Editorial: Memo to the NRA: Lighten up a little (Mass.)

[stevie_d_64]

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Editorial: Memo to the NRA: Lighten up a little

By The Republican Editorials
September 28, 2009, 5:44AM

Sometimes the National Rifle Association needs to know when it’s time to lighten up.

It pains us to say that, because the NRA has fought hard to keep the state and federal governments from denying responsible, law-abiding Americans from possessing and enjoying guns.

But the organization jerked the trigger recently when it targeted Easthampton Mayor Michael A. Tautznik and other Western Massachusetts mayors because they had the temerity to join Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a national organization that works to deny irresponsible and criminal citizens from getting their hands on guns.

It would take the logical skills of Aristotle to explain the finer points of why these groups disagree. Let’s just say that the mayors’ group believes America needs stronger curbs on gun trading, while the NRA believes the group seeks to erode our Second Amendment rights.

The NRA has been sending letters to its members nationwide denouncing Mayors Against Illegal Guns and urging them to pressure their mayors to quit the organization.

Caught in the middle of the whole affair is Tautznik, a gun owner and NRA member, who is locked in a tight re-election race. He withdrew from Mayors Against Illegal Guns after he received eight to 10 letters about his membership.

“This really isn’t a local issue,” he said last week. “I thought it would be quicker for the community to just end it.” Tautznik is wrong about that. It is a local issue, and Western Massachusetts doesn’t need the NRA to tell us what to think. We know guns. Our region is home to two of the world’s leading gun manufacturers – Smith & Wesson and Savage Arms. Our friends and neighbors make these guns.

But our region is also home to an ugly gang violence problem. Nearly all the murders and shootings in the region are committed with illegal guns. We know that nearly every illegal gun was once a legal gun, and mayors should fight illegal gun trading.

The Republican has and will continue to support the rights of gun owners, but sometimes we wish the NRA would focus more on promoting marksmanship and gun safety instead of badgering small town mayors. We’ve been shooting a little high and right lately, and we could use the NRA’s help. But when it comes to politics, we can think for ourselves.

[stevie_d_64]

There is nothing Republican about this waste of an "editorial"!!!

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a national organization that works to deny irresponsible and criminalcitizens from getting their hands on guns.

absolute horse biscuits

The Republican has and will continue to support the rights of gun owners, but sometimes we wish the NRA would focus more on promoting marksmanship and gun safety instead of badgering small town mayors.

In other words, they want to support only the hunters...

And as for badgering small town mayors, if they sign on for this special interest and self interest group run by a RINO called Bloomberg...Well, thats just a load of tough noogies (thats as nice as I am going to put it)...They have to deal with the badgering...

Need to find the (updated) list of mayors who have copped out on the issue and took up on the wrong side of it...

[DoubleJ]

What's an Illegal Gun??? Our friend TxI used to ask that, and I don't know that I ever got an answer...

[The Annoyed Man]

I want to discuss what this Mayors Against Illegal Guns really stands for before pronouncing judgement on the NRA. Given that this editorial is a shot across the NRA's bow, I'm willing to bet that MAIG have done more harm to the rights of gun owners than good. It kind of reads like, "I don't think you know about the special problems of mayors, so I don't want you to challenge a mayor that supports further restrictions on guns."

It's not that uncommon for a politician who "believes in the right to own guns" (because he owns a hand made english import shotgun with a price of $25,000.00) to go on an on about the right to have a gun for "sporting purposes," but to not be at all sympathetic to your or my right to own an $800.00 AR15 or a $500.00 handgun with a 15 round capacity magazine for home defense. Those patrician elitists are not the grass roots of gun rights. They are the astro-turf.

Instead of worrying about these kinds of swats at the NRA, we should be taking pleasure in MAIG's discomfort.

[lrb111]

Bloomberg sent his thugs into Virginia to buy guns, and break laws via straw purchases. Then tried to prosecute those same Virginia, unknowing and unwitting gun dealers in New York City.
In my mind this is the height of conspiracy, malfeasance, and corruption under the color of law.
He continues to try to find ways to make law abiding gun owners criminals.

I have nothing but contempt for this little dictator, and all that support him.

[mymojo]

I'm betitng it all hinges on what "illegal gun trading" really means. Sounds an awful lot like "Gun show loophole" to me.

[DoubleJ]

the Editorialer was just mad that his guy got picked out of the lineup...

notice that his guy quit the Mayors That Are Idiots Organization. Hmmmmm

[bdickens]

Bloomberg's pack of thugs should be called MAAG (Mayors Against All Guns) because that is what they really are.

[hirundo82]

"Mayors Against Illegal Guns" is nothing more than a gun control advocacy PR firm financed by Mayor Bloomberg to promote his antigun agenda, and has the stated agenda of countering the political power of the NRA--ie opposing the largest grassroots gun owners group.

They (ie Mayor Bloomberg) push for things such as "assault weapons" bans, one-gun-a-month laws, and are vehemently opposed to concealed carry.

They mislead otherwise reasonable mayors about their agenda (purporting to not be antigun) to gain a veneer of respectability. This makes them and similar groups, such as AHSA, extremely dangerous to our rights.

[The Annoyed Man]

notice that his guy quit the Mayors That Are Idiots Organization. Hmmmmm

That's an astute observation. Maybe the guy who quit woke up and smelled the coffee, realized it that was Kopi Luwak — the kind of coffee bean that comes out of the hind parts of a civet cat, and which is most enjoyed by elitists — and wasn't havin' any of that. So he quit... ...not because he felt intimidated by the NRA, but because he agrees with the NRA and he just didn't realize he had joined a group of people who drink coffee made from cat poop. He might even be grateful to the NRA for turning on the alarm which woke him up.