Stop Saying the NRA is about "Promoting Gun Ownership." It's not.

[TygrBright]

It's about promoting gun sales. And ammo, and accessories.

There are already 300-plus million guns "owned" in America. That mission was achieved long ago.

Judging by their communications, their attempts to promote fear and paranoia, and their insistence that there's no such thing as "too many guns," it's not "ownership" they care about:

It's sales.

Lots and lots and LOTS of sales. For lots of money. To land in the pockets of the top executives, board members, and shareholders of five companies: Ruger, Smith & Wesson, the Freedom Group, Mossberg, and SigSauer. And a constellation of smaller companies and holding companies.

There are already almost nine guns for every ten Americans floating around out there. If "ownership" was all the NRA was in existence to "protect," they'd be the most successful 501(c)(4) in America.

A 501(c)(4) organization, by the way, is a category of nonprofit created in order to enable tax exemption for groups promoting the social welfare and mutual benefit of its membership.

I think it's time for the IRS to review that classification. The NRA does bupkus for the social welfare of its "more than 4 million members" (that's in quotes, BTW, because the organization is remarkably coy about the actual membership numbers. They're perfectly willing to tell you how HUGE they are and how FAST membership is increasing, but try to pin them down to an actual number of dues-paying members and suddenly you're lost in a morass of qualifications, outdated statistics, and obfuscation.)

The NRA is actually a trade and lobbying association serving the interests of the firearms manufacturing industry, maintained by ginning up fear and paranoia and us vs them creepitude in order to build sales and provide their cloak of tax exemption.

It's about sales.

How do you sell more guns?

Scare people.

Tell them they're under siege.

Tell them "their rights will be taken away."

Fill them with jingoistic paranoia and fear of "others" who are coming to do harm to them.

Claim that the government is their enemy and they need to buy more guns to prevent the government from doing horrible things to them.

Scare, scare, scare.

Sell, sell, sell.

bitterly,
Bright