Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [104]
But Obama’s election did not prove particularly devastating to the Second Amendment. Not only did he fail to enact the Ten Point Plan to “Change” the Second Amendment, he did not even implement the modest gun control initiatives that he had championed during the campaign. “We do not debate guns around here much anymore,” grumbled Senate majority whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) two months after Obama took office. “We reached a point where there are not many people who will stick their political necks out to vote for sensible gun control—too big a hassle.”12 A number of prominent Democrats have even supported antigun control measures, including Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)—who once said, “If I were to select a jackbooted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick ATF.”13 Nor does the Supreme Court show any sign of diluting gun rights, having upheld individuals’ constitutional right to possess firearms and struck down gun laws in Chicago and Washington, DC.
But even as the Supreme Court accommodated and the White House capitulated, Wayne LaPierre, the swaggering, gun-toting captain of one of the most formidable lobbying organizations in the country, quivered anxiously in his power tie. “The bomb is armed and the fuse is lit,” he warned in 2009. “They are going to come at us with everything they’ve got.” The Obama administration, he insisted, is “the slickest, most aggressive anti-gun White House in history.”14 A year later, still with no gun control in sight, LaPierre continued his dire prophesies, “The fact is his administration is stacked full of people that have spent a lifetime attacking the Second Amendment, and I believe there are storm clouds on the horizon, and ‘stay ready’ is the word.”15 (It’s two words, but that’s okay.)
Josh Sugarmann, founder of the Violence Policy Center in Washington, observed, “Despite the fact that they won their Supreme Court case, they act as if they lost.”16 Richard Feldman, a former NRA lobbyist, made much the same point in 2007: “I think in large measure the war has been won, but the NRA refused to accept congratulations. They would much prefer to fight pitched battles.”17
But LaPierre’s reaction to the NRA’s political victories should come as no surprise. As with the secular humanists, the militant homosexuals, and the subversive czars, right-wing conspiracists have consistently responded to success by amplifying the scare tactics. That’s because the paranoia has little to do with reality and everything to do with psychology. Like Glenn Beck, Wayne LaPierre is a proselytizer. Success affirms the rationalizations underlying his paranoid ideas. The Supreme Court endorsed his view of the Second Amendment, and the unpopularity of gun control demonstrated that Americans found his tale of government tyranny persuasive.
In addition to the psychological affirmation, LaPierre also receives material benefits from keeping his mythical villains at large. Like Beck, he collects a lot of money—for the NRA, the gun industry, and himself—by telling an appealing story about a tyrannical government that preys on innocent Americans. After Obama’s election, anxious gun enthusiasts rushed to buy firearms before the Democrats destroyed the Second Amendment, producing a bonanza for gun dealers and causing nationwide ammunition shortages.18 NRA membership rose 30 percent, and donations flowed. According to Richard Feldman, “You could almost sense the NRA fundraisers licking their chops because for the first time in eight years they had an identifiable bogeyman.”19
“What Color Star Will They Pin on Our Coats?”
What’s particularly interesting about LaPierre’s narrative of government repression is that it’s not inherently conservative. During the days of J. Edgar Hoover’s anticommunist FBI, it was the left wing that feared despotic government agents. Then in the 1970s, would-be revolutionaries like the members of the Weather Underground romanticized armed struggle against