Over the years the National Rifle Association (NRA) has delighted in grading our legislators in the context of 2nd Amendment absolutism, or, inversely, gun control, by assigning a letter grade as if the legislators were in a school and needed to be corrected in their thinking in the failing cases.
A subtle application of dominance theory.
But apparently something has gone amiss for the NRA, because they’ve taken down the grades. WaPo’s Philip Bump has the story:
Last week, though, the Washington Post reported a change in the NRA’s presentation of its letter grades. Although evaluations for current races are online, past grades — once available to members — no longer are. When a Post reporter called the NRA to find out where the past grades had gone, the person who answered the phone said, “I think our enemies were using that.”
Indeed? But how? Everytown for Gun Safety is a gun control organization, and thus an adversary for the currently radical version of the NRA. Here’s the hint:
Why did Everytown compile the data? In a statement, the organization explained that “the NRA wanted to hide this information from the public. Everytown thinks it is important that voters see it.”
Imagine watching the letter grades change for a Democratic legislator who is hungry for campaign contributions. Imagine seeing them trend from F to A. Wouldn’t that make you wonder if this legislator is unduly influenced by NRA contributions?
Looks like the NRA is trying to protect the legislators they’ve bought. After all, they’re expensive and you can’t just have them disappearing. Follow the link to the WaPo story if you want to play with the data, because WaPo’s run a brush through it for you already.
