The NRA as the advance guard of economic development
A number of commentators and organizations that usually cater to the conservative viewpoint were moved to denounce Wayne LePierre's alleged press conference at which he said the solution to mass shootings in schools was to get more guns into them. Most people were astounded that following the shooting of 20 six-year-olds and 6 of their teachers a man would make a pubic statement that showed such little regard or respect for the children, the staff, and their families, and instead promote proliferation of guns. As one commentator said
it was as if someone was making a public appeal for the acquisition of AIDS. However, Jason Linkins saw that what LaPierre did was, in fact, very effective and that LaPierre was fulfilling the role he was hired to carry out.
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| It has become a target for the defenders of free enterprise. |
The NRA is a marketing tool of the firearms industry and its sole purpose is to increase the sales of guns. It is not simply a lobby group that cares about the public or public policy, and it is not interested in anything, such as the number of deaths its product produces that might impede the sales of firearms. Human life is not valuable; only profits are.
A Slate article also analyzed the sham press conference as a marketing ploy for the gun industry.
To the NRA, the right to life and the quality of life have no place in the corporate scheme of things. Just as the auto industry had ambitions to put a car, then two, into every garage, the NRA represents an industry that would like every home to be an armory,. If you feel endangered by the many guns around you, its strategy is to buy guns, learn how to use them, and take responsibility for your own public safety. While that idea may seem insanity at its absurdist extreme, it is not in the perspective and purpose of the gun industry. Unfettered free enterprise demands complete freedom from any restraints, no matter what ethical and moral values of life those who are deemed obligated to the corporations engines that generate wealth may have. When life gets in the way of the making of money and the obtaining of power, it is dispensable.
The corporate world has designed the system that has shifted so much of the nation's wealth and earnings to the few who make up the power class. It has had little compunction about the systemized exporting of jobs: it was done to increase profitability.
During the last election campaign when large percentages of Americans, especially those desperately looking for work and some economic opportunity, were told that they were negligible entities who were considered disposable parasites on the "producers," they got the point of what is going on in America. If it wasn't perfectly clear then;, the NRA in giving gun sales a major priority over human life and social viability has given the point very precise definition.
For the first time in 50 years, I have heard informed, intelligent people make comparisons of our gun culture with other countries and talk about the advantages of a socialist government that could regulate finances and corporate activities in ways that contribute to the general welfare of the people. The outrage comes from other corporations and organizations that fear that the gun industry is jeopardizing free enterprise in its best aspects.
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