Happiness May Be a Warm Gun, But Joy Is Shitting Your Pants:
The Rude Pundit's favorite piece of news from the world of guntards is the NRA is joining with the ACLU to oppose the NSA's collection of metadata on Americans. Why? Because it "can be used as a 'backdoor' to construct a national gun registry." You got that? No backdoor action for the NRA. And it's cool with all other kinds of surveillance, but they'll be goddamned if you're gonna collect information on firearms sales. In a brief filed in court, the NRA says, "Under the programs revealed so far, the government may already possess information about everyone who has called the NRA by phone, emailed the NRA or visited the NRA’s website."
Frankly, it's easy to be of two minds here: First, one might think, "Hey, welcome to the party, bitches. Some of us don't like it when the NSA is monitoring our phone calls to our moms, let alone the NRA." And then one might think, "Well, shit, why don't we have a national registry for guns? They're more likely to cause violence than our moms. Fuck the backdoor. Front door that shit."
Oh, how the National Rifle Association danced a little jig of grotesque glee last week when, in Colorado (which has way, way more to worry about now than what the NRA is doing), it was able to get the scalps of two state senators who had voted to close the gun show background check loophole and limit magazines to 15 shots, which pretty much means al-Qaeda wins and America has to go Sharia. Let's give credit where it's due. The guntards won that one fair and square. They made clear that no possibly queer, definitely Jew mayor from New York City was gonna tell gun owners that they might have to wait a few minutes to buy an AR-15 at the annual Gunpalooza in Colorado Springs.
After all, a staggering 15-16% of all registered voters in two counties said that Democrats Angela Giron and John Morse had to go. That's like a tidal wave in a kiddie pool. Of course, Democrats still control the Senate there. And, of course, the laws are still on the books. But, hey, moral victory, motherfuckers, so well done.
The NRA's go-to stance is the panicked squat. That's because any time anything happens that might make people think poorly of guns, they first must shit their pants and then react as if they are being forced to walk around with shit-filed pants. They're already squatting in anticipation of the reaction to today's shooting at the Washington, DC, Navy Yard, especially since it seems like the shooter (or one of the shooters) used an AR-15 to off a dozen or more people. (Note: If your argument is that DC has gun control laws and look what happened, then you must want all the roads into DC lined with inspection stations to make sure no one brings in a gun from the outside.)
The think is that, unlike a baby with a filled diaper, the NRA loves it when it gets to shit itself. Like David Vitter on a visit to a hooker, the NRA gets off on shitting itself. Then it gets to act like the aggrieved victim of mean, mean liberals and irrational politicians merely "using" a tragedy to advance an "agenda." Because, see, it's an "agenda" if you want to ban certain kinds of guns, like after Newtown, but it's just common sense if you want to arm teachers. That's not an agenda at all. And when the NRA can get its squirrely membership all paranoid, you can bet that the money rolls in. Wayne LaPierre's hair ain't gonna combover itself.
The funny thing is that the NRA shitting itself over the NSA may actually work to get Congress to revisit broad surveillance powers. No less a dickless motherfucker than Grover Norquist believes it to be true. Calling the NRA's paranoia a "game-changer," Norquist bearded, "It will solidify conservative and Republican opposition to the program, without endangering the left-of-center opposition."
If you can't sometimes use evil to get to a greater good, then you don't know how to play the game.
