Lock, Stock and 500 Smoking Barrels
By C.J. Marcinko
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently voted unanimously to call the National Rifle Association a “Domestic Terrorist Group.” This is wrong and here’s why:
It’s a question of size, scope, and magnitude, like calling Amazon and Wal-Mart mom and pop outfits, like calling the Roman Catholic Church a crazy little cult, an elephant an ermine or a whale a weasel. Terrorism is the tool, tactic and philosophy of the defeated, the disenfranchised and the occupied. Terrorism is what the little guy does, not the big guy. Ladies and Gentlemen, the NRA are the biggest guys on the block. With a membership of nearly 5 million, according to The Center for Responsive Politics, they spent nearly $419 million in 2016, including $30 million for the Trump campaign and $20 million for GOP Senate candidates. Not exactly the have-nots.
By Contrast, occupied Northern Ireland proved fertile ground for the Irish Republican Army, the State of Israel gave birth to the P.L.O., Black September and Abu Nidal, and reconstruction of the South after the American Civil War spawned the Ku Klux Klan. Call it unintended consequences, call it Chaos Theory, call it the Laws of Physics, but action causes reaction causes faction, fraction, addition, subtraction and dissatisfaction.
None of this, of course, applies to the N.R.A. In any legislative sense of the word, they “rule.” If politics is war and elections are battles, then they, my friends, have won. They are enfranchised to the hilt, or more aptly armed to the electoral teeth. They are not the occupied, they are the occupiers. The National Rifle Association own both political parties and our government lock, stock and 500 smoking barrels. They occupy every statehouse, Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue like a triumphant Gross-legioned Roman Army.
Did the passage of The Feingold McCain Campaign Finance Reform slow them down? Not a chance. They only gone faster, grown larger like a metastasizing cancer out of hell, or for all you “Spaceball” fans, they’re moving at “Ludicrous Speed.” After every mass shooting from 2009 to 2017 Barrack Obama morosely lamented that something needed to be done. Sadly, nothing got done, even when his own party controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Opinion polls show in the neighborhood of 60 to 70% favorability for background checks and a reinstatement of the Assault Weapons Ban. I suppose the elite campaign money of the N.R.A cancels out the will of the common people. The current occupant of the White House seems more concerned with servicing the agenda of the N.R.A. than anything else (except tweeting, maybe). He took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States, not the political game plan of a special interest group. They’re not the same thing.
I hate to bring this up, but I will. The N.R.A., as far as I know, have never advocated assassination, kidnapping, high-jacking, the use of improvised explosive devices, public be-headings, crashing planes into buildings or any other terrorist type activities. This is probably why they will win their lawsuit against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Comparing the N.R.A. to terrorists on that level, is just silly, but I guess it’s a sign of the silly times we live in.
They’re more powerful than terrorists. To paraphrase John Kennedy about an organization like that, they’re not the Underworld, they’re the Overworld.
That famous phrase that pays is not of the special interests, by (or buy) the special interests and for the special interests, it’s “Of the people, by the people and for the people.” Our youngest, most vulnerable, most innocent people need to be protected and defended. Our old, experienced, cagey constitution needs to be preserved. If we don’t have leaders with the courage, the ability and the will to stand up to the N.R.A. or anyone else who aids, abets, and enables mass murderers, then we clearly need new people.
It’s your country folks, what you do with it is completely up to you.