Arizona Paranoia

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Last week I posted a piece entitled “The Lunatic Fringe” which was mildly critical of Arizona’s legislature, an elected body that seems to feel their only purpose for existing is to write legislation to make it easier for any miscreant to buy guns. (That was somewhat of an unfair characterization, because the legislature also expends energy trying to find ways to lower business taxes and taxes on the rich – and to find ways of harassing anyone who had the audacity to be born brown!) But providing the public with easy access to firearms remains the legislature’s top priority.

As mentioned in “The Lunatic Fringe,” our state legislature is in the process of passing a bill that would eliminate the requirement for people to have permits in order to carry concealed weapons. One legislator even referred to the ability to walk around armed as a “God-given right.” (The “lunatic” in the piece was a murderess and vigilante - and child killer - named Shawna Forde, but, for my money, the legislator who got her right to carry directly from God is also qualified to be in Shawna’s good company.)

The reason I dredge up this post from last week is that it generated an interesting response from an anonymous reader. The reader felt that the bill to eliminate the need for permits was some sort of plot. Basically it would result in increased crime, thereby giving the government an excuse to come kicking in doors and confiscating the guns of private citizens.

Can you say paranoid and delusional? The legislature hands the fringe a gift, and their first response is to shoot it!

The National Rifle Association, which boasts of zillions of citizen members but is primarily funded by gun manufacturers, profits by keeping the paranoids stirred up – and their public enemy number one is, of course, our federal government. Former President George H.W. Bush (the sensible Bush) angrily resigned from the NRA in 1994 because the organization had referred to federal agents in one of its mailings as “jackbooted government thugs.”

Now the unofficial NRA banter is that “Obama wants to take your guns away.” Never mind that there is absolutely nothing to back that statement up, it still stirs the rabble and sells guns and ammo – lots and lots of guns and ammo! Wayne La Pierre, the executive director of the NRA, undoubtedly fell to his knees and thanked the ghost of Charlton Heston when Obama was elected! Demonizing a black, liberal Democrat to an army of knuckle-draggers has been a piece of cake for his propaganda machine. NRA board member and rocker Ted Nugent is probably hitting notes that he only dreamed of before! Obama makes a much scarier boogey man than John McCain ever could have been.

Related Factoid: An article in this morning’s Drudge Report entitled “Federal Agents Hunt for Guns One House at a Time,” which discussed the flood of U.S. arms into Mexico, noted that “Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California, and Arizona.”

Gotta love the buffoons in the Arizona State Legislature - surely each and every one proudly carries an NRA membership card!