Uncle Barlow Meets the NRA

    I got a letter from Uncle Barlow the other day. He has become a bit of  celebrity down there where he lives in Barlow County, and that is bringing new pressures on him from his friends and neighbors.  Here's what he had to say.
    "Dear Newphew,
    "Well, I am surely in a pickle.  I think I told you that the Ladies' Genealogocial Society was doing a personal history of Barlow County. Well, wouldn't you know, while they were doing all that digging into my family history, they discovered my full, formal legal name, which I believe you probably don't know, since I have always kept pretty quiet about it.
    " I was christened Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard Barlow.  You see, my daddy was a Civil War Buff, and I guess this Beauregard fellow was some kind of general back then. You can probably understand why I've always just gone by plain old 'Barlow.'
    "Anyhow, when that ladies' bunch found out about it, they kind of decided that somebody named after a big general with a Frenchy-sounding name must be some sort of special deal, in genealogical terms, and they started wanting to get ever so much better acquainted with me. They started wanting me to 'participate' in their 'discussions.'
    "And that's where I made my mistake, because I said right out plain, 'Discussions of what?'  Now, the Ladies' Genealogical Society is pretty much the same bunch as the Barlow County Ladies' Civic Action Committee. About the time I said 'discussions of what?' they were going through kind of a slow spell  and looking around for something new to be active about. Some of them began talking about my family's 'military history'. Pretty soon they were wanting me to give them a talk about gun control. And durn me, I couldn't figure a way to get out of it.
     "Since I didn't know anything about gun control, I started poking around and reading about it. I got mighty confused mighty quick, let me tell you. I read all this stuff about how sportsmen and hunters needed to be concerned because the gun-controllers wanted to come and take their guns away. I do a little deer hunting from time to time, so I figured maybe I needed to be concerned, too.
    "But then I read on some more and, near as I can tell, mostly the kind of thing that the gun-control  folks want to regulate is fake combat rifles and great big high-capacity magazines -- 20 shots and more, some of them.
    "Now, I don't know much about gun control, but I do know something about hunting, and I am here to tell you this: If you can get a deer to stand still while you shoot at it 20 times, you don't need a gun of any kind. You could hunt that sucker with a baseball bat.
    "Being thoroughly confused, which I was, I thought I should stop looking at secondary sources. (Millie over at the library calls them that.)  I thought I should go directly to the horse's mouth, so to speak.  I started looking first-hand at the stuff put out by the National Rifle Association.
    "Now, the first thing that got my attention was their head man, the one who looks like he just sat bare-assed on a hair brush.  Wayne LaPierre is his name. Some of the stuff he had to say was so nutty, I wondered for a minute if I'd messed up and stumbled across some comedian.  But no, there he was, right in all the official stuff the NRA puts out.
    "By this time I was a country mile beyond confusion. I went over to the library and asked Millie to help me out.
    "Millie told me hell no he's not a comedian. He's serious as a heart attack.  She waved a paper at me and said I had to read it. Said it was an article he'd written somewhere. 
   " In the article he said the president's financial policies could lead to a great big national breakdown:  'Nobody knows if or when the fiscal collapse will come, but if the country is broke there likely won't be enough money to pay for police protection.  And the American people know it.
   " ' Hurricanes. Tornadoes.  Riots.  Terrorists.   Gangs.  Lone criminals.  These are the perils we are sure to face -- not just maybe.  It is not paranoia to buy a gun. It's survival.'
    "Millie said, 'If he believes that bafflegab, he's a fool, and if he doesn't believe it, he's a con man.'  I kind of asked her which one she thought he was, since I hadn't had much luck making heads or tails of him any which way.
    "She said, 'Keep reading the claptrap.'   She pointed to a place farther in down in the article where he said the only way to keep the country from going straight to the dickens was to strengthen the NRA. He asked for donations of $20 or $50 or even $1,000. He said he and his bunch were going to work hard to recruit a lot more members.  He called them 'lovers of freedom.'
    "Millie said 'Lovers of freedom, hell!'  ( She gets kind of salty when she gets worked up.) 'He wants to collect more dues.  That's his message:  The sky is falling! Send me money! It's a wonder he doesn't offer a free bottle of snake oil with every membership. And we've got members of Congress who listen to that guy.'
    "Well, I just have to say, I don't know why anybody would listen to him, much less send him money. And so I still don't know what to say to that ladies' bunch about all this gun control argument, except that they might get themselves about the same grade of discussion in the secure wing over at the home.
    "Maybe I can talk them into being interested in something else. And in the meantime, I guess I'll just have to hope they don't find out that NRA fellow has a Frenchy-sounding name.

