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PANKRATIO -> RE: NRA was pro-gun control when it came to Black Panthers (1/15/2013 9:50:40 AM)
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Howdy from the great white north.
In Canada we have a few organizations that lobby on behalf of firearms owners and ownership.
Yes, there are conspiracy theorists who like to believe that these groups are puppets or satellites of the big bad NRA trying to undermine Canadian sovereignty - whatever that means.
A recent issue of of their official magazine, featured a pair of 'new canadians' as their cover story. They appeared to be of south, or south-east asian descent and the little article that followed basically stated that the Canadian shooting and gun-ownership community has in recent years seen tremendous growth fuelled by recent immigrants. Was it a cautionary tale? A phenomenon that had better be nipped in the bud? No, it was a matter of pride as the editor of "Canadian Firearms Journal" magazine theorized that many of the countries that produce a large number of émigrés have repressive regimes AND very strict gun control, if not absolute prohibition.
It would seem that the two go hand in hand.
Maybe some people are more comfortable with the NRA as a good old boys club - a very few proponents and most of the critics; they find it easier to speak against an organization that has a clear conservative, racist, white-supremacist agenda. I know in Canada the NRA is frequently portrayed, and even parodied, as a white men's cowboy gun club, where after hours if you buy a raffle ticket at the bison dinner fundraiser you can enter to win the chance to lynch a n##%$$#...... Seriously. Even major newspapers, when weighing in on the gun debate, which comes up every now and again, publish editorial cartoons showing NRA members as barefoot raw-gator eaters with one hell of a gnarly family tree. Overbites, straw hats and a shotgun borrowed from Elmer Fudd himself.
Fortunately, many people here in the great white north choose to do their own research. Generally, they'll find, as I have, that whatever the NRA once was, it has evolved into an organization that promotes the empowerment of the individual compared to the power of the state. It does so by protecting and advocating for the continued protection of the crucial right to hold in one's hand the means to defend oneself against assault, aggression, and most of all, oppression.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that once you give up certain rights, regardless of why or how you do so, it can be downright impossible to get them back.
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