![\"\"](\"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/doom.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Smith: The NRA Has Won and America Is Stuck in a \u2018Doom Loop\u2019 of Gun Buying<\/a><\/p>\n [O]ne would think supporting policies that let Americans carry any type of\u00a0gun<\/a>, anywhere, at anytime would be a losing proposition for any politician, much less one who wants to be president.<\/em><\/p>\n And yet as I listened to Trump \u2014 and the parade of equally craven Oval Office hopefuls who preceded him onstage \u2014 I began to realize that he just might be right in his political calculation. Because, far from losing, the NRA seems to be winning. In fact, it might already have won, polls be damned.<\/em><\/p>\n Why would I believe such a thing?<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s not because of the nonsense I heard longtime NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre spout last week, including that the Founding Fathers created the 2nd Amendment so that, from \u201cthe day you\u2019re born,\u201d Americans have the \u201cGod-given right\u201d to carry a gun\u00a0for self-defense that cannot be infringed upon.<\/em><\/p>\n Nor is it because, as former Vice President Mike Pence told the NRA faithful, \u201cfreedom is under attack,\u201d and Americans are determined to not let the government take their guns. I\u2019ll spare you the stories of people I know who think this so fervently that they\u2019ve buried boxes of semiautomatic rifles and ammunition in their backyards.<\/em><\/p>\n I believe it because of what I\u2019ve seen and heard in liberal California over the past few years \u2014 and how similar it is to what I saw and heard at the NRA convention in the conservative state of Indiana last week.<\/em><\/p>\n Consider that the past three years have been the most profitable in modern history for gun\u00a0manufacturers, even as the country has been plagued by mass shooting after mass shooting. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n Of course, this was the NRA\u2019s grand plan all along, this having America armed to the teeth. It\u2019s a lobbying organization for gun\u00a0manufacturers, after all. Under the veneer of patriotism is just naked greed.<\/em><\/p>\n Aside from the true believers, like the woman in the red, white and blue pants,\u00a0<\/b>I have to think most Americans know this by now. We were under no obligation to follow the NRA\u2019s grand plan. LaPierre didn\u2019t force us to buy more guns. Republicans didn\u2019t make people start carrying sidearms to the mall like we\u2019re sidling up to a bar in an old western.<\/em><\/p>\n Sure, the NRA has made it easier to do all of this. But I don\u2019t think we can blame the gun\u00a0lobby for the number of people in coastal California who,\u00a0as CalMatters reported, are rushing to capitalize on last year\u2019s Supreme Court ruling that made it easier to get a concealed carry license\u00a0before state lawmakers can close the loophole.<\/em><\/p>\n We made these choices. And now it appears we\u2019re stuck in a\u00a0San Francisco-style \u201cdoom loop,\u201d\u00a0when the sheer number of guns owned by Americans, and the violence and death they cause, is prompting still more Americans to buy more guns, leading to more violence and death, and so on.<\/em><\/p>\n So as much as I applaud Gov. Gavin Newsom for taking on the NRA and its political lackeys in his so-called Campaign for Democracy, we\u2019re going to have to fix a lot of this ourselves. Somehow we\u2019re going to have to break our addiction to guns.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014 Erika D. Smith in\u00a0Trump and the NRA Might Be Right About Guns \u2014 And We Mostly Have Ourselves to Blame<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Smith: The NRA Has Won and America Is Stuck in a \u2018Doom Loop\u2019 of Gun Buying [O]ne would think supporting policies that let Americans carry any type of\u00a0gun, anywhere, at anytime would be a losing proposition for any politician, much less one who wants to be president. And yet as I listened to Trump \u2014 … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91963,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91961\/revisions\/91963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}