No, re the Aryan NRA brotherhood quip - it's simply that a lot of lunatic fringe also imagines NRA is on the 'right' side - and just needs a little help.. from Them. Kinda hard to shoo away that friendly puppy with the ammonium nitrate keg on its collar. Not NRA's fault entirely - who coopts the name. But my quip could suggest - what you infer. OK: The North Dakota Aryan NRA-wannabe Posse Comitatus Marching Band then..
My sources are not just the talking heads either - but for the fortress mentation which NRA believes is necessary for them? - so Are the speeches often too close to the tired shibboleths, to ever evoke interest in the less polarizing activities you mention.
Still and all.."Like they were a major force in the "three strikes" sort of laws. that they have no sympathy for felons using weapons..." <<<<
I see this as no + at all, given the intent and actuality of the provisions passed: leaving judges no choice in tailoring the punishment to fit an Individual - his/her crime, previous performance, circumstances. Imagine: a judge in tears! apologizing to a young defendant he must impose a Draconian punisment upon because HE HAS NO CHOICE. And Muricans tolerate THIS !!! Baa Baa Baa == always choose the Simplistic over the merely Difficult but Necessary solution.
And if enough people imagine that judges are lenient? too lenient always? on this Particular case Ihappentohaveanopinion on? 'The Answer' (there is NO 'The Answer' EVER) is NOT to (very likely unconstitutionally = coopting via legislative branch!) REMOVE Judicial branch powers to er 'judge'. Perhaps there needs further ground for removing the aberrant extremist judges, as with the quacks perennially protected by the AMA (?) Maybe that isn't broken at all.
But we can't just bump Every judgment call up to a committee, or settle the problem of 'crime' by simplistic slogans like 3 Strikes. Even though that is the national style re all difficult topics.
(Remember: "3--Strikes" gained its largest momentum via the Polly Klass kidnap, prolly rape & certainly murder - by a recently released scum of the earth. This happened in my back yard. Via the accident of human frailty and poor cop-communications: a cop actually stopped this perp while the girl was left "up a hill" [Why Did She Not Then Scream? we will never learn]. It was a traumatic event, intensified for her being such a wonderful little girl (so.. are they all, of course - but some are more..) And it led directly to this nationwide hysteria justifying the crippling of the Judiciary in every state. I Vas Dere, Charlie. The place where they Almost saved the kid - is less than ~ 4 miles away.)
The entire idea - NRA support of 3-Strikes - merely bolsters my characterization of the NRA (too) as falling for just as mindless, simplistic 'solutions' -- as are ever popular with opportunistic pols and with people who have no sense of what individual rights might be. Or why we should care.
We won't 'get rid of the guns' and - we won't 'get rid of the criminals' via 3-Strikes: We Will and Are - locking up people for insane sentences (30-40 YEARS!) for ingesting 'illegal' substances in the privacy of their homes *(not cars, airplanes or boats). we are simply fucking hysterical about so-called illegal drugs. Evidence? lots. One - you cannot even use heroin in a Brompton cocktail for terminal cancer pain . Here! Despite it's being the most effective base ingredient known. UK uses the real thing - we settle for pharm-chem one-note-johnny single alkaloid derivatives (Heroin like Coca is a vast mixture of minor alkoloid variants).
* Yes, not only drug dealers - whom we imagine it's OK to savage out of all proportion: individual users caught with maybe a couple weeks' supply - on the rubric of.. "well, they Might want to use some and sell the rest".. That flies with DAs looking for Perfect Records to taut to the pols. Over and over. Pure sophistry institutionalized *now*.
Apparently - more than you do - I see a tissue of hypocritical laws around, drugs being the most overt: we are the largest assemblage of daily drug-users in history. Only the Pharm-Chem tax renders some street drug (same alkaloid with a twist) - OK for mom n' pop. I also see the clear thread of Puritanism behind most of our victimless crimes, from prostitution on. All my life I've observed this thread of 'causality'.
We are a nation of busybodies - believe we have the right to control behavior that some plurality deems.. immoral. That is how we act, though sanctimoniously deny that we do. (Somehow I imagine this last.. is a plank in the NRA framework too ?? Right to be fucking *Left Alone* ??)
The guns just let minor disagreements turn instantly into fatal ones - often played out by 13-year olds who wanna rap like that gangsta. (CD sold by that Mega-Corp which cares-Not what they do for $$ Nor doe we appear able to interfere with Any profit-making scam so long as: please to call it bizness. Then it is on hallowed ground and untouchable - the Murican Capitalist Creed, sub-\ufffd III)
Welcome to Bedlam USA. We'll sell Anything to kids. If there's $$ in it. For me. Is that the root of our idiocy: Puerile Mendacity In All Things in Life? No more simplistic a slogan than other Popular ones, I deem.
Ashton
Once ashamed of ~'my country's behavior' internally & externally.
Now: it ain't My country. Accidentally here, I try to live - even though 'here'.