While listening to Wayne LaPierre fume on about how "eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough," I tried to remember why I joined the NRA. At the beginning of this year, I paid $25 for an NRA membership card and a duffel bag, mostly interested in the communications between the NRA and its members. The cost of membership is low — one reason the rates of membership are high.
As a progressive Democrat, I believe in some rudimentary gun-control measures. I am also fascinated by guns. I have some experience at shooting ranges and intend to get a gun permit in the near future. Politics aside, the NRA has some great information about the weapons and how to properly use them, so I threw my $25 in the pockets of fearmongers like LaPierre. The entertaining emails I receive are worth the money spent.
Based on those emails and propaganda, I am convinced the reason for the NRA's vast popularity is the fear they spew out to their members. The NRA is in business to sell fear, plain and simple. Even with a Republican-controlled Congress, the NRA wants members to believe that gun-control measures are in danger of passage right now.
The NRA regularly sends surveys to their members laced with leading questions intended to scare. The latest one I received before the convention asked, "Do you support or oppose laws that subject you to door-to-door inspections conducted by the police?" I would guess the majority of people don't want door-to-door inspections of guns. But that's just my thinking. The NRA helped spread this rumor after a new gun law passed in Connecticut. The head of the state police had to come out and say this scare tactic was false.
The $25 membership fee also allows you access to the convention, a nice perk. I was excited to attend the conference, even though I would be the odd man out. I made it to the convention Friday afternoon (liberals have to work too) in time to see Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham speak. On this stage, politicians literally listed the guns they owned to prove how NRA-friendly they were, or perhaps to compensate for something else.
But the NRA isn't only concerned with guns. Other convention speakers spoke more about radical Islam, health care, Hillary Clinton and the media than they talked about the Second Amendment. I was expecting to hear stories about how guns saved lives, or how gun freedoms have been expanded, but I heard hardly any of that. If I hadn't known this to be a convention about guns, I would have thought it was a Republican Party convention.
The convention speakers delivered fear every chance they got: fear that wherever you go in life, there will be someone trying to rob, beat and kill you; fear about the Muslim terrorist cell that is surely waiting in your city to kill you. The solution? Guns. Always guns.
Gun-free zones were the worst, they said. But their convention itinerary included a gun-free zone. Members of the NRA were upset that the Bridgestone Arena, where big-name country stars performed, did not allow guns, and some members refused to go to events in that place. These NRA members never set foot in a gun-free zone. How they flew here in a plane, I will never know.
The NRA exists so that regular freedom-loving Americans can carry guns to protect themselves. We all can't be liberal elitists with our own armed security team, I was told. But while the NRA raged on about those liberal elitists with their own private security, the NRA VIPs were given armed security. Ted Nugent's booth had three uniformed Metro Nashville Police officers standing guard, while multiple plain-clothed security guards stood closer to Nugent.
Nugent wasn't the only VIP with security details. As I walked around the convention center, there were many with their own phalanx. Though I didn't know of many of them, their security was a dead giveaway of their status.
Wayne LaPierre said he has "hope for someone to save America." But after this weekend, I don't think the NRA wants someone to save America. For the NRA and its 5 million paid members — of whom I am one — their side is winning and getting richer. Gun sales are up. Membership is up. Ninety percent of NRA-endorsed candidates won their races last term. It's a great time to be in the NRA, and their executives are cashing in. For the NRA, they don't want someone to save America. The one thing they want you to have is fear. And fear makes people do crazy things ... like join the NRA.
What did I get out of the convention? Free bullets, a laser for my friend's pistol, some cozies for my beer, and a close-up look at Donald Trump's hair.
All in all, not too bad. Well, except for that Trump combover.
