See, I may or may not be the only one that pictures the NRA as being sophisticated and nefarious enough to have an espionage operation directed at Daily Kos, but who is stupid enough to doubt that all kinds of that shit goes on here. CIA? Check. FBI? Check. Mossad? Check. NRA?
I mean, whenever whoever makes the relative big time in any controversial way, that kind of shit seems to go with the territory. (And Markos is certainly welcome to correct me in any way he sees fit if I'm misrepresenting his reality.)
The importance of this site as an opinion maker on the left needs to be accounted for in many ways, and to many players, it's as simple as that. But, anyway.
The NRA plays divide and conquer with the best, and is perfectly positioned for doing so. It has no true following, other than seemingly unlimited money and right wing idiocy, so there is simply no way that it can have a wide open playbook. In fact, get it mixed up in alot of stuff at the same time, with issues coming hot and heavy from every direction on the political compass, and it would become intellectually crippled. The NRA has certain politically effective feedback loops, and tons of money, but other than that it's a glorified eunich. In short, it's the ultimate "one trick monkey", with the pure blessing of being gifted with maybe the ultimate single trick (after religion) in all of history. According to the NRA, RKBA is way better than sliced bread, probably even better than sex, and far more important to the survival of humanity than either. Except, of course, that that's a pure falsehood, and would be so exposed if it could be seperated from the aforementioned money and idiocy advantages that NRA expertly milks to the absolute limit.
So, enter The Second American Constituional Convention (which, clearly, this county is overdue for by way more than 100 years).
Let's not just rethink The Second Amendment, let's rethink everything. What harm can it do?
But, this time, we would be doing it in the modern world, so we could do it in a modern way. Almost no one, numbers wise, getting together "in secret", sweating it out in Philly made sense when, logistically, physically, nothing better, or even any different, was realistic.
For us, trying to replay that scene would make no sense. Going big, loud, and public, on the other hand, would be totally in keeping with our world. Thousands of Delegates, brilliant minds, cameras on everything and every one all of the time. All of us watching, all of us paying attention, and all of us feeling free to offer our opinions in any and every way possible. The ultimate massive modern free for all, with, really, the ultimate stakes on the line.
Think about it. This would not only be too big to pass up if it happened, it's far too big for all of us to not do everything in our power to make happen.
Well, not all of us exactly. NRA, for instance, would fight like hell to keep this kind of an event from ever being pulled off. Representation proportional to public support? NRA is, what, someplace on the same scale as Daily Kos? And not only would it have a small, much quieter voice than it is used to purchasing, it would be saying something that almost no one else represented agrees with, and would be trying to be heard in an arena where the importance of the workload would render the NRA message, it's sole issue, as really very nearly a mere afterthought.
Some number of thousands of the best and brightest minds that we can muster, considering in the most profound and important manner the very issue of how humanity moves forward from today and the NRA member would have to forge some extremely powerful alliances to even wrangle a small place on the agenda of a realtively quiet day of our Convention.
In that setting, Good Luck and God Save The NRA, because there's nothing that any mere mortal could do for the NRA to be able to even score any points.
N.R.A. R.I.P.!