The NRA Shoots at the Wrong Target!

This week, the NRA so scared of the consequences of someone besides Donald Trump winning the general election, shot at the wrong target and came out in full force to support the less than popular Donald J. Trump. Not a strong or intelligent decision by the hierarchy of the NRA.

A day after the NRA officially endorsed Donald Trump, there are rumblings of dissent among those who wonder why the organization moved so quickly to endorse Trump when they waited several months after the nomination to endorse either Romney in 2012 or McCain in 2008.

From POLITICO:

“’I have no clue why they did it,’ said Brian Abney of Missouri. He was among the much smaller contingent that showed up to the NRA’s Annual Members Meeting on Saturday, hoping to grill the NRA’s brass about the decision to endorse a man who not long ago backed longer waiting periods to buy guns and a ban on assault weapons (which, NRA activists will tell you, is an inaccurate, anti-gun term for that category of firearms).

Trump has since disavowed those views, and on Friday, he called for an end to gun-free zones while warning that Clinton would overturn the Second Amendment.

On the NRA Facebook page, there has been a mix of some who approve and others who flatly refuse to support an organization that would so readily support someone like Trump.

“It was a very clear choice,’ said an NRA official on Saturday, who insisted on speaking anonymously about internal NRA deliberations. ‘Hillary Clinton is not an option. She must be defeated at all costs.’”

The campaign was “heated,” the official said, so the NRA saw the early endorsement as “an opportunity to begin the process of bringing everyone together to defeat Hillary Clinton and elect a pro-Second Amendment president.”

Trump’s more recent statements put him on strong footing, the official said. ‘Throughout this campaign, Donald Trump has been very clear that he is a staunch supporter of Second Amendment rights.’”

Yeah. He says that now, but can he be trusted?

Nobody knows for sure.

Representative Allan West gave a very watered-down nod to the decision to back Trump.

“’What’s the alternative?’ West said Saturday in a brief interview. As a freshly elected member of NRA’s board, he wasn’t involved with the endorsement decision.

‘You’ve got to endorse someone that you think will look after your interests,’ West said. ‘I guess they figured that Donald Trump will protect the Second Amendment.’

Asked whether he trusts Trump to protect the Second Amendment, West responded, ‘We’ll have to see.’”

It frustrates the common voter when all a candidate can do is to state their scare tactics of the made up versions placed upon the competition, which Trump managed to do against Hillary Clinton if she would become the POTUS. It also frustrates the Constitutional Conservatives that have vowed beyond a doubt to be #nevertrump under any circumstance, and Donald is using the NRA to try and coach more to support him while his ulterior motive may be far from supporting the rights of gun owners, and his turn back to previous positions. A chance existed that this organization, prior to this decision, was a stronghold for the Constitutional Conservatives…but not anymore. The NRA is now just another spineless entity that believes that Donnie the misogynist liar will somehow become a true Conservative if elected.

Comments like the following were widespread with thousands if not millions vowed to cancel membership, and no longer support the NRA. Again Donald has brought people together, but against a once great organization, and now in defiance of that organization that has endorsed the disgraceful candidate.

“Where were members though and who made the endorsement call?”

That’s the $64,000 question. As I said yesterday in my post renouncing my NRA membership, this endorsement appears to come from no one but Chris Cox and Wayne LA Pierre. Certainly I never received any communications from the NRA asking me about my own preference. At the very least there should have been a poll of the membership; better, there should have been an actual ballot provided to all members.

This endorsement came months before the NRA traditionally announces who it’s backing if it’s backing anyone at all. To make this move months in advance, with no input from members, on behalf of a candidate who has taken some of the most extreme anti-gun positions imaginable, is not just inexplicable. It is a betrayal, and it is why I called the NRA within minutes of yesterday’s announcement to terminate my membership; after which, I scraped that NRA decal off the window of my SUV.
I will not be associated with anyone and will not now or in the future support anyone who would voluntarily associate themselves with Donald Trump; be it the NRA, the RNC or any elected Republican official

Donald Trump — who just a few years ago praised President Obama’s appeal for stronger gun control after the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. — was endorsed and embraced by the National Rifle Association on Friday, completing his rapid transformation into a fierce pro-gun advocate.

Instead of detailing his own positions on gun rights issues at a political forum attended by thousands of NRA members, Trump told the crowd that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton would “abolish the Second Amendment” and then release violent criminals from prison, not caring that innocent citizens would be unable to protect themselves.

“Hillary wants to disarm vulnerable Americans in high-crime neighborhoods,” Trump said. “Whether it’s a young single mom in Florida or a grandmother in Ohio, Hillary wants them to be defenseless, wants to take away any chance they have of survival. . . . And that’s why we’re going to call her ‘Heartless Hillary.’ ”

Trump, once a supporter of gun control policies that are anathema to the gun rights lobby, claimed he was surprised by the endorsement.

“I will not let you down,” he promised NRA members in his speech. “Remember that, I will not let you down.”

In a discursive address that combined his trademark improvised riffs with more unsteady moments reading from notes, the presumptive Republican nominee tried to convince the crowd that he was one of them.

He bragged about his concealed carry permit and awkwardly boasted that his sons Don Jr. and Eric own so many firearms “that sometimes even I get a little bit concerned”.

Some NRA members said in advance of the speech they were not sure how sincere Trump’s support of gun rights might be, and that they feared the second amendment might be something such a famous dealmaker might be willing to trade away.

Echoing familiar lines from his stump speech, Trump promised that as president he will get rid of “gun-free zones”. The November terrorist attack on the Bata clan theater in Paris, he said, might have been averted if concertgoers had been carrying firearms.

Just more rhetoric in a long list of promises that will never occur if Trump becomes President. He has made so many promises, he will have to present a new intelligent bill to be considered by congress every day for his whole four years. The issue is it would have to be intelligent=disqualifier, he would have to have a written law to be a considered=2nd disqualifier. Another empty promise by an empty suit.

Many of Trump’s properties, including the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, are gun-free zones. With the NRA endorsement, yet another conservative stronghold has yielded to Trump, whose heterodox policy positions had led many on the right to view him with suspicion.

Chris Cox, the group’s top lobbyist, addressed disaffected conservatives in the convention audience when he said: “If your preferred candidate dropped out of the race, get over it.”

The NRA telling people to get over it, he better be ready to just get over it when it comes to thousands to millions of lost members because of their endorsement, and the #nevertrump voters state emphatically to the NRA. You lost me!! Just get over it.