Open Resignation to the NRA

EDITOR'S NOTE: Frank's views are not necessarily the views of myself or Andrew. However Blue Ribbon Radio is a place where every side of every subject can be looked upon, and every opinion voiced. This is everybody's sounding board. 


My name is REDACTED, and my member number is REDACTED. I want to end my membership with the NRA immediately.

When I moved out of my parents house six years ago, as a responsible gun-owning citizen, I dawdled a few years before I joined the NRA. I joined primarily out of a sense of nostalgia for reading American Rifleman as a boy, as well as a completely misguided fear of President Obama wanting to take away the shotgun and .22LR I shoot for fun.

Once I did take the step to join the NRA, I did so with joy and pride, thinking that I was doing a service to the Second Amendment. It proved to be a gravely mistaken notion that the rights of reasonable gun owners were actually being infringed upon. I received the stickers in the mail and quickly applied them to my truck and my toolbox at work. Then I began to receive the magazine.

You know as well as I that you remember things differently from your youth than they actually were.

Obviously I missed the political bent when I was younger; all I knew then was I loved shooting with my Father and Grandfather, and American Rifleman had cool pictures of cool guns. They were both NRA members, and when I had the means to join, I wanted to be in the club.

Immediately after I joined, even in my ill-informed youth, I recognized Wayne LaPierre for what he is: a foam-flecked professional paranoiac. I never liked what he had to say, and I never felt that he was a good representative of “gun rights.” For a time I was able to regard him as a curiosity, but as I came to embrace my voting rights, I now see him as a menace to society at large.

The final turning point for me was the press conference a week after the Newtown massacre, and his appearance on Meet the Press a few days later.

The unwillingness of the NRA, and especially LaPierre, to even consider the idea that something as simple as a ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds has forced the ugly realization upon me that the NRA is nothing more than the propaganda arm of the firearms industry. The desire to shift responsibility is nothing short of appalling. Wayne LaPierre's attempt to lay the blame at the feet of Hollywood and the video game industry is offensive to logic on several levels, chief of which is the fact that the NRA maintains an exhibit dedicated exclusively to famous guns of Hollywood. I do not take the easy road and blame entertainment, but I cannot be part of an institution that not only vilifies, but glorifies, the same thing, and for the same reason.

I am a gun owner who believes that our main action against the government is to shed oppressive special-interest propaganda and vote with our conscience, and do so without fear. I am a gun owner who believes that no honest civilian needs more than ten rounds in any magazine. I am a gun owner who believes you are a detriment to civilized society, and wants no further part of you.