In a previous post I mentioned our upcoming Saturday night date: dinner at a National Rifle Association auction. I wanted to wear my ACLU member pin but couldn’t find it. I did my homework, though, and was prepared to argue the case for protecting all ten amendments in the Bill of Rights, not just the one. Alas, the situation never came up.
Donna works part time at a local gun store. Her boss usually reserves a table or two at these events, and employees can bring their spouses. The way the auction works, you submit silent (paper) bids on guns, holsters, and shooting accessories donated by local NRA members and supporting businesses. After dinner, organizers announce who won what, and proceeds go to the local NRA chapter.
The NRA auction in July 2007, the only other one I’ve attended, was politically charged. I blogged about the experience; I still remember being acutely aware of my outsider status. I expected more of the same last night, but there were only two brief instances where I felt like a Martian observing events through a immense telescope on Phobos. The first was when the minister giving the invocation sneered at an anonymous (and obviously fictional) event organizer who asked him to make his opening prayer non-denominational. The second occurred later in the program, when an embarrassed emcee briefly turned the microphone over to a man who told us about JPOF … Jews for the Protection of Firearms … and how they had discovered that some piece of gun control legislation passed during the Kennedy administration in 1961 turned out to be a “word-for-word translation of Hitler’s gun confiscation law.”
Oh, and then there were the flag shirts. Tucson NRA Chapter members who organized and officiated at last night’s event … about a dozen of them, men and women … wore the shirt on the left (I grabbed the image from the NRA website; and I must say the shirts don’t look nearly as nice in XXXL, draped over potbellies).
The shirt on the right got Abbie Hoffman arrested and tried during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Later, in 1970, he wore the shirt during an interview on the Merv Griffin Show. To keep from offending viewers, the network fuzzed out the shirt. You could hear Abbie talking but all you could see of him was a jittery white blur.
Did I tell you there was going to be a quiz? Don’t worry, there are no wrong answers.
What explains the NRA’s embrace of American flag shirts?
a) At some point during the last couple of decades, wearing American flag shirts became acceptable, even patriotic
b) IOKIYAR
c) Both a) and b)
I’m going with c), heavily weighted toward b).
No, I am not an NRA member. When I was a teenager I might have considered it. I went hunting with my dad, and even had a .22 rifle of my own for target shooting. I own guns today, and am glad to live in a country where I can. There have probably always been gun nuts in the NRA, but somewhere along the way they managed to completely take the organization over, and today they vociferously oppose even the most commonsense restrictions. No, they’re not for me. I’ll stay an outsider at these events, should I go to another one.
Now where could that ACLU pin have gotten to?