                                                                                                            "Sincerely,
                                                                                                            "Your Uncle Barlow"
   

Gun Nuts

    When we Americans crank up our gun control fights, we display a marked capacity for cockeyed behavior.  Hear U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell in an email to constituents (we will return later to the salutation's veiled insinuation):
    "Dear Patriot,
    "You and I are literally surrounded.  The gun grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out assault on the Second Amendment.  On your rights.
    "On Your freedom.
    "Just the other night President Obama urged them to act.  And then he went one step further, spelling out 23 executive orders he will take to get your guns."
    The message continues in this vein.  Even by the standards of fear-mongering, this is gamy stuff.  President Obama and his legislative allies have not offered to "grab" anything.  If fair-minded people may consider some particulars debatable -- and some do -- the president's agenda is not extreme. It displays not a whit of contempt for the Constitution. It is a measured attempt to address problems of gun violence.
    Sen.  McConnell, who may face a re-election challenge from the right, has extra reasons for choosing to incite his constituents rather than lead them.  But he is far from being alone in going for red-meat rhetoric on this issue. Images of jack-booted government are common coin among opponents of gun control.
    What prompts these extremes of language and attitude?
     Greed, in some instances.
    Assuming for the sake of argument that the average family has no pressing need of an imitation combat rifle, it is reasonable to ask: Who has a vested interest in protecting the manufacture and sale of imitation combat rifles -- and Saturday night specials, and other dubious weaponry?
    It is reasonable to answer:  People who manufacture and sell dubious weaponry.
    Enter the National Rifle Association, a gun industry lobby posing as a guardian of citizen's rights. Lobbyists who want to keep their jobs must demonstrate clout. The NRA shrinks from no opportunity, however bizarre. Not long ago it buffaloed the Wisconsin legislature away from a proposal to ban loaded firearms from the public galleries of the legislative chambers.
    The NRA is loud and clever on behalf of gun manufacturers. But it also is openly ruthless and, from time to time, downright absurd. (Its website contains an enemies list that includes the YWCA and Pam Dawber, an aging alumna of the '70s TV sitcom Mork and Mindy).  All this for a business that is -- in its sales to civilian markets -- a very small player in the American economy.
    How can one rogue organization command the attention of the whole  country on behalf of a fringe industry?
    It doesn't.  Quite apart from the ranting of the NRA, gun control propsals strike their own chords among Americans.  They raise questions of privacy and property rights in parts of the country where gun ownership is an ordinary and harmless feature of the common culture.
    And they call to mind of one of government's lower habits. Unable -- or unwilling -- to do what they should, officials may simply do whatever they can and pronounce the result sufficient.  Sensible people may conclude that some gun control proposals fit this pattern all too neatly: Unabe to control or deter the violent few, the government settles for the expedient of encumbering the innocent many.  Few of us require an explanation of the old gibe, "Close enough for government work."
     Even so, reasonable and promising gun control measures are available for the taking.  They may suffer in public debate precisely to the degree that they are not extreme. Measured voices are difficult to hear in a storm of shouting.
    Nowadays, wild-eyed gun advocates are gladly sheltering in the larger right-wing assault on Obama administration policies and on President Obama personally.  (The NRA sponsored an ad calling the president "elitist" and caricaturing the protective measures required by law for his young daughters.)
    In this lamentable context, Sen. McConnell sets out to lather up the home folks.  He and those who agree with him are "patriots."  People who disagree with him are -- well, something else.
    We may be reminded of the 18th Century sage Samuel Johnson.  He said:
    "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."