The NRA's real agenda

NRA spokesperson Wayne LaPierre won't stop calling for more guns and fewer restrictions. He says that we all have to be armed to the max in order to defend ourselves against potential intruders and other bad guys.

In doing so, he talks about "freedom" and "rights" - specifically the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to bear arms, which has been affirmed by the Supreme Court and is under no real threat, despite so much fear mongering.

The NRA's rhetoric is a thinly veiled smokescreen to mask the NRA's true reason for wanting unfettered availability of guns: It's because the NRA has become the political arm of the gun and ammunition manufacturing industry, which pumps millions of dollars annually into the NRA's treasury.

Even MSNBC's Joe Scarborough - a Republican - criticized the NRA for its single-minded agenda to enrich the gun manufacturers. An excerpt:

"This is about gun manufacturers making millions and millions and millions of dollars. This is about retailers making millions and millions and millions of dollars. Do you know how much money these people have made over the slaughter of 20 innocents in Newtown? Do you know how much richer these rich gun manufacturers have gotten over the past month, and how the NRA uses that tragedy to gin up fears, and websites use that tragedy to gin up fears that they're coming to take your guns away? Hey, they can't take your guns away, we've got something called the Second Amendment in the Constitution of the United States. Justice Scalia said in 2009 they can't come and take your guns away, you can have a handgun to protect your family. But after that, they can regulate guns."

Perhaps it's too bad that Scarborough, a former U.S. Congressman, is no longer in Washington. We could use more GOP Congressmen with a clue.