The NRA's big show in Arizona: Paranoia en masse
By David Neiwert Friday May 15, 2009 2:00pm
The National Rifle Association is having its big annual convention in Arizona this week, which means we'll see the usual parade of fearmongering and liberal-bashing on steroids that these affairs always are -- with a special emphasis on President Obama, that scary Muslim left-wing radical who wants to take all our guns away.
It's all paranoia, all the time. As you can see from clips above, all the raging talk at the convention is about how gun sales are through the roof because everyone's afraid Obama is going on a gun-grabbing spree. (Side note: Was that a Freudian slip on Larry Kudlow's part, calling the NRA the "IRA"?)
Pretty typical is Ted Nugent, who's blogging the affair from Arizona for Human Events and coming up with some prime bon mots ("Write this down: Gun Free Zones are a felon’s playgrounds. Ban Gun Free Zones now. Join the NRA.") while drawing a bead on the bottom line: Keep your hands off my guns, you dirty stinking liberals:
Meanwhile, in order to stop the drowning and murders, I will work on banning water, Obama can try to ban guns. Good luck. Save an innocent life, join the NRA and celebrate 138 years of keeping and bearing. Drive a bad guys nuts. Then shoot him while he’s committing a violent crime.
That's the stuff circulating for mainstream-media consumption. But always at these shows, and around them, there's the gaseous nebula of conspiracism. The warnings of an NRA fan posted at one of the local news stories is fairly typical of the material floating about the convention and among its attendees:
