The NRA Isn’t that Powerful. Its Creed Is.
The NRA is a profoundly weaker and more divided organization than it once was. But its legacy, even if it fails to survive, will be the culture and ideology of gun rights it helped cultivate.
Author Archive for: Frank Smyth
About Frank Smyth
This author has not written his bio yet.
But we are proud to say that Frank Smyth contributed 205 entries already.
Entries by Frank Smyth
Gun reform, going nowhere fast: After Oxford High, there’s no appetite for legislative change
/in New York Daily News/by Frank SmythGun reformers must rethink what they want and learn how to talk to gun owners. Unless they can start the conversation by credibly saying no one is ever going to come for your guns, they will likely continue to fail.
The NRA turns 150: The organization has a rich history. Most of it has been buried.
/in franksmyth.com, USA Today/by Frank SmythThe NRA in New York copied the British Royal NRA’s name, the distances to its targets on Wimbledon range, and even their solid iron designs weighing up to 400 pounds each – shipped by steamer across the Atlantic.
MLB vs. NRA: Compare and contrast
/in New York Daily News/by Frank SmythMajor League Baseball and the National Rifle Association are each a century and a half old. But while MLB celebrates its history, the NRA buries and rewrites its own, likely because an exhumation could illuminate our nation’s pickle over gun violence.
Holocaust, guns and the truth
/in New York Daily News/by Frank SmythRepublican Party leaders finally called out Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a supporter of QAnon and the big lie about the 2020 election — after she compared health measures requiring facemasks, to Jews in the Holocaust forced to wear Stars of David. But the National Rifle Association has manipulated the Holocaust to advance its modern political agenda, too.
The slope is not so slippery, actually: Dems must tackle disinformation about gun control head-on
/in New York Daily News/by Frank SmythGun groups have been circulating for months what they call the “Biden plan to destroy the Second Amendment,” filling the vacuum left by his silence with fear. They claim that this is the fateful step, after background checks, that could start the slide to disarmament, and then genocide.
The Myths Fueling Today’s Armed Right How the NRA seeded the storylines animating the violent groups that will be patrolling this year’s election
/in The New Republic/by Frank SmythAmerica’s pro-Trump armed right would not be the first to invent a new ideology to justify in advance their violence against others. Genocidaires developed propaganda ahead of the mass violence in late-1930s Germany and early-1990s Rwanda.