In the wake of the the Newtown shootings, there has been an awful lot of talk about gun control in America.

It makes me wonder why only now is there talk of gun control? This is not the first mass shooting. Not by a long shot. Is it simply because most of the victims were children?

I’ve sat quietly and listened to liberals and parents clamoring for more gun laws when they had little to say on the issue only six months ago after the Aurora shootings. I also noticed the NRA‘s total silence on the issue when normