When The NRA Isn’t Pro-Gun Enough

Grace Wyler reviews how some well-armed gun rights advocates took their activism so far that the NRA asked them to tone it down:

For the past few months, zealous Second Amendment lovers, led mostly by the group Open Carry Texas, have been staging demonstrations at various chain restaurants, arriving en masse at places like Chipotle and Chili’s and demanding to be served while brandishing long guns. In some towns, Open Carry Texas members have also taken to wandering around busy intersections armed with rifles and handing out tiny copies of the Constitution to passing drivers.

It’s not totally clear what these protests are supposed to accomplish, but it’s safe to say that they’re not working. Mostly they’ve managed to frighten fast-food workers and customers and get guns banned from eateries that had previously tolerated firearms. … Perhaps sensing a backlash, the NRA is now asking the open carry enthusiasts in Texas to please tone it down before they ruin the Second Amendment for everyone. In a statement released Friday, the notorious pro-gun organization applauded the Lone Star State’s “robust gun culture,” but pointed out that ordering a burrito with an assault rifle slung across your chest is “just not neighborly.”

Morrissey agrees that OCT’s antics were simply unnecessary:

It’s a little unclear exactly what point OCT had in staging these demonstrations at retailers who either supported or at least tolerated firearms on their premises. The protests made them a target for anti-gun activists, and raised their profile to the point where they had little choice but to respond. Whatever one thinks of carry issues, few dispute that private-property owners have at least some legitimate rights in setting conditions for service and access. and these protests made it significantly more difficult for common-sense gun owners to do so in these establishments for no real clear purpose … other than gaining attention.

Francis Wilkinson lampoons the NRA’s response:

[NRA leader Wayne] LaPierre has detailed the overwhelming threats Americans face from “terrorists, home invaders, drug cartels, carjackers, ‘knockout’ gamers, rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse as a society that sustains us all.”

Is it any wonder that open-carry advocates would fear going into a Chipotle or Starbucks without a loaded semi-automatic rifle to keep themselves safe from the horrors LaPierre so exhaustively describes? Yet here is the NRA last week discouraging Texans from being on their guard at every moment.

Dara Lind stresses that the NRA’s objection was pretty circumscribed:

The blog post, posted on the website of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action — its lobbying arm — lumps the Texas open-carry demonstration in with proposed “smart guns” legislation. Both of them, the post says, make it harder to be a responsible gun owner. But while the case against “smart guns” takes up most of the post, the NRA doesn’t mince words in dressing down the Texans for showing up to Chipotle armed to the teeth. In fact, the NRA calls that (emphasis in the original) “downright weird.”

The NRA thinks the Texas gun owners’ true faux pas was the type of guns that were used, not the demonstration itself. Apparently, it’s not “bad manners” to brandish a pistol in a Chipotle, but brandishing a “tactical long gun” crosses the line.

Nonetheless, Open Carry Texas responded by slamming the NRA as unfriendly to gun rights:

“The more the NRA continues to divide its members by attacking some aspects of gun rights instead of supporting all gun rights, the more support it will lose,” the group wrote. “Already, OCT members are posting pictures of themselves cutting up their life membership cards. If they do not retract their disgusting and disrespectful comments, OCT will have no choice but to withdraw its full support of the NRA and establish relationships with other gun rights organizations that fight for ALL gun rights, instead of just paying them lip service the way the NRA appears to be doing.”