And the right wing extremists are suddenly getting a vivid example of what happens when the arguments of the leaders become ludicrous:
Two major airlines. A cybersecurity firm. Six car rental brands. A home security company. An Omaha bank. Companies have scrambled to cut ties with the National Rifle Association over the past couple of days, and the list continued to grow into the weekend.
Delta Air Lines (DAL) announced Saturday morning that it’s ending discounted rates for NRA members. “We will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website,” the company said in a tweet.
United Airlines (UAL) followed a short time later, saying the company will no longer offer discounts on flights to the NRA annual meeting. [CNN]
I think we can predict the communications at the NRA‘s annual meeting – UAL has been taken over by the liberals. Or far, far worse from the NRA leadership. I mean, it’s a bit of an awkward mouthful to say that about a major corporation, but they’ll try.
And this will become a test for the membership of the NRA. It’s helpful to remember that, once upon a time, the NRA was not an extremist organization. It was instrumental in organizing gun classes. This Steven Rosenfeld article on AlterNet is congruent with my memories over my lifetime:
For nearly a century after, its founding in 1871, the National Rifle Association was among America’s foremost pro-gun control organizations. It was not until 1977 when the NRA that Americans know today emerged, after libertarians who equated owning a gun with the epitome of freedom and fomented widespread distrust against government—if not armed insurrection—emerged after staging a hostile leadership coup.
In the years since, an NRA that once encouraged better markmanship and reasonable gun control laws gave way to an advocacy organization and political force that saw more guns as the answer to society’s worst violence, whether arming commercial airline pilots after 9/11 or teachers after the Newtown [massacre], while opposing new restrictions on gun usage.
No doubt the NRA leadership will be gnashing its teeth at the NRA annual meeting. UAL has been taken over by the liberals! This from an NRA leadership that has been scrabbling for traction as its now-traditional bugaboos of a liberal take-away of firearms has gone by the wayside, and they’ve become even more unhinged as they try to … what?
Keep their membership from escaping the far-right echo chamber.
This is the problem for LaPierre, the NRA CEO, and his gang: they have no influence without the NRA membership and its money. Membership figures are not released, last I checked, so it’s unknown whether the membership continues, as a whole, to be shrinking or growing. But from here on the outside, it’s become clear that the NRA has been a speedboat running madly to the right wing, spewing out fear of the liberals and their gun-grabbing ways, as well as criminals.
And this is the test of the membership – are they still willing to stick with 2nd Amendment absolutists who really think their gun rights come from God? You don’t have to be an atheist to realize that LaPierre is desperately trying to remove the entire topic of gun rights and reasonable gun control from the venue of public discourse and into the venue of the Word Of God – and thus set them in stone.
In other words, he hasn’t a leg to stand on, but he doesn’t want to admit to it.
In the echo chamber, all communications with the outside world is carefully labeled as unreliable, and because only the word of the leaders of the echo chamber are to be trusted and funded, the wealth of the flock may be skimmed off from time to time with a predictability quite useful to the NRA leadership. But if the flock starts to leave the echo chamber?
If the flock begins to question the wisdom of absolutism? I’ve discussed this recently, but it bears repeating: The United States is the Land of Limited Rights. You can’t yell Fire! in a theater unless there’s really a fire. Similarly, rights that can impair other rights must also be limited. Go read it.
Since the NRA leadership has demonstrated a fanatical belief in the centrality of the 2nd Amendment to American life, the membership needs to start thinking about just how far they’re willing to stray from the American mainstream for a flawed ideology.
And the corporations cutting ties with the NRA? They’re not organizations tainted by the liberals. They are hard-headed pillars of the community who have come to realize that the NRA has gone off the rails, and they’re making financially-based decisions. Not just to preserve their customers’ loyalty, but to preserve the stability of the very society on which they depend for their very existence. If society becomes a warzone, these companies won’t see profits like they do today – they might not even exist.
The NRA membership shouldn’t be worrying about the Hand of God appearing in the sky, clutching a Glock. They should be looking at all those airliners up there, a reminder that a sane society is thataway.
Time to change the leadership. It’s a bit like changing a diaper. Has to happen or the baby dies in extremely bad ways.
