Reply #157: Mark Morford Weighs In

[MrBenchley]

"And you might think, glancing down the list, that it's just comical and sad how the nation's most powerful and paranoid gun club sees no self-mockery in this, no hint that in creating such an impressive catalog of its "enemies" and revealing just how extensive is the list of intelligent and thoughtful and creative people and organizations who all find some sort of fault with its gun-fetishizin' agenda, they might just be revealing how pitiable and warped their cause actually is. You might think.
....
Maybe you are not on the NRA's list just yet. Maybe you want to join the blacklist and add your name to the thousands who look at the NRA and feel, well, not really anger, not liberal outrage, not even mistrust or disgust.
But more like this overwhelming sense of sadness, and embarrassment, and twisted empathy, this acidic knot in the gut at all the ignorance and misinfo the NRA seems to wallow in and engender in its members, what with the 32,000-plus gun-related deaths in America every year, even as the NRA actively works to reverse the assault-weapons ban in Congress and absolve gun makers and dealers from any liability and protect your right to buy the same high-powered Bushmaster rifle used by that murderous D.C. sniper.
Because remember, to extend the NRA's favorite saying, guns don't kill people, gun-happy sociopaths weaned on ultraviolent media coupled with the NRA's very brand of fearmongering and paranoia and intolerance and anticultural loathing kill people.
Make a note of how in one recent year, guns murdered four people in New Zealand, 19 in Japan, 54 in England, 57 in Australia, 66 in Switzerland, 151 in Canada, 373 in Germany, and 11,798 in the U.S. Note how the NRA hates stats like this. Send this note to all your friends, using the subject line: "Fun data to toss around at a GOP party or when scoring Vicodin for Rush Limbaugh." "

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/