Indiana’s lawmakers play Kiss the Ring with the NRA
Just when it seems as though the lawmakers in the Indiana General Assembly have demonstrated they are as far removed from reality as is humanly possible, they find another level.
A new dimension of delusion and detachment from real people’s lives.
On the same day that another mass shooting took place in Louisville, Kentucky, our legislators decided to honor the National Rifle Association and its leader, Wayne LaPierre, ahead of the NRA’s convention in Indianapolis.
That’s right.
Just after the news broke that another disturbed person had used a legally obtained military-style weapon to kill five people and wound nine others, including two police officers, our elected representatives opted to pay tribute to the NRA, the organization that has done more than any other group to turn the United States into a mass murderers’ amusement park.
Worse, the lawmakers also opted to genuflect before LaPierre, the huckster who led the NRA’s transformation from a club for sportsmen into the most radicalized special-interest group in the country while bilking the membership and contractors out of hundreds of thousands—and perhaps even millions—of dollars.
Your tax money at work.
There are several things that make this act of obeisance offensive.
The first is that many of the rigid and unrealistic stands the NRA takes don’t even have the backing of the organization’s membership. Several polls have revealed, for example, that somewhere between 70% and 80% of the NRA’s members support universal background checks for firearms purchasers.
That doesn’t matter to the NRA’s leadership, including LaPierre.
Their opposition to background checks and any other reasonable attempt to keep deadly weapons out of disturbed people’s hands has little do with either the U.S. Constitution or common sense. Background checks delay sales. The gun manufacturers and merchants who provide the bulk of the NRA’s funding, through means they try to hide, want to keep the cash registers ringing.
So, regardless of what the members of this supposed members’ organization want, the NRA continues its intransigence to the most common-sense gun laws even as the body count continues to climb.
LaPierre, the man before whom our legislators bowed down, is of a similar mercantile mindset.
The NRA is the focus of litigation in New York state. The discovery process in the state’s civil suit has revealed that LaPierre leads a lavish lifestyle for a man who leads a supposed not-for-profit organization.
He routinely has taken personal flights on the NRA’s private jets, sometimes dispatching to collect family members from exotic places so that they can provide childcare. Investigators have determined that some of LaPierre’s personal vacations could have price tags as high as a half-million dollars apiece.
That’s not surprising.
LaPierre likes a lavish lifestyle. His mansion in Texas cost $6 million—in part because it has an extensive and expensive security system to protect the occupants from all the people running around with the guns LaPierre has worked to make so readily available.
Such security systems sadly aren’t available to most of the rabble who send LaPierre their hard-earned cash.
The NRA’s flacks tried to contend that none of the organization’s money went to helping with the purchase of LaPierre’s home. Independent accountants disproved that whopper in a hurry.
So, here’s where we are: a majority of Indiana’s legislators abased themselves before an organization that is heedless of the damage its profit-driven policies have done to the country and a man who seems never to have seen an expense account he didn’t want to pad, even to the point of overstuffing it.
This all might be just unseemly—if it weren’t for one thing.
Our legislators don’t work for Wayne LaPierre and the NRA.
They work for us.
Or at least they’re supposed to.
But it doesn’t seem to matter to them that most Hoosiers, like most NRA members, would like to see some common-sense legal protections against the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our communities.
The reason it doesn’t matter to the lawmakers is that they reside in legislative districts, thanks to gerrymandering and other forms of political skullduggery, that are as heavily fortified against the ire of the electorate as Wayne LaPierre’s huge homestead is against the gun-toting populace he helped bring into being.
Both our legislators and the NRA like to live behind barricades—barricades that shelter them from everything.
Including reality.
FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
The City-County Observer posted this article without opinion, bias, or editing.
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The NRA has been stealing from gunowners for decades……
……sickening. They think their memebers are tools
How has the NRA been stealing from members? I freely pay my dues. But I am glad that you forfeit your Constitutional right to possess a tool of self-defense.
Jerry, “I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man”. As we see, Jack is without armament of any kind. As you, I have freely paid my dues for decades.
The writer of this article is NOT a journalist. What a biased article. It might as well say “Organization that shouldn’t be allowed to speak is allowed to do so.â€
Biased trash
OK let me get this straight you have a constitution. Read it. 2nd and add up on objects cannot kill it’s the heart of man we are breeding bad hearts and men women and children go after the people that do this kind of s*** put him in prison for life bring back the death penalty 2nd we pay more money to protect our money than we do our kids Enter places of business shut up do that get things done not disarm me
Krull is a left-wing ass wipe. He thinks he’s a “journalist”, in reality he’s a hack.
Instead of kissing my ring, he can kiss my ass.
I didn’t know that the NRA was responsible for the Louisville mass shooting or any mass shooting? Was the shooter an NRA member? I guess when I joined the NRA I was under the delusion that the NRA wants to keep firearms out of criminal hands but in the hands of those who might need to use one in self-defense. O know they do support reasonable background, gun safety education checks, and oppose weapons of mass destruction. I however am certain that the NRA will not violate your right to become a victim.
The only thing John Krull said that resembled the truth is when John spoke of a “disturbed person”. Why is no information about the shooter being shared? No party affiliation (we all can speculate), not sharing the manifesto of why she (I refuse to perpetuate a lie about her gender confusion) committed the murders, no information as to where or if she took training, no discussion of prior arrests, convictions or mental assessments or evaluations.
The true problem is not the gun or the NRA. It is these liberal journalist, school systems and doctors that are biased and paid by big contributions to push a lie about gun control, gender dysphoria and crime statistics. We have many countries that can be sited as beta examples proving gun control does not work, and many states in our own country that prove legally owned firearms save lives and reduce crime. If he wants to be a journalist rather than a paid hack to spread misinformation and personally biased opinions, he really will need to research both sides of the story (that is work) and back it up with legitimate facts (more work).
Just like every other left wing supposed journalist that does talking points and no research. Good source of misinformation. Have you ever bought a firearm? I’m guessing no. Till you do I’d suggest you leave this topic alone.
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