When I say the NRA, what do you think? The National Rifle Association, but what does that mean? What do they do?
I am aware of the NRA’s long history, but the NRA of today is not the NRA your grandfather, or father joined fifty years ago. Today’s NRA is the lobbying arm for weapon manufacturers. That is all. They are not a great American organization defending your rights till their hands are cold and dead. They are a lobbyist for a trillion-dollar industry that represents everything wrong with our government.
Through the NRA, gun manufactures managed to tie their product to an amendment of the United States Constitution drafted to maintain a well-regulated militia. By focusing like a laser on the latter clause of that amendment, they managed to create a group of customers that put even Apple fan-boys to shame.
The Gun Lobby’s Product Problem
The gun manufactures have a product problem, and it is not that their product kills; their product has a long shelf life. You can buy a gun today and with only a modicum of care give it to your children and it will work as well as the day you purchased it. With the same modicum of care, your children can hand the same gun to their children.
There are only few products like this. The other items I can think of are that set of china (and other curios) in the curio cabinet, and the phones AT&T produced when they were a government monopoly.
Remember those phones, those old rotary dialers. AT&T designed those phones to last a lifetime because they gave them to subscribers, and AT&T didn’t want to give another one away, ever. The same is true with a gun, once you have one, no need for another. The gun you have today will serve you just fine for the rest of your life. For gun manufactures that is as big a problem as those rotary dialers were for AT&T.
For AT&T those old reliable phones became a burden on their bottom-line. They had to find innovative ways to get their customers to buy new phones. The long story made short; look at your smartphone.
How the Gun Lobby ignores its Product Problem
For gun manufactures the story is the same, except they generate product demand through their lobbyist—the NRA. When gun manufactures create new ways to throw slugs, they use the NRA to get their products into as many hands as possible. Assault weapons are a product that had a limited audience, the world’s militaries. But the billions gun manufacturers made on war was not enough for them. They needed a new market and sent the NRA out to create and defend it.
The NRA is not a defender of your freedom, and they don’t care about maintaining a well-regulated militia. The NRA is a lobbyist that promotes a product designed to last a lifetime and just happens to kill as many Americans as automobiles. The NRA is the best marketing team ever assembled.
After the next mass-shooting, as you listen to, or engage in, the gun debate remember this: Assault weapons are a product line. Thirty and forty round clips are accessories to a product. The difference between the NRA’s product and AT&T’s is that the NRA’s product is still regulated by the second amendment to the US Constitution, you know, the one about a well-regulated militia.
