Get A Grip: NRA Fearmongers Are Whipping Up A Nasty Case Of Extremism After The Election

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Hey, right-wingers: Let's have a little talk about the coming election.

We realize it's not looking so hot for your side, what with the clown-car primary season we've gotten on the Republican side and all. But really, if you lose, it's not the end of the world.

You know that, we know that. It sucks to be you, but it is what it is. And it's not the apocalypse.

So we here in the world of normal people would like to make a request: Stop telling your followers that it is.

Because we know, with night-follows-day-certainty, that you folks have some violent and mentally unstable people lingering among your ranks. And we know with the same certainty that, after the election, these same people will begin acting out violently, usually leaving behind as victims we folks here on Planet Normal, if Obama does indeed win out, as is looking (thanks to GOP ineptitude) increasingly likely.

And it will be all because they believe the crazy-ass crap you guys spew in order to get them all whipped up and eager to vote.

The leading nutcase in this parade has been the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre, who has been warning his fellow right-wingers of a massive Obama conspiracy to destroy the Second Amendment:

If you want a glimpse of a genuine nightmare for America, just look at what’s headed our way.

But unlike a nightmare, this isn’t some fantasy. It’s a very real, very dangerous conspiracy of public deception intended to destroy your Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

It’s targeted directly at you.

And it’ll succeed unless you recognize it, understand it, and take action now to stop it.

Gosh Almighty! What a nefarious scheme! And here's how it will work:

1. Neutralize gun owners and NRA voters as a political force in national elections, and thereby:

2. Win re-election to a second term in the White House, where they then will be immune to the will of voters and free to continue consolidating and misusing their ever-increasing power to:

3. Prosecute a full-scale, sustained, all-out campaign to excise the Second Amendment from our Bill of Rights through legislation, litigation, regulation, executive orders, judicial fiat, international treaties—in short, all the levers of power of all three branches of government.

Recall what he told the CPAC folks:

"[The Obama campaign] will say gun owners -- they'll say they left them alone," LaPierre told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday. "In public, he'll remind us that he's put off calls from his party to renew the Clinton [assault weapons] ban, he hasn't pushed for new gun control laws. ... The president will offer the Second Amendment lip service and hit the campaign trail saying he's actually been good for the Second Amendment."

"But it's a big fat stinking lie!" the NRA leader exclaimed. "It's all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and destroy the Second Amendment in our country."
"Obama himself is no fool. So when he got elected, they concocted a scheme to stay away from the gun issue, lull gun owners to sleep and play us for fools in 2012. Well, gun owners are not fools and we are not fooled," La Pierre declared.

"Sotomayor, Kagan, Fast & Furious, the United Nations, executive orders. Those are the facts we face today... President Obama and his cohorts, yeah, they're going to deny their conspiracy to fool gun owners. Some in the liberal media, they are already probably blogging about it. But we don't care because the lying, conniving Obama crowd can kiss our Constitution!"

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As Matt Gertz at Media Matters observes:

NRA leaders and advocates have been so hard up for evidence that President Obama is anti-gun that they have been citing an Obama-implemented rule that requires gun dealers in some states to report multiple sales of assault weapons to the ATF. That rule would not prevent a single person from getting a firearm.

The NRA's hysterical claim that President Obama plans to repeal the Second Amendment is a natural byproduct of the Supreme Court's finding in District of Columbia v. Heller that the amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Until then, the group could offer the similarly conspiratorial claim that gun bans and confiscation were right around the corner. With those ideas taken off the table even in theory by Heller, NRA has moved on to even more ludicrous conspiracies.

But look at what they're telling their gape-mouthed followers:

It might seem like a stretch to compare an election to one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.

This year’s election could prove the most disastrous in the history of this country. Why? Because this election will decide whether Americans remain free.


There’s no simpler, more accurate or exact way to say it—it’s all or nothing.
Either we defeat Barack Obama and retain all the benefits of our pro-gun victories over the past 30 years—from the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, to the Right-to-Carry revolution, Castle Doctrine, hunter protection and landmark victories in the U.S. Supreme Court—or we lose this election and lose it all.

Everything you and I, and gun owners across America have fought to achieve over the past three decades could be lost as a result of just one presidential election.
It’s not just firearm freedom that’s endangered—all of our freedoms are on the line.

Now, pardon me for saying so, but that's just looney-tunes ludicrous. And telling people that Obama is going to take away all of their freedoms if he wins re-election will leave a lot of people who actually believe this crap angry and frustrated beyond belief. And if they happen to have an unstable and violent disposition to boot, then they are going to cause problems.

This is just classic Bad Speech: profoundly irresponsible, cancerous and toxic, inevitably tragic. It's not just the NRA, either. It's pervasive on the right these days. And we know that when the inevitable violent acts happen, you all will run away and claim you have no responsibility for them.

Well, this is Good Speech. We're calling you out on this. We're begging you to stop. Because rest assured: We will be holding you to account.