How The NRA Resembles The CPUSA

by Richard Kostelanetz (February 2014)

Let me suggest unfamiliarly that in crucial respects the current National Rifle Association resembles the Communist Party USA of decades ago. Both were essentially puny organizations barely earning support from those they purportedly represented. Scarcely a few percent of the 100 million American gun owners belong to the NRA, which routinely tries to scare up new members. At the apex of its membership during WWII, the CPUSA collected dues from less than ninety thousand of the available American citizens of voting age. Of course, both the NRA and CPUSA benefitted from innumerable sympathizers who for various reasons declined from paying dues.

Considering this analysis, guess who the principal beneficiaries of the current NRA inflation might be? They are not its true constituencies of Americans who would like to own personal weapons or Americans who are more vulnerable for lacking them. Nope.

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