Will Freedom Livers Be Outraged?, by John Taylor

Exclusive to TLE

For years, we at TLE have been pointedly accusing the NRA of being the nation's largest and oldest gun control organization. For those of you in doubt�and those of you in denial�here is some further evidence to substantiate our assertions.

In their "NRA-ILA News and Releases" electronic mailing of 2-5-01, the NRA notes:

"For years NRA has said that the best way to fight illegal gun use is to enforce the laws already on the books, not pass more laws. Now, the Progressive Policy Institute agrees."

For as many years as the NRA has been pimping this old whore of an idea, we have been trying desperately to point out that the 22,000 gun "laws already on the books" are, each and every one, unconstitutional.

Why would we want to enforce the 1994 Ugly Gun Ban ... the Lautenberg amendment which 'felonizes' misdemeanors and creates ex post facto law ... the Protection Free Gun Free School Zone law, passed once, subsequently declared unconstitutional, but risen again from the dead, as ill-tempered and ugly as Boris Karloff in "The Mummy"?

Why indeed?

And why would the NRA, self-professed main line of defense for gun owners, promote such a stupid notion? For that matter, why would the NRA create such hideous travesties as "Instant Check", "Three Strikes", and "Project Exile"?

Oh. I almost forgot to ask�and just who is this Progressive Policy Institute that the NRA proudly trumpets as having climbed on board their authoritarian bandwagon?

Hmmm ... "Progressive Policy Institute" ... sounds like something out of the Fightin' Bob LaFollette camp�a "Mother Jones" kind of thing. But the great gray lady (aka six blind fakirs groping an elephant)�I'm the NRA and I vote (Republican no matter what)! -- would never willingly climb into bed with a progressive organization ... would it?

N-a-a-a-h.

Must be something else. Surely no idea that was actually good for gun owners would be touted by a progressive organization ... would it?

Nope!

Here's the lowdown on the Progressive Policy Institute�newest bestest "Friends of the NRA"�and in their own words:

In an effort to counter Democratic proposals for new gun laws, both President George W. Bush and many Congressional Republicans talked constantly during the 2000 campaign about weak enforcement of the laws already on the books. Now that President Bush is in office and Republicans control both Houses of Congress, Democrats could quickly produce bipartisan support for tougher enforcement efforts by holding the GOP to its own campaign rhetoric. ...

If guns were manufactured so that only their legal owners could fire them, much of the death and destruction caused by illegal gun use could be prevented. The technology exists to do just that. ...

PPI has long promoted innovative strategies for preventing crime. For example, its work in the early '90s inspired the Clinton Administration's "100,000 cops" initiative as well as its support for community-oriented policing. ...

PPI advocates a strategy of community-based crime-fighting focused on prevention, reasonable gun control, community-oriented policing and prosecuting, and a new focus on reintegrating offenders into communities as lawabiding and productive citizens.
...
(Source for all quotations: http://www.ppionline.org/)

The Progressive Policy Institute is a "New Democrat" "Third Way" so-called "centrist" collection of do-gooders who preach: "Oh we don't want to control you. We just think it's time we move past all the hateful rhetoric, past the acrimony, and find a new solution� hey, I know ... let's do it our way. After all, we're being reasonable about this ... see?"

And we're the oysters to their Walrus and Carpenter.

Yep, the senile-before-their-time brain-dead-trust in the Crystal Blue Persuasion Palace�"Hey! We moved outside the Beltway; we don't think like Marion Barry any more!"�bought it lock, stock, and two de-activated barrels.

What a confederacy of pogues!

Can these people get any stupider? Is there even a scale that measures that great a descent into idiocy?

Hey, ChuckJimWayne & Company! These people are your Lucy van Pelt; they're going to yank the football away and you're going down again, right on that great pumpkin of a blockhead of yours! Wake the heck up! If you're being praised by the Progressive Policy Institute, you've done a bad, bad thing. You've soiled the carpet again.

Bad NRA! Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad! Go get in your crate!

Wayne, I know I've asked you this before ... and maybe you thought I was kidding.

I wasn't.

Could we please have our money back?

John Taylor is a Life Member of the NRA; one or more members of the Taylor family have been NRA members since before WWII.

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