According to StopTheNRA.com: "The NRA bans guns from its own convention year after year, yet does not want to give the citizens of the District of Columbia the same right to make that determination."
Nor to the citizens of anywhere else I presume. I find it fascinating to think that guns are banned from NRA conventions - although there must be an exception for the folks on stage, bragging about their "cold, dead hands".
Let me just amplify on StopTheNRA's point, because they certainly have one whether or not this intra-NRA ban is true, as I assume it to be. I haven't actually been able to verify or contradict this, but even if the precise statement turns out to be mistaken (or someone merely claims it to be out of convenience, which happens), the whole idea still leads to an interesting thought experiment. If you do have further info about this policy, please post it here.
In the Westerns, everybody carried a gun. Well, the men did anyway, and once in a while in the more progressive (?) Westerns, so did the women. But in many saloons you were expected to check your guns at the door. Even certain towns required you to leave your arms with the sheriff or marshall until it was time to leave. It wasn't personal; most of the people had their guns for self-defense and target practice. But everybody just knew that there was one nutcake out there who would actually use his gun to start something, to disrupt the order of the peace lovin' town. And they knew that, when that happened, everyone would have to pay.
Does the NRA have this same fear? At the same time as they would liberalize (yes, liberalize, I know you think they're some species of conservative) just about every gun law so that anyone and everyone can walk into a grocery store carrying a concealed Howitzer loaded with nuclear tipped, cop-killer shells, is it possible that in back of their minds they realize that in a room filled with thousands of gun nuts there could easily be one real, live, bona fide nut who would actually start a gunfight?
I'd like to pause to apologize to the thousands of gun enthusiasts whom I just called "nuts" and whose rights I unfortunately want to abridge in the name of other important rights, like the right to walk around without gaping holes in your flesh. I know most of you folks use and enjoy your guns more or less responsibly, and would not hurt a flea unless it fired first. I feel like we can engage in a little good natured name calling, and then go and have a beer afterwards, otherwise I probably would be a lot more delicate. Even I have enough sense not to call a real nut a "nut" to his face. You're not a nut, my friend Joe Average NRA -- (gulp) at least I hope not, since you're armed to the teeth. But one or two or a few hundred members of your community, or the community at large, might actually be cashews, and if it weren't for their having concealed Howitzers it might not be so important to you to have your own for self-defense.
But here's the rub. If StopTheNRA.com is correct, then the NRA actually agrees with me - some of you guys are cashews, not you certainly, but the guy four seats down whose coat is way too big since it has to have room for the Howie, so maybe we'd better check the guns at the door. It would certainly be a huge embarrassment to the NRA if a melee erupted at the convention. But if the NRA doesn't trust its own membership to bring guns into their own convention, why should we let the NRA turn the rest of society into a "Free for All", to quote the lyrics of NRA semi-celebrity macadamia Ted Nugent? If we grant that the NRA gives good training in the responsible use of guns, isn't society at large under a much larger danger because most gun buyers aren't members and don't get this valuable training?
Or, to get back to the image of the Western, where most of the men have guns but are peaceful and law abiding: sooner or later, Billy the Kid's going to ride into town. Without a gun, he's an obnoxious punk. With a gun, he's a deadly outlaw (and getting off on the fact that we know it). So now we need Wyatt Earp, who, without a gun, would be just a right-wing talk show host. With a gun, he's a quasi-fascist dictator. But we need him, and we let him bully us all around because Billy's got a gun, too and Wyatt's the fastest anyway, something to remember should we happen to get on his nerves. And this town was so peaceful!
Returning once again to modern times, let's look at school shootings. Something like 15 people died (including the two young gunmen) and 23 were wounded at Columbine, with the boys having planned much greater devastation and quite possibly having been close to achieving it. It seems doubtful they could have accomplished as much using their bare hands, or knives, or throwing stars, even if they had been well trained in combat. "Guns don't kill people, people kill people", goes a popular NRA slogan. Well, hammers don't pound nails, people pound nails. But you can pound a lot more nails when you have the right tool.
Even scarier examples of guns out of control come from the Middle East. In Afghanistan and Iraq, most of the weapons aimed against us came from us. Why, so gunmakers could make a lot of money? Maybe that's who the NRA really benefits.
The "right to bear arms" shouldn't mean that everyone is entitled to their own concealed Howitzer. And yet that seems to be the direction that most NRA-backed legislation leans today.
And civil society (or what could be a civil society) bears the consequences.
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