NRA spooks tough-guy president
People looking on from outside must think the U.S. government is the proverbial prison where inmates are in charge.
They read of grandmothers being body-searched by airport security screeners.
They read of British tourists placed in shackles at U.S. gateway airports because of faulty visas. They read of a Muslin scholar denied entrance to the United States to lecture at Notre Dame University because of alleged criticisms of Israel. And they read of the law allowing the FBI to seize public library records to check reading habits of patrons.
Now those outside learn the 10-year-old 1994 Crime Control Act banning 19 weapons, large cartridge magazines and some semiautomatic ?assault weapons? will expire because Congress, the unwavering lapdog of the National Rifle Association, refuses to renew it.
But worse, President George W. Bush, who advertises himself as the ?bring ?em on? president that hangs tough against terrorists and willingly launches war costing thousands of lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, cowered before the NRA and refused to even pressure Congress to send him a new bill to sign.
The obvious needs saying: The Republican-controlled Congress, which bends without a whimper to every whim of the president, was slipped the word not to write a new bill. This way the president could have it both ways: He?d promise to sign a new ban if only Congress would send him one (wink!) but in the end didn?t have one, (whew!), requiring courage to sign.
There you have it: nothing spared to protect Americans from the likes of grandmothers and Muslim scholars and in-flight terrorists, but no restrictions on flooding the gun market with battlefield weapons that potential terrorists surely would find inviting for creating chaos and panic.
When challenged to defend and explain the easy access to assault weapons, the NRA falls back on the Second Amendment and armed militias, claiming it only seeks the same freedoms ensured in the First Amendment.
But even the noble First has restrictions: the press is not free to slander and libel, nor does free speech allow yelling ?Fire!? without cause in a crowded theater, nor does freedom of religion allow human sacrifice in the name of some god.
The NRA gets its way with Congress and President Bush not because of the sanctity of the Second Amendment, but because of the NRA?s well-known thuggish practice of using political brass knuckles and its multimillion-dollar war chest on politicians that cross the NRA.
For the NRA, mission accomplished.
