Why Do "Liberals" Hate The National Rifle Association?

by Richard Kostelanetz (February 2013)

Instead of accepting the, yes, liberating permissions advocated by the NRA, certain liberal publicists have sought to demonize it, routinely reciting its three letters to incite an impressionable audience. Senator Diane Feinstein I rank among the worse, as she exploits the Newtown tragedy to revive a bill that failed approval long ago, whose provisions, as I understand them, would have done nothing to prevent the Newtown massacres.

(Take seriously the argument against gun licensing, which lets the state know who has one, should any future government official ever want to disarm its constituency. I knew a man who refused to license his guns in the 1960s because he feared that Commies taking over the United States would get the lists and disarm the conquered populace. Far-fetched though his fear now seems, it was, in my opinion, politically credible.)

To give the problem of crossed wires a larger context, consider that some Republicans have a comparable problem with, say, Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union both of which alienate Republicans by seeking support from liberal Democrats. Non-Catholic conservatives should be sympathetic to the former for favoring choice and personal responsibility apart from government constraint in reproduction and sympathetic to the latter for favoring free speech again apart from government constraints. When knee-jerk Republicans deprecate either of these organizations, they are, in my judgment, not true conservatives.

For profound critical exercise, may I ask my reader to consider how much would be different if the NRA had followed the example of Planned Parenthood and courted Democratic legislators?

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