Written by Winston P. Nagan   

The NRA has a reputation for being one of the most notorious pressure groups in Washington. It was not always so extreme. Its extremism emerged from a conference it organized which was overwhelmed by intimidating right-wing militias. The militias wrote the script for the extremist political positions of the NRA on guns in our social process and the extremist interpretation of the Second Amendment and its ostensible right to bear arms prescription. If the NRA assumed the extremist position of the militias with some reluctance, this has not been evident in the enthusiasm and stridency of its defense of extremism in the face of overwhelming gun-related tragedies across the nation. The organization appears to be immune to the human tragedy that lethal weapons with a capacity for mass destruction, visits on the American people. As a special interests group it has a legendary reputation of reeking vengeance on politicians who have the temerity to oppose its extremist views. Its resistance to regulation includes a resistance to checks on access to guns from ex-felons as well as mentally impaired individuals. It has also vastly opposed even the idea of the registration of firearms. The organization hides behind an extremist and untenable construction of the Second Amendment with the implication that the state or the federal government has no authority to enact even the most minimal of regulatory standards. President Obama’s recent checklist of possible regulatory action has garnered enormous public support, and even opinion polls targeting Republican voters have the same consequence of support for these measures. It would appear that the NRA does not have resilient support among the mass of the American people. The critical question then is what exactly or who exactly, is the constituency that it represents.
The answer to this question probably lies in the fact that the leadership in this organization depends for its salaries and funding on this leadership remaining in control of the organization. In short, it may be that the leadership is its own constituency. That is one possibility. Additionally, the organization does receive support from the industry that monopolizes the manufacture and marketing of guns. In this sense, the organization has a special interest constituency whose prime objective is the maximization of profit. That is still another constituency although hardly one that can carry a banner of national authority and patriotism with confidence. A third possible constituency may be the plethora of right wing militias spread across the nation. These groups are inherently violent and militaristic. Their numbers have been increasing exponentially. They represent the dark side of American liberty and democracy. The sense of doom that pervades the militias is reflected in the American people electing for two consecutive terms a black president. The connecting symbol between the militias and the tea party is that the election of a black president has taken America from them. Hence, the militias and the tea party proclaim that their objective is to take back America. It should be noted that public figures indicate that since 2011 there is an excess of 1,000 active militia groups spread across the nation. Many of these groups qualify as hate groups and are distributed throughout the nation. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 1,018 counted active hate groups in the United States in 2011.
These terms may mean different things to different elements on the right. However, to the militias, the importance of taking back America may implicate the use of insurrectionary violence. They seem to claim that implicit in the Second Amendment is their right to reclaim the U.S. by the use of force. I am uncertain just how armed and equipped the various militias are. I am convinced that they are armed to the teeth, not with Saturday night specials, but with assault rifles and tons of ammunition and clips. They could be armed with more: hand grenades, mortars, bazookas.
Additionally, the computerization of our culture means that the militias although widely distributed, can communicate instantaneously and be organized for violent challenges to local, state, and federal government. We should therefore be quite vigilant about this possible future and in particular, about how these groups have a face in American politics led by the NRA. When the extremist Nazis came to power in Germany, there was a general feeling that these folks were buffoons led by buffoons. The speed, with which these buffoons could eliminate their political enemies by murder and concentration camps and then provide a takeover with the backing of a total state, is a lesson that even we should not ignore.
There are rightwing groups that have lists of their liberal and allied enemies who will have to be destroyed in the early phases of a takeover. It sound phantasmagoric but this strategy has happened elsewhere. I myself was the head of a human rights organization and at one point was informed by law enforcement that some of these extremist groups kept lists of potential enemies to be eliminated at the right moment. Rightwing theorists considered what the indications are of the timing of such a right moment. Would it be when the tea party succeeds in closing the federal government down?
The extremism of the NRA on the identification of gun purchasers and the possible registration of the guns would be a major threat to its militia constituency because I suspect, that were there to be registration of weapons including assault weapons, and we would be shocked at the arsenals that these militias have acquired. The last thing the NRA or the militias want is transparency, responsibility, and accountability.
by
Winston P. Nagan