Culpeper Star Exponent Op/Ed Smears NRA

This morning an Op/Ed was published in the Culpeper Star Exponent that says the NRA is undermining responsible gun ownership with it's rhetoric.

The evidence for the charge? According to the author, Robert Legge,

After the 1994 sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge, the NRA leadership whipped up anti-government hysteria, culminating in a famous fundraising letter warning of jackbooted thugs ... (who could) break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and injure or kill us.”

Legge even follows DHS Secretary Janet Napolotano's lead by dredging up Tim McVeigh.

Timothy McVeigh bought into that kind of incendiary rhetoric. A week after that NRA letter was sent, he blew up the federal Murrah building, killing many of the U.S. federal agents he so despised.

Legge should know that the NRA (or Wayne LaPierre who's name is not used but the term "leadership" is clear code word for the target of the charge) was not the first to use the term "jackbooted thugs." For those who don't know, it was a U.S. Congressman, a Democrat at that, Representative John Dingell (D-MI), who referred to ATF this way:

...a jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today.

First, people outraged at what the government is doing don't need the NRA to get riled up. All you have to do is look at what is going on - from attempts to pass further restrictions on firearms freedom, to spending our children 's and grandchildren's inheritance, to making our nation less safe by telling our enemies they no longer have to worry about being subjected to having water poured in their face or spending a few hours with the insect they most hate. There are plenty of reasons to be outraged at the government and our elected leaders.

To say that the NRA foments violence against the government is absurd. Go to any function attended by NRA members, like the NRA Annual Meeting or a Friends of NRA Dinner, and you will find that NRA members are some of the nicest people you can ever have the pleasure of coming in contact. If someone is going to take the rhetoric used in NRA fundraising letters and turn it into a reason to commit mayhem against the government, those people were already inclined to violence and it is safe to say those people would have found any excuse as the reason for their actions. The NRA has nothing to do with it and this gun owner believes that the NRA and its state associations are doing a great service to gun owners by holding the feet of our elected officials to the fire.