SALON

Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013 2:51 PM UTC

7 uncovered quotes that reveal just how crazy the NRA’s become

The organization once supported reasonable gun control laws. Now it's a lobby group for paranoid extremists

By

Topics: AlterNet, NRA, Wayne LaPierre, Gun Violence, Newtown, Sandy Hook Shootings,

7 uncovered quotes that reveal just how crazy the NRA's become
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet The 143-year-old National Rifle Association has not always been like today’s NRA, fighting every gun control law as if the essence of American freedom depends on every citizen owning a gun. What follows are a series of shocking quotes taken from various academic histories of the NRA by top officials within the organization supporting reasonable gun control laws.

1. “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons,” said NRA President Karl T. Frederick, a 1920 Olympic gold-medal winner for marksmanship who became a lawyer, praising state gun control laws in Congress. He testified before the 1938 federal gun control law passed. “I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

2. “We do think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States,” NRA Executive Vice-President Franklin Orth told Congress, shortly after Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy with an Italian military surplus rifle Oswald bought from a mail-order ad in the NRA’sAmerican Rifleman magazine.

3. “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons,” said California Gov. Ronald Reagan in May 1967, after two dozen Black Panther Party members walked into the California Statehouse carrying rifles to protest a gun-control bill. Reagan said guns were “a ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.”

4. “You do know that I am a member of the NRA and my position on the right to bear arms is well known,” Reagan said, speaking out in support of the 1994 Brady bill to create new background checks and a waiting period for gun buyers. “But I want you to know something else, and I am going to say it in clear, unmistakable language: I support the Brady Bill and I urge Congress to enact it without further delay.”

5. “To ‘keep and bear arms’ for hunting today is essentially a recreational activity and not an imperative of survival, as it was 200 years ago; ‘Saturday night specials’ [handguns] and machine guns are not recreational weapons and surely are as much in need of regulation as motor vehicles,” said retired U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in Parade magazine, in January 1990.

6. The Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime,” Burger told PBS’ News Hour in late 1991, referring to the NRA’s claim that the U.S. Constitution included a personal right to own guns.

7. “These people are crazy,” said Alan Gura, referring to NRA critics who said he’d ceded too much to gun control arguments when he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2008 to overturn the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and establish a Second Amendment right to a handgun at home for self-defense. “I could have, if I wanted to, stood before the Court and said, ‘Yes, [the Amendment’s clause] shall not be infringed,’ means you would never have any gun laws, and of course need to all have machine guns in case we want to overthrow the government, and while we’re at it we should have rocket launchers and stinger missiles. And that would have probably made me very popular in some cabin somewhere out there in the woods… Of course, I would have lost 9-0.”

Editor’s note: These quotes were cited or referred to in UCLA law professor Adam Winkler’s 2011 book,Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

More Steven Rosenfeld.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 160 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from AlterNet, an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations