' (IBE).

MY ASS IS WORTH MORE THAN YOUR INCONVENIENCE ... that's my response to anyone opposed to universal background checks. If Ted Nugent has to wait three days because his wife wants a Howitzer for the backyard -- tough shit! If a background check keeps ONE gun out of the hands of ONE maniac thereby saving MY ass, it's worth it. May sound a bit selfish, but I'd hope you're equally fond of your own ass.

Forget the National Debt Clock. We need an electronic billboard to track all the daily shootings in this country. I'm really sick of listening to all the mouth breathers who soil their camouflage pants every time someone suggests we might have a gun problem. Other countries have crazy, violent people. What they don't have is 300,000,000 WMDs and a gun show loophole that allows any psycho with a valid credit card to own 'em.

When it comes to television advertising, Michael Bloomberg out-spends the NRA and all other self-defense groups by 6.3 to one. The money produces political attack ads that accuse supporters of right-to-carry on college campuses of “allowing criminals to carry hidden, loaded guns in our schools.

If enough American gun-owners urge Congress to do the right thing, and insist the NRA climb aboard, the results might surprise you. Gun owners aren’t dragons, and they don’t have to practice Gerald Ford two-mindedness, simultaneously mourning the victims and denying the role speed-shooters play in these tragedies, forever.

At an NRA annual meeting in Cincinnati in 1977, Second Amendment “absolutists” took control of the NRA from previous leaders who thought the organization was really there to protect marksmen. Gun nuts call this event the Revolt at Cincinnati. Our modern epidemic of mass shootings can, more or less, be traced to these yahoos winning control of that organization. The ammosexuals reformed the NRA from the generally benign conglomeration of Bambi killers to the grotesque weapon of mass destruction we know it to be today. It was this new NRA that invented the radical rationalization of the Second Amendment as a right to armed self-defense. It was this new NRA that gained political supremacy in the Republican party. It was this new NRA that got Ronald Reagan, who once signed one of the most sweeping gun restrictions in the nation, to sign the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, an act that rolled back many of the restrictions from the Gun Control Act. The NRA’s wholesale reimagining of the Second Amendment hasn’t just lured Republican politicians, it’s become part of the gospel of Republican judges. The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, the two outside interest groups most responsible for telling Republican judges how to rule, have fully adopted an absolutist, blood-soaked interpretation of the Second Amendment. These groups of alleged “textualists” read “well regulated militia” clear out of the text of the Amendment. Instead, they substitute self-defense as the “original purpose” of the language. There was an original purpose to the Second Amendment, but it wasn’t to keep people safe. It was to preserve white supremacy and slavery.

Raise your gun in anger, then hang your head in sorrow.

IT BEGAN WITH A GUN. On September 1, 1939, the German army invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. In the October 1939 issue of Detective Comics, Batman killed a vampire by shooting silver bullets into his heart. In the next issue, Batman fired a gun at two evil henchmen. When Whitney Ellsworth, DC’s editorial director, got a first look at a draft of the next installment, Batman was shooting again. Ellsworth shook his head and said, Take the gun out.1 Batman had debuted in Detective Com-ics in May 1939, the same month that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in United States v. Miller, a landmark gun-control case. It concerned the constitutionality of the 1934 National Firearms Act and the 1938 Federal Firearms Act, which effectively banned machine guns through prohibitive taxation, and regulated handgun ownership by introducing licensing, waiting period, and permit requirements. The National Rifle Association supported the legislation (at the time, the NRA was a sportsman’s organization). But gun manufacturers challenged it on the grounds that federal control of gun ownership violated the Second Amendment. FDR’s solicitor general said the Second Amendment had nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun; it had to do with the common defense. The court agreed, unanimously.2

A sacred cow, unexamined, feeds itself and produces a whole lot of bullshit. And nobody wants that, except the people who profit by selling you bullshit. Those are the people who try to tell you that examining or criticizing the sacred cow is taboo.

Not every gun owner is as sane or self-possessed as the plumber from Sutherland Springs, after all, and if, as the NRA argues, law-abiding Americans should be and must be armed to protect themselves against the lawbreakers who threaten our safety, vast numbers of fearful, often irrational people will be empowered to make split-second decisions that will inevitably lead to more killings of unarmed strangers. To put a gun in everyone’s hand would turn the United States into a country of soldiers and thrust us back to the early colonial days when every citizen was a musket-bearing warrior and did lifetime service in the local militia. Is that what we want from America today—the right to live in a society of permanent armed struggle? If the problem is too many bad men with guns, would it not be wiser to take those guns away from them rather than arm the so-called good men, who in many if not most instances are considerably less than good, and thereby eliminate the problem altogether, for if the bad men had no guns, why would the good men need them? As my mother used to say to me whenever I spun off into one of my wild, passionate speculations about how to improve the world: “Dream on, Paul.

This is comparable to the long fought battle over the Second Amendment (the right to bear arms) and a popular stance that automatic weapons should be illegal while handguns should be permitted. Similarly, Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, fought a hard battle in the 1970s and 1980s over the First Amendment and his right to publish any material regardless of content as it was a matter related to the freedom of expression. Gun control opponents, such as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA), do not want to outlaw fully automatic weapons because of the “what is next?” argument, which can be a slippery slope.

Yet here the guardian of the Second Amendment was now deliberately ignoring the inconvenient fact that Black men had been killed for merely possessing a firearm. “Where’s the NRA?” asked journalist Hanna Kozlowska. Didn’t Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have Second Amendment rights, too? 11 David A. Graham, in The Atlantic, coolly observed that the “two shootings give a strong sense that the Second Amendment does not apply to black Americans the same way it does to white Americans.” 12 Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote that he saw that old Jim Crow “whites only” sign plastered above the Second Amendment. 13 The message was loud and clear: Even for the NRA, Black people did not have Second Amendment rights. 14

NBC’s Bob Costas—when he is not out praising Vladimir Putin at the Olympics—is railing against the dangerous gun culture of America, perpetuated by (cue low piano keys) the villainous NRA. When it was pointed out to Costas by Greg Gutfeld that he was protected by armed security, Costas blanched. Costas responded, “In truth, Greg was accurate if you consider 180 degrees from the truth accurate. I have never had a personal bodyguard a single day in my life. There are security people at NFL games that the NFL employs, and there is always massive security at an Olympics, and there…is NBC security.” But Gutfeld never said that Costas had hired a personal bodyguard. Just pointing out that Costas was benefiting from the gun culture he was simultaneously attacking. He doesn’t have to be armed, because the companies he works for have the power and money to make other carry arms for him.

NBC News reporter David Gregory was on a tear. Lecturing the NRA president—and the rest of the world—on the need for gun restrictions, the D.C. media darling and host of NBC’s boring Sunday morning gabfest, Meet the Press, Gregory displayed a thirty-round magazine during an interview. This was a violation of District of Columbia law, which specifically makes it illegal to own, transfer, or sell “high-capacity ammunition.” Conservatives demanded the Mr. Gregory, a proponent of strict gun control laws, be arrested and charged for his clear violation of the laws he supports. Instead the District of Columbia’s attorney general, Irv Nathan, gave Gregory a pass: Having carefully reviewed all of the facts and circumstances of this matter, as it does in every case involving firearms-related offenses or any other potential violation of D.C. law within our criminal jurisdiction, OAG has determined to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to decline to bring criminal charges against Mr. Gregory, who has no criminal record, or any other NBC employee based on the events associated with the December 23, 2012 broadcast. What irked people even more was the attorney general admitted that NBC had willfully violated D.C. law. As he noted: No specific intent is required for this violation, and ignorance of the law or even confusion about it is no defense. We therefore did not rely in making our judgment on the feeble and unsatisfactory efforts that NBC made to determine whether or not it was lawful to possess, display and broadcast this large capacity magazine as a means of fostering the public policy debate. Although there appears to have been some misinformation provided initially, NBC was clearly and timely advised by an MPD employee that its plans to exhibit on the broadcast a high capacity-magazine would violate D.C. law. David Gregory gets a pass, but not Mark Witaschek. Witaschek was the subject of not one but two raids on his home by D.C. police. The second time that police raided Witaschek’s home, they did so with a SWAT team and even pulled his terrified teenage son out of the shower. They found inoperable muzzleloader bullets (replicas, not live ammunition, no primer) and an inoperable shotgun shell, a tchotchke from a hunting trip. Witaschek, in compliance with D.C. laws, kept his guns out of D.C. and at a family member’s home in Virginia. It wasn’t good enough for the courts, who tangled him up in a two-year court battle that he fought on principle but eventually lost. As punishment, the court forced him to register as a gun offender, even though he never had a firearm in the city. Witaschek is listed as a “gun offender”—not to be confused with “sex offender,” though that’s exactly the intent: to draw some sort of correlation, to make possession of a common firearm seem as perverse as sexual offenses. If only Mark Witaschek got the break that David Gregory received.

