A few years back I discovered the joys of posting on online message boards. Not long after the Columbine killings, the subject of guns and access to them was a frequent topic of conversation. The board I frequented was populated by a number of, er, very devoted NRA types, and although I had known many gun owners - and even some who were ardent advocates of what they felt were their Second Amendment rights - I wasn't at all prepared for some of the things I found out from the online gun advocates.
I discovered that there were people who were really convinced that America was headed for a civil war between the gun owners and the confiscators. They were obsessed with the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents and truly believed that they too would one day have to be holed up in a compound somewhere in Idaho or Montana or West Texas or some similar remote area where they would have to fight off the evil agents of their own country who had strayed from the true path of the Constitution.
In their world there was always a fleet of black helicopters heading their way bearing the SWAT teams who would spearhead the New World Order's final push to disarm them. (The New World Order, as best as I could determine, was a conglomeration of the UN, the media, the university professors and a group of disloyal Constitution-haters who all had government jobs). The last chopper, of course, carried Hillary Clinton, who would be there to lead them to the gunless Gulag once the SWAT teams had done their jobs.
I was reminded of my old cyberspace gun friends the other day when I came across the
NRA blacklist, a fact sheet that the National Rifle Association offers to all visitors to their website. It identifies individuals, organizations and corporations that apparently suffer from the twisted, un-American delusion that the Founding Fathers didn't want all Americans to be able to defend themselves with fertilizer bombs. The list is a full nineteen pages long and can be printed out and duct-taped to the wall of your trailer in case you forget who the enemies of freedom are.
The NRA doesn't explain in detail why any of these people or organizations are on their list but I think that we can be sure that some will take their word that those on the list are lying in wait to shred our precious Bill of Rights and render us defenseless against the criminal hordes in our streets and our government.
Upon looking at the list I realized just what a service the NRA has performed for those who value their Second Amendment rights. I mean, without the NRA to tell you otherwise, you might be under the impression that Olympic figure-skating champion Tara Lipinski and Tampa Bay wide-receiver Keyshawn Johnson were just harmless (if talented) professional athletes. How wrong you are; they're on the list, so they're after your guns. Remember Heisman Trophy winner and pro quarterback Doug Flutie? Well, don't trust him with your Glock, or you just might find yourself disarmed.
In fact the sports establishment seems to be infested with New World Order types, particularly it seems in the state of Missouri. The St. Louis Cardinals are on the list as are their football counterparts the St. Louis Rams. Ride down I-70 and you find the Kansas City Royals, gun-grabbing former employers of Rush Limbaugh. They too are on the list, as are football's Kansas City Chiefs.
James Madison may have worked tirelessly to guarantee that every schizophrenic who gets released from a mental institution can buy an Uzi on his way home, but there are still many in the entertainment business who don't subscribe to this most basic of American principles. Among them you'll find country singer Shania Twain, the "Boss", Bruce Springsteen, actresses Renee Russo, Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and - oops, she seized it again - none other than Britney Spears. Keep buying their music or going to their movies and you could find that your God-given right to surface-to-air missiles has disappeared without a trace.
Even 'Bond, James Bond' can't be trusted. Sean Connery is on the list, as is Austin Powers' Mike Myers.
But it doesn't stop with sports and entertainment ; there are, incredibly, many in the media and even professional and religious organizations who are out to deprive us our sacred right to own rocket propelled grenades. Reagan surgeon general C. Everett Koop was a stealth gun-grabber as are the B'nai B'rith, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Retired Persons and the United States Conference of Mayors.
So I guess OmSigDAVID and his soulmates are right. Everybody from Britney to the B'nai B'rith is out to get their guns. Stay in those bunkers, guys, it's worse than you thought. You can't trust
anybody.