The NRA leadership always has been paranoid that this fall from public grace would come.
All their advertising showed it — the illogical and misleading slippery slope arguments that even the most sensible gun law would result in the confiscation of ALL guns, the money funneled from foreign governments like Russia into politicians campaign chests, the huge investment the weapons industry spent on lobbying Congress and all 50 statehouses across the nation, the huge advertising campaigns attacking anyone brave enough to speak out against them — all showed a level of paranoia rare among corporations or industries in the USA.
Membership in the NRA is something around 3 million to 4.2 million, depending on whose data one gives credence to, or around 1% of the total USA population of around 340 million people, not counting several key Russian citizens working for their intelligence organizations. It is estimated that 3% of Americans own over 50% of the guns extant in the nation. The tip of the tail was successfully wagging the entire dog.
But their whole act was exposed and countered effectively by over a half-million marchers in Washington D.C. on Saturday, March 24th, 2018, backed by hundreds of other marches in cities in states all around the USA and even several large ones in cities around the world. The NRA was effectively killed off NOT by a huge advertising campaign nor a political movement plotted and organized by adults, but by our children, reacting emotionally to the straw that broke the NRA's back, the tragic mass murder in a suburban high school in Florida.
The chant most heard among the huge crowds sent shivers down the spine of every gun manufacturer, every gun store, every gun show aficionado and every politician with a high NRA loyalty rating; "VOTE THEM OUT."
That means the days of their political supporters are now numbered; they are under attack by a force they could not have imagined a month ago. The wave sweeping many politicians from their comfortable seats much talked about as a Democratic wave has now become a non-partisan tsunami.
Out of the mouths of our children came the most literate, emotionally charged arguments heard in our nation since the marches against the Vietnam War in the 1970's. And THAT 1970’s wave led to the ending of that war with the USA in ignominious defeat.
The same fate now awaits the NRA. The Emperor of Weapons in the hands of citizens now is naked, exposed by signs reading, for instance, "THE FREEDOM TO BEAR HARMS," and “YOUR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS IS ‘TRUMPED’ BY MY RIGHT TO LIVE.”
Out of this one school will come several of our politicians of the future; just based on their determination and their savvy use of logic mixed with emotion to stir us all to tears.
Yes, you can mark this day as the day the NRA began its quick and ignominious fall from the grace of our politicians who courted them just yesterday. We adults could not do it.
The kids did it.
P.S.: Slipped into the 2,000 page Federal Budget that Congress passed last week and the President signed into law Friday afternoon is full funding through September 2019 for the CDC, (Center for Disease Control) in Atlanta GA to research the effects of gun violence on the health of Americans.
No one knows, as yet, who slipped it in because no Representative nor Senator has taken credit for the line item.