Restricting the sale and use of guns became a salient political issue only after the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr. The gun control laws enacted or seriously proposed were modest. When Congress was passing gun regulation in 1968, the National Rifle Association’s executive vice-president wrote that “the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.” The GOP platforms of 1968 and 1972 supported gun regulation—and President Nixon, his speechwriter William Safire recalled, told him that “guns are an abomination” and that he would have outlawed handguns if he could. But violent crime had tripled in a decade, and in the late 1970s hysterics managed to take over the NRA, replacing its motto “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation” with the second half of the Second Amendment—“The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” Within a decade, the official Republican position shifted almost 180 degrees to oppose any federal registration of firearms. In other words, fantasy was starting to hold its own against reason.

The five million members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) are at the forefront of shooting and promoting shooting safety. And they have a proud record of achievement as well as activism. Perhaps you were not aware that: • More than 120,000 certified NRA instructors train about 750,000 gun owners every year.

Since the establishment of the lifesaving “Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program” in 1988, more than twenty-eight million pre-kindergarten to fourth-grade children have learned what to do if they see a firearm in an unsupervised situation. • During the past seven years, “Refuse to Be a Victim” seminars have helped more than fifteen thousand men and women develop their own personal safety plan using common-sense strategies.

place. With the world in turmoil, America has generally managed to honor its egalitarian principles and, though some people might disagree, to maintain the basic rights guaranteed to citizens in its founding documents. Freedom to worship as one pleases. Freedom to speak one’s mind. Freedom against unreasonable searches and seizures. Freedom to own a firearm. These are precious liberties, ones that are rare in the world. Freedom together with other promises--such as freedom of assembly and of the press–is standard nowhere else.

women

Even if you are absolutely certain that a gun is not loaded, handle it as if it were because you’re forming a habit, and the consequences of a moment of inattention or carelessness can be disastrous.

The damage caused by carelessness is harmful to the entire firearms community in North America. It harms the twenty-five million hunters, competitors, and recreational shooters. It harms the fifteen million concealed-carry permit holders. It harms the 325 million citizens of the United States who believe in and honor our rights as citizens.

When racks shed arms like autumn leaves, the land shall turn from red to gold

The most thoughtful progressive scholars recognized that the Court was responding to a broad shift in attitudes about gun rights. For one thing, elections matter. The presidents who appointed the five justices in the majority all were themselves NRA members.

With more than a million Texans licensed to carry handguns, the state is actually far behind Florida, with 1.7 million. "I'm EMBARRASSED," Governor Greg Abbott tweeted in 2015; "Texas #2 in nation for new gun purchases, behind CALIFORNIA. Let's pick up the pace Texans. @NRA

Soldiers understand and know death. Families only understand grief, anger and sorrow.

