The gun control debate just rages on, especially during election season. There are increasingly interesting twists and turns in the debate.
For example, the "gun control" side has tried to re-brand their argument as "gun safety". That sounds (at least to the moderate gun ownership sector of the population) a lot less like the government trying to take away someone's guns and a lot more like some sort of reasonable plan to protect people from gun violence. This was smart and seems to have been borrowed from the "same-sex" marriage proponents who re-branded themselves as "marriage equality" proponents as well as the same-sex marriage opponents who have now moved on to branding themselves under the "religious liberty" moniker.
Also interesting is the increasingly awareness than a very large portion of gun-related deaths are the result of suicide. That is tragic, but that is information that the gun-control crowd doesn't really want to be very public because it makes gun-related homicide and mass murders to appear to be less of the problem that it is. That also allows the pro-gun crowd to more easily argue that their are sufficient laws in place regarding gun ownership and that the real issue is "mental health" (that is, the supposed underlying cause of suicide), which is mentioned regularly now.
But, in my view, there is another issue that does not get much play, but I'm convinced it is true. That is, the NRA really doesn't care directly about the Second Amendment and individual right to own guns, etc. Rather, the NRA's real interest and effort is for the gun manufacturers and sellers to be able to sell guns without significant limitations and to perpetuate the Second Amendment culture by the purchasers of those guns. There is lots of evidence of this, including that the NRA keeps pushing through legislation to preclude legal liability for gun manufacturers. Only the most tortured explanation of such legislation can support why such a law supports individual's Second Amendment rights. Instead, the NRA's main purpose is to convince gun buyers and owners that their rights are constantly under attack and that the more people who own and carry guns the safer we all will be. That is fundamentally an ignorant position, but it has been sold very effectively and the ultimate winners of such a strategy and mass delusion are the gun manufacturers and the extensive distribution and support network that sells and keeps guns in the hands of all those people that the NRA has been deluding.
