The NRA Reaps Its Own Whirlwind in Facing Bloomberg:
Wayne LaPierre, the bespectacled goblin of gun "rights," appeared on Meet the Press with Bowl-Cut Grayhair yesterday. The face of the National Rifle Association since roughly 1901 (note: Yesterday's Sunday talk shows featured Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, and Wayne LaPierre. It could have been the Sunday conservative line-up from 1988), LaPierre was on to respond to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's pledge to "fuck the NRA's ass so hard that shit is driven out of its mouth." Or words to that effect. Bloomberg's a billionaire, you know, and he's spending hard to defeat members of Congress who don't support stronger gun control laws.

LaPierre huffed, "[H]e's going to find out this is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people. And he can't spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public...We have people all over, millions of people, sending us $5, $10, $15, $20 checks saying, 'Stand up to this guy that says we can only have three bullets,' which is what he said." Of course, LaPierre doesn't mention the millions the NRA gets from gun manufacturers, and he doesn't have to, thanks to the Supreme Court and, well, hey, the NRA.

Yeah, see, other than making sure that every "sane" American has a right to buy enough guns and ammo to take down a small army (that doesn't have things like missiles and rocket launchers, which would pretty much make one's guns a minimal threat), the NRA's other big legislative effort is to take on anything that smells like campaign finance reform. Here's LaPierre back in 1998: "What's at stake is what type of political society we live under in the 21st century -- whether we live in a society where men and women can get together and express a point of view or whether we're going to turn over the keys to the national media conglomerates." See, "media conglomerates" means news organizations, which might report how much guns are fucking things up without having to kowtow to the well-financed savages of the NRA.

And McCain-Feingold was a poison to democracy, according to the NRA in 2001, because it would "silence all of the voices of all of the individuals who support virtually every cause during elections through organized 'issue advocacy.'" Like, perhaps, Michael Bloomberg?

But that would have taken some foresight. And the only foresight the NRA has is the strange ability to see a future where "jack-booted thugs" from the guv'mint will take away your Chinese-made AR-15 and not a future where people keep shooting each other and themselves because that's what guns do. So when the Citizens United decision opened the cash floodgates for groups and corporations, the NRA reacted with predictable self-fellatio: "[F]or now, we can savor a tremendous victory for our First Amendment rights, a victory for which much of the credit belongs to those loyal defenders of our Constitution—the members of the National Rifle Association of America."

The attempt to demonize Michael Bloomberg is going to be amazing and, more than likely, anti-Semitic, with a good dose of Northern liberal resentment mixed in, something that's gonna be kind of hard to pin on the guy who is responsible for the odious, racist "Stop and Frisk" program. The fun part is going to be the class warfare part, about how a billionaire is trying to buy an election against the will of all these little people. Now that'd be irony.

Perhaps what politicians who have suckled at that NRA teat like man-sized babies in David Vitter's most avid fantasies are going to learn is that they'll have to turn to Bloomberg's cash-engorged dugs and drink anew. How can the NRA, and, indeed, many on the right, oppose Bloomberg making it rain for his cause after their opposition to anything that smells like campaign finance reform? They'd look like hypocritical tools. But, you know, they're conservatives, so they won't care. And their followers won't even notice.