It’s hard to know exactly how many children are killed or maimed by guns because in 1996, Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., at the behest of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and weapons manufacturers, attached the Dickey Amendment to a must-pass omnibus spending bill, making it illegal for the CDC to keep track of or analyze the data. Congress simultaneously cut the CDC’s budget by the exact amount it had been spending to track gun violence.10 (Sixteen years later, Dickey essentially apologized in a Washington Post op-ed, calling for research into gun violence.11 As he later told ABC, “I wish I had not been so reactionary.”12)

Even the simplest regulations meet outraged opposition from the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Gun Owners of America. Theirs is a reflexive opposition based on the rather paranoid belief that any step toward firearms regulation must necessarily take us one more step down the road to federal confiscation of America’s guns and, willy-nilly from there, to tyranny and oppression. Yet survey after survey shows that most Americans favor rigorous firearms regulations.

As long as our legislators continue to pocket handouts from the NRA, as long as they continue to condone a way of doing business that readily puts guns in the hands of the marginalized and the desperate, of children who see no other access to their share of the American dream …

Many gun control academics use language that is hardly scholarly, attacking academics they disagree with as being paid off by the “execrable NRA.” They claim that “gun sellers call the shots at the NRA.”5 They accuse others of having “blood on [their] hands” or being a “blight on democracy.” Apparently, finding evidence of defensive gun uses brings “harm to the democratic process.”6 There are other less obvious claims that are just as outrageous. No, the United States isn’t unique in terms of mass public shootings or homicides. No, gun bans don’t make people safer. Background checks on private transfers haven’t stopped mass public shootings or any other type of crime in the U.S. or other countries. Background checks are racist. And there are real problems with background checks that harm the most vulnerable. Gun control advocates have it backwards when they claim that gun makers have something to learn about how to reduce accidents from looking at government regulation of cars.

In 2010 the NRA received $71 million in donations, much of it coming from manufacturers of assault weapons. 74% of their funding comes from corporations. According to Firearm Industry Statistics, there are 465 gun manufacturers in the U.S. The number of guns manufactured in the U.S. increased from 2.9 million in 2001 to almost 5.5 million in 2010. In 2013, guns and ammo sales rose to an estimated $14.7 billion. The NRA isn’t fighting for the rights of the average American to own a 30-clip magazine. They’re fighting for the rights of gun manufacturers to make and sell them, both in the U.S. and abroad. That’s why they spend millions each year to make sure the politicians they bought remain in office. Between

first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time.’ So I’m a pro-life-choice NRA gun-control nut who wants schools to pray for the separation of church and state. For the love of God, I just want all of us to start getting along!

On Piers Morgan Tonight, Alan Dershowitz claimed, “[W]hat’s happening is the NRA is buying their data. They’re buying their facts. They’re hiring and commissioning so-called scholars to come up with the kinds of lies.”8 In another appearance he declared, “Your [John Lott’s] conclusions are paid for and financed by the National Rifle Association . . . This [Lott’s research] is junk science at its worst. Paid for and financed by the National Rifle Association . . . It [the NRA] only funds research that will lead to these conclusions.”9 But the NRA doesn’t fund empirical research for a simple reason—the media would ignore it.

against my research were true. The claim is especially ludicrous, since the NRA doesn’t seem to fund any statistical research at all. When I appeared on CNN with Dershowitz in July 2012, I forcefully responded, “Take that back. The NRA hasn’t paid for my research. That’s simply ridiculous.”13 When asked about these claims, the NRA told Cybercast News Service: “The NRA has never funded John Lott’s research.”14 Dershowitz declined to provide any support for his charges when Cybercast asked him for evidence.

The decades-long NRA disinformation campaign has effectively convinced almost all gun owners of this myth.

