BADGES? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING BADGES: THE PROPOSED NEW SLOGAN FOR THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION (NRA)

We don’t need no stinking badges was a line first delivered in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), again in Blazing Saddles (1974), and several times since and in between. We don’t need no stinking badges has become one of the most famous laugh lines of the Western World.

I am thinking that the NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION (NRA) could very soon be adopting We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges as its newest slogan because … The NRA believes that all law abiding citizens have the right to own and bear arms; and has just recently called for a surge of gun-carrying good guys (this is a quotation) to save the hoi polloi of America.

***Of course, there are many people who disagree with the NRA prescription.  See Peyton Tremont in the above picture, age 7, who is among the hundreds of people marching on Washington who want guns banned.***

Since its inception, the NRA has lobbied politicians on all levels for their members’ rights to own and carry guns.  Also, since its inception, politicians on all levels have lobbied for the NRA dollars, Mitt Romney and John Kerry being among the recent few.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the NRA, blames media, video games, courts, mental illness for violent gun-related crimes, which include the recent school shootings.  Wayne LaPierre is lobbying American politicians for an active mental illness database.  To quote Wayne LaPierre, We have no national database of these lunatics.

Fact:  Congress has banned usage of the word lunatic in all federal laws.  However being Canadian, I can write that it is Wayne LaPierre who is the lunatic.

Fact: 4% to 5% of violent crimes are committed by people with mental illness (Dr. Dilip Jeste, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences).

Fact: 95% of violent crimes are committed by other members of the population.

Fact:  The strongest predictors of violent crimes:  those with a past history of violence, those addicted to drugs or alcohol, and those disenfranchised due to their socioeconomic environment (the ilk of homelessness, poverty).

Fact: Male youths (including fortunate sons) add to the risk of being violent offenders.

Fact:  The NRA’s Board of Directors is 87% male and 93% white.  Some prominent current members are Tom Selleck (I’m surprised), Ted Nugent (on record as being a Barack Obama hater), Oliver North (America’s real John Wayne), and Robert Brown (founder and publisher of Soldier of Fortune, a magazine used to recruit mercenaries for wars around the planet).

Fact: The NRA endorsed Mitt Romney, the Republican choice for president, stated, I will do all in my power to defend and protect the right of all law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms.

Fact: The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a bully-pulpit organization that is losing its firepower. The NRA is an egoistic organization that has decided to make the mentally ill the scapegoat of its lunacy simply because the mentally ill are vulnerable and easy victims.  

Fact: People with mental illness are in a continuous battle with invisible enemies, the disease itself, and the stigmatic social perception.

And the last FACT:  If the members of the NRA insist that all law abiding American citizens have the right to own and bear arms then … the NRA should be speaking on behalf of the mentally ill, since most of these people are, in fact, law abiding citizens, rather than subjecting them to a disgusting inspissate draconian plot.

BADGES?   THE NRA NEEDS NO STINKING BADGES?!

(On my last busk with my didgeridoo in balmy minus 7 degree weather, Brad, an avid reader and critic of this blog, suggested that I write on the National Rifle Association and its political thunder that blames people with mental illnesses for all the gun violence in America.  And this I’ve done – with an angry pen.)