NRA ⊂ ACLU
Conservatives, as a general rule, believe that the ACLU is an unacceptably radical organization which helps criminals and promotes lawlessness, representing a scary liberal mentality of taking personal liberties much too far.
The same people also tend to see the NRA as a virtuous organization preserving the rights and freedoms our country was founded on, fighting for law-abiding citizens who only want to protect themselves.
The reality is, the NRA and the ACLU are far more similar than conservatives would like to believe. Both have essentially the same charter: to preserve the rights of the people. The difference is that the NRA focuses on a single right, while the ACLU focuses on virtually all rights. Simply put, the NRA is the ACLU for the Second Amendment.
Conservative critics of the ACLU focus on the fact that the ACLU will defend notorious and vile criminals, setting them free on the streets to harm the people, while the NRA does the opposite. But this is actually where the two organizations overlap. The greatest similarity between the two is that, in the pursuit of protecting the rights they wish to defend, they will take on the case for what are essentially vile and despicable people or things.
The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms.Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.
Can you imagine how conservatives would react if the ACLU tried to protect the constitutional rights of terrorist suspects?
Actually, you don’t have to look too hard to find such opinions; they’re all over the web. A few examples… The American Daily:
… the ACLU is only concerned with protecting the civil rights of terrorists, against the American government, our intelligence community, Department of Defense and Justice Department, whom they allege; [sic] mistreat terrorists in an effort to stop the next 9/11…
The same publication regularly supports the NRA (for example), and at least so far has no comment on the NRA position on the anti-terrorism bill. Or how about this site, specifically created to fight against the ACLU:
The ACLU’s support of Islamic terrorists has become quite apparent over the past few years, why should this reminder come as a surprise to anyone? The ACLU is about destroying the spirit of the laws we have in place to convict and put away criminals to make America safe; and to prop the rights of NAMBLA, felons, drug dealers and murderers – not to mention the fascists that want to attack us of the Islamic variety.
The same site has little to say about the NRA but is generally supportive of it and is against gun control. They also have no comment on the recent NRA stand, and probably won’t.
When it comes down to it, the ACLU and the NRA are the same where the criticism is heaviest: both will defend the despicable in the pursuit of their cause. The ACLU will defend murderers, terrorists, rapists and so on if there is an issue of constitutional rights at stake; the NRA will defend the same, as well as free access to things like armor-penetrating ammunition or weapons made specifically for sale to criminals, if it means protecting what they see as any deviation from their interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Both also tend to share a basic strategy: if they see a move by the government or the justice system which, however small or insignificant in and of itself, might set the stage for further erosion of a right or freedom, they take it on in a pre-emptive fight.
It should be noted that the ACLU does have somewhat of a blind spot where the NRA stands out; while the ACLU will go all-out to defend virtually all rights, they are uncharacteristically moderate when it comes to gun rights. Here is their stand on the issue, but essentially they support the right to keep and bear arms but see no reason why guns, like automobiles, should not be licensed and registered.
It should also be noted that the ACLU tends to limit its fight to court actions and press releases; it does not propagandize like the NRA does, and it does not even come close to the egregious tendencies of the NRA to distort and aggrandize.
But in principle, the two are joined at the hip.
Just a note (heck, I do not know if you even see comments on posts this old).
But… the NRA wrote the current law against ‘armor piercing ammo’. It is specific to the problem and given that to date, no police officer has ever been killed by an ‘armor piercing’ round, effective.
What the NRA has fought are two laws, one of which would have banned pretty much all hunting rifles, and the new one, which will give the attorney general the ability to ban anything he wants.
As a side note, I am never certain how much non gun owners know about this stuff. Pretty much any hunting rifle will go through a ‘bullet proof’ vest like it’s not there. The power difference between even a small rifle and a large handgun is huge (about 3x).
BTW, most gun-rights types I know are like me – die hard libertarians allied with the right out of necessity. We support the NRA and the ACLU.
Jon:
Your point about no policeman being killed by armor-piercing ammo is the most cogent here to the lack of necessity for such a law, although (a) almost every source of information on such matter I could find were pro-gun sites and thus not the most unbiased sources I could hope for, and (b) there have been cases of police officers being wounded by such ammunition; it’s not a binary killed/unhurt situation, and let’s not forget that most gunshot wounds from firefights are not fatal (I believe).
As for the NRA “writing” the current law, that’s a more slippery situation. First of all, they didn’t write it, they were involved in the negotiations for it (many say they “helped craft” it). Second, you’re accepting the NRA line that the law would have banned virtually any ammunition but the passed law is more reasonable. However, this kind of negotiation happens all the time: one side says legislation is so loosely worded so that it would effectively ban all guns/abortions/prayer/civil rights, the other side says no; alternate legislation is proposed which is claimed to be more reasonable, but which the proponents of the first bill say is so watered-down as to be ineffective. Sometimes the truth is with one side, sometimes with the other, and sometimes it’s in-between.
However, alternate legislation proposed by special-interest groups tends to be the worst of all. I remember an “anti-smoking” law that was supposed to ban cigarette vending machines in places where children could access them, but when the bill was closely examined, it was found that it would erase virtually every other piece of non-smoking legislation–eliminating laws against smoking in work places, restaurants, etc, and many other smoking-related safety regulations and taxes. Of course, this “anti-smoking” bill was written by the tobacco industry.
So when the NRA helps to craft legislation on armor-piercing (“AP”) ammunition, one has to be at least a tad suspicious. The problem is, I’m hardly an expert on this, and cannot judge the debate accurately on the technical aspects. Unfortunately, virtually *all* web presence on this issue is pro-gun, usually extreme, which means that it’s very hard to find any contrarian evidence. Heck, I could even find reports from people so far on the pro-gun side of this issue that they felt the NRA was selling them out on the AP ammo issue. But you can find people on the other side–particularly police organizations, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
I suspect that guns & ammo that can be used to hunt animals from a great distance could also be used to penetrate many kinds of armor; this kind of overlap, with all the variables involved, probably means that the AP ammo issue won’t likely be resolved soon. Perhaps I chose a bad example to include in the above post. But the central theme still stands, and your note that libertarians support both organizations further supports it: the NRA and the ACLU share a lot in common.
(I wrote about three responses to this and then deleted them… This seems more productive)
You have on at least a couple of occasions referenced the notion that the NRA is pretty extreme in their stance on gun control. This directly contradicts my experience with them, but that may be a result of my own bias. Given that you obviously research things instead of just firing off unfounded opinions, can you give me some examples?
(I cannot begin to describe how hard it is not to debate. Seriously, it’s killin’ me. But I really would like to hear your reasoning.)