Life in the NRA's USA

In 1975, Lynyrd Skynyrd released Saturday Night Special, a song about the iconic six-shot revolver that left no doubt the band questioned the value of a weapon good for nothing but to "put a man a-six feet in a hole." That same year, my high school freshman civics class held a series of debates on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I was assigned the Second Amendment.

I do not recall if I had to take the pro or con on the amendment. I do not recall if the debate centered on the individual right to possess firearms, if it centered on the intent of referencing a well-regulated militia, or if it centered on the pros and cons of adding the amendment to the Constitution in the first place.

What I do recall, however, was that as a public high school student, school shootings were not part of the conversation. The thought never even entered our minds. Why would they? Such events, if they took place at all, were so rare as to be neither part of the public discourse nor public consciousness. We didn't think about them because they didn't happen. What was in the public consciousness - and what was a central part of the overall discussion on crime and violence - were those Saturday Night Specials, so-called because they were the weapon of choice for burglars, drug dealers and spurned lovers who often found reason to use said weapons to resolve a drug deal gone bad or mete out justice on an unfaithful partner, often on a Saturday night.

The results of our high school debate are irrelevant. But what is relevant is where that larger societal debate on Saturday Night Specials took us, because suggestions to register those weapons began the NRA's shift from an advocate of gun safety to one vociferously defending and arguing for the individual right to own a gun. The NRA warned us those early suggestions of registration were the beginning of a dreaded slippery slope.

Time covers show the evolution of US firearms from 1968-2012

It was a slippery slope, alright, but not the one of ever tighter registration, restriction and eventual gun confiscation that the NRA warned about. Instead, it was the slippery slope of ever increasing exploitation of fear to justify the right and need to possess guns. The gradual but steady portrayal of our government as an evil threat to arm ourselves against using the guns protected in the Second Amendment, rather than to engage via the rights enshrined in the First. The NRA raised funds warning of jack-booted government thugs coming to take away guns. They lobbied for lax Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms enforcement of existing laws. They fought restrictions on the sale and firepower of guns. They enabled and encouraged the growth of gun shows where background checks often pay mere lip service to the concept and the gun trade became the equivalent of model trains - a hobby with an insatiable thirst for cooler, more realistic accessories that leaves a small, but significant subset living in an unhealthy fantasy world where they are defenders of truth, justice and the American Way.

Gun shows have turned the American arms race into a hobby - or vice versa

Meanwhile, we adapted to the new publicly-held firepower. We installed security cameras and metal detectors at airports, courthouses, football stadia and more. We began inspecting purses and backpacks when entering concerts and ballgames. We are witnessing the militarization of our local police forces. And now, the NRA is using those examples to argue that our schools are "deserving" of the same protections. That our schools deserve metal detectors, surveillance cameras, inspections, armed guards, armed teachers. That to do any less is neglect and a dereliction of our duty to our children. Their term of choice for what they envision is "harden."

There is another term that describes the NRA's vision of America.

Police state.

Bottom line, we are allowing those with the weapons to dictate how we are to live our lives. Therein lies the sad irony of the NRA's forty-plus year fight for gun rights in the name of preserving liberty. In pursuing those rights, they have created a society that is less free, less secure. The NRA's world is Orwellian in the purest sense, where words mean the opposite. Guns mean safety. Surveillance ensures liberty. Inspections deliver freedom.

Some liken what we are witnessing to the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot, where bit by bit, we cede our real freedom - the freedom to move about without worry of harm or the scrutiny of unseen watchful eyes, the freedom to send our kids to school without fear - until one day we realize the world we've created is precisely the dangerous dystopia from which those guns promised to protect us.

A 2017 NRA ad warns of evil forces in and outside of government

In some ways, however, what we are witnessing is more like a pressure cooker. The growing concentration of guns in the hands of fewer people, fueled by NRA warnings against dark forces inside and outside of government risks not just our safety, but society itself. In the NRA's world, not only is the government something to be viewed as sinister, but so are any who question the motives of the self-proclaimed righteous. The media, Hollywood, protesters and liberals are all presented as enemies of liberty. It is the classic "us versus them" construct, whereby the NRA is not only encouraging the development of a heavily armed, unregulated civilian army, but is also creating an enemy against which they must prepare to do battle. With a complicit conservative media fueling the flame, anger simmers and pressure builds. It is doubtful those weapons will remain forever sheathed. People looking for a fight are rarely disappointed. What the triggering event might be is a mystery, but just as pilots are warned of the "moth effect," whereby they fly towards objects they fixate upon, so should we beware that those fixated upon a righteous battle with evil adversaries will find those adversaries and be drawn towards - and into - just such a battle.

God help us if they do. The thought of an angry, disorganized mob of self-styled patriots who fancy themselves modern-day Minutemen, but lacking modern-day Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons to back their fervor with intellect and principle, leading a revolution against the United States of America does not lend itself to images of desirable outcomes. It could end quickly in a more serious, though no less decisive, Apache helicopter/A10 Warthog version of Indiana Jones and the guy with the sword. It could end with large parts of like-minded military units joining in to take on our government. Or, it just might never end. It's impossible to predict what life, politics or our system of government would look like on the other side of such an uprising, but it is hard to believe it would be an improvement upon the greatest experiment in liberty and democracy the world has ever seen.

Which all begs the question - is this the path upon which we wish to continue? Do we want the NRA and the most heavily armed among us dictating that we must accept intrusion in our personal lives, inconveniences in our public places and occasional mass death so they can continue to arm themselves against our own government? Because that is what five decades of NRA advocacy and activism has delivered.  And their answer - their only answer - is more of the same. The word for that is insanity. It is time to stop. More guns are not the answer. In a civil society, they never are.

Our founding fathers gave us all the tools we need to protect us from an overbearing government with rights enshrined in the Constitution that do not require taking up arms. With a free press to keep us informed, the freedom to speak out as we see fit, the right to hold our government accountable through peaceable assembly and petition, all backed up by the might of the ballot box, we have all the power we need. But in our zeal for guns, fueled by a fear-mongering NRA, we've lost sight of that.  The first step is to end the fascination with guns and the fantasy that they are the tool of choice in defending us from ourselves, for we may wake up one day only to find those guns have done nothing but place us in an armed prison of our own making. That is hardly freedom's safest place.