COVID takes down the NRA
Most everyone knows the commonplace wisdom that a liar needs a good memory. Less common is that a hypocrite needs a good sense of irony. Because when the National Rifle Association announced Tuesday that it’s pulling out of its highly anticipated annual meeting in Texas next week due to Covid concerns, they forgot to mention that many of the industry’s biggest manufacturers had already pulled out — like a bunch of cartoon cats on tippy toes to the sound of pizzicato violins.
So where’s the irony? You have to understand what their patrons think to appreciate how ironic it truly is. Most of them aren’t just gun nuts, many are also Republican, alt-right, anti-vaxxer, anti-mask, death cult, science-denying religious wackos as well. They don’t need masks to protect them from Covid. God will do that. But they do need guns to protect them from bad guys because for some reason God won’t help them there.
While gun manufacturers will happily cater to the ammosexual and religious needs of their pistol-packing customer base — composed largely of inadequate males — they’ll be damned if they’re going to contribute to what will undoubtedly prove to be a superspreader event. After all, some 35,000 gun-slinging cretins were expected to attend the convention, all crammed and unmasked into a single indoor venue.
Manufacturers such as Benelli, Browning, FN Herstal, H&K, Kimber Manufacturing, Savage Arms, Springfield Armory, Sig Sauer, Ruger and Vista Outdoor took to their heels and pulled out of an annual event that historically has been practically mandatory to attend. But they did it quietly without drawing attention to what would, among normal people, ordinarily be considered a heroic act. Or at least a prudent one. After all, no one wants to get sued by the widow or family of a firearms enthusiast who died of Covid because they attended one of their superspreader events.
So wearing a harmless little mask that hurts no one is an offence to a God that will protect them from Covid-19 anyway, but openly toting a gun designed to kill other people against an imaginary enemy is not an offence to the same God? Strange God you’ve got there.
But what do I know? I live in England. When I go to the grocery store I don’t need a gun, and I certainly wouldn’t feel “safer” if some of the other patrons of that store were carrying guns. I would in fact feel significantly less safe, because in point of fact I would be less safe.
When an inadequate mental midget recently killed five people with a shotgun, including a young girl, in Plymouth, England, the British government immediately swung into action to look at ways to tighten gun laws. It was the worst gun atrocity in Britain in more than 10 years. Think about that for a minute.
It turns out the cretin’s gun license had been restored after an egregious violation of British gun ownership law. Now the government is saying his license should have been taken away permanently. I agree with that. No thoughts and prayers were offered in lieu of safer restrictions.
I suspect in their larceny-blackened hearts American gun manufacturers probably appreciate the logic of that. After all, they don’t want people actually murdering other people with their people-murdering machines. They just want them to buy their people-murdering machines and open-carry them around to atone for their pitifully obvious sexual inadequacies. I get it. American manufacturers of murder weapons just want to be left alone — so they can quietly blush all the way to the bank. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.