Guns
Despite all that has been written about guns and their consequences, there are still important topics that haven’t received much press. This note is about two interrelated subjects:
- Why the NRA and the gun lobby are as powerful as they are.
- Why the pro-gun campaigns are as damaging as the guns themselves.
Both are important in thinking about what needs to happen for public policy.
- Why the NRA and the gun lobby are as powerful as they are.
The point here is that the usual stories explain influence but nothing like the absolute veto power wielded by the NRA. Most articles describe NRA contributions to candidates and gun manufacturer contributions to the NRA. The stories are compelling, but the money just isn’t there for absolute power.
A recent article clarifies the situation. As with much of today’s politics, the real story is in the dark. The vast majority of the money spent by the NRA actually doesn’t go directly to candidates but to political action committees. And the source of that money is also dark and from far deeper pockets. Specifically the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, and Political Victory Fund are bankrolled by conservative Super PACs and the Koch brothers’ organization.
Nothing says that guns are necessarily close to the hearts of the Koch brothers, but the rhetoric around guns is. The central argument of the Koch agenda is that governments can do nothing, so we need to shrink government, shrink taxes, and shrink controls. We’ve talked about this before:
Government is corrupt and inept. Sometimes, as with the EPA, it is actively malicious. It makes laws that impinge on our freedoms. It wastes money with social welfare programs for ungrateful non-white cheats. Education is useless indoctrination. Even the police cannot be trusted to do their job — we need more good people with guns.
In that context the Kochs have every reason to support the gun lobby, and the pro-gun movement has to viewed as just one more aspect of the Koch-organization presence that has already delivered unimaginable tax cuts for the ultra-rich.
That leads to the next topic.
2. Why the pro-gun campaigns are as damaging as the guns themselves.
The first point is obvious but needs to be emphasized. The whole notion of “good people with guns” is an attack on the rule of law. The Kochs may not have to care about it — they certainly have their own law enforcement — but for the rest of us this is terrible. No one should be cheering for laws that say it is okay for people to go execute each other with only the vaguest notion of self-defense.
That gets to the main point: the pro-gun movement is not just supporting guns — it is supporting vigilante action. This is important, because it undermines the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument. We’re actually glorifying citizen executions.
And if there is anything that stands out in virtually all cases of mass shootings it’s that.
So now the question is what we can do about it. Anything in this piece is of course pure speculation, but here goes.
Fighting the whole Koch agenda is impractical, so we have to separate this part out. It seems that a first step is to go after the “good people with guns” notion explicitly and with support from law-enforcement and anyone else willing to stand up for rule of law. Guns are for defense, not vigilantes. Basic gun control (background checks and no assault weapons) is part of the package. Ideally this could be an acceptable compromise and could also make gun issue less productive for the Kochs. You never know, it might work.
It’s worth noting that nothing in the second amendment supports vigilante action, and no one can possibly believe that the eminently respectable founding fathers wanted to encourage it!
Originally published at ontheoutside.blog on March 21, 2018.