I want to sue the Burns kid. I want to sue his parents for leaving their guns so easily accessible to this punk. I want to sue the school and the school system for their lax security and shit preparedness. God knows there have been enough shootings for someone to figure out how to protect our kids in these situations. I want to sue the gun manufacturers, the gun lobby, and the fucking NRA for usurping and bastardizing the Second Amendment, turning it into something it was never intended to be. They carried and shot muskets in 1776, for crying out loud! What does the Second Amendment have to do with assault rifles? Why does any citizen need an AR15 or an AK47?

his lifetime NRA membership in a blistering letter. It’s worth reading the whole text to get a sense of the totality of Bush’s fury: I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people. Al Whicher, who served on my [U.S. Secret Service] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country—and serve it well he did. In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi. John Magaw, who used to head the U.S.S.S. and now heads A.T.F., is one of the most principled, decent men I have ever known. He would be the last to condone the kind of illegal behavior your ugly letter charges. The same is true for the F.B.I.’s able Director Louis Freeh. I appointed Mr. Freeh to the Federal Bench. His integrity and honor are beyond question. Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government’s “go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens.” (Your words) I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns. However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us. You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre’s unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list. Sincerely, [signed] George Bush

Whom are we protecting if not the children of Newtown, brutalized beyond recognition by an assault rifle, whose parents could not convince an NRA-fearing Republican Congress to pass a single piece of gun reform legislation? Whom are we protecting if not fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, shot and killed after taking her final exams? What the hell are we doing? And was it always this bad? Was the world always on fire and I hadn’t been looking up?

Possibly the most glaring blindspot in current leftist discourse is its apathy for—or worse yet, outright opposition to—the Second Amendment. Ironically this trend seems to have evolved out of the lie long lobbied by the NRA that posits a zero-sum contest between proven gun control measures (e.g. waiting periods, safe storage, universal background checks for mental and criminal records, etc.) and a citizen’s right and duty to bear arms in defense of self and others. Like many such partisan dichotomies, this is utterly false. What left-leaning gun skeptics must recognize […] is that the final political veto always rests with the armed, for better or for worse; and that while might of course does not make right, right just as surely requires might if it’s to endure worth a damn. Only the nihilist can, of right accord, embrace a life of weakness, whereby the meek in effect surrender the earth to the highest bid of brute force.

I can’t tell you how many times people told me that I was ignorant and didn’t know what I was talking about because I didn’t blame the NRA for everything. Because I didn’t blame the type of gun that 18–1958 used. I couldn’t do that, because blaming the gun let everyone and everything off the hook. There was more incompetence here than seemed humanly possible.

In 2015 executive vice president of the NRA Wayne LaPierre took home $5.1 million; I took home $0. Whose motivations do you trust?

This makes it incredibly ironic when the NRA accuses Moms Demand Action volunteers of being paid to show up and protest. But really, we shouldn’t be surprised—it’s a classic hallmark of manipulation and narcissism to accuse your opponent of doing the exact thing that you yourself are doing.

The conflation of gun rights and religious identity existed well before there was an NRA, before there was even a nation, and it is likely to remain a powerful political force for the foreseeable future.

America is drowning in guns. Even if they were all banned from midnight tonight, it would probably take a century or two to get them all out of circulation and maybe not even then.

I find the NRA to be hard work. The fact that they always think the answer is more guns. After Sandy Hook happened, the NRA said, and I quote, “None of this would have happened if the teachers had guns.” I… I think they’re forgetting what school was like. Does anyone remember that casual teacher that used to… Whenever she came into school, that relief teacher came, you and your friends would see her and go, [Chuckling] “Oh, we’re gonna make her cry.” And then she’d stand in front of the class with a bit of chalk and her hands would be shaking, and you’d go, “You’re never getting married, are you, Miss? Never gonna happen for you.” Then she’d get back to her 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, and she’d be crying over the steering wheel, just, “Why don’t they like me?” Let’s give that cunt a gun and see how things work out! [Audience cheering] And then they go, “Oh, well, answer to that, we’ll just add more guns.” They go, “We’ll put an armed security guard at every school across America.” Yeah, that’ll work out. The average security guard in America earns $16 an hour. Not a lot of wiggle room to be a fucking hero! Someone comes onto the school and… [Mimicking machine gun] And you’ve got Kevin. Now, I’m sure Kevin’s shit-hot at Call of Duty, but it might not fucking cut it, ladies and gentlemen.

Use a Condom, Not a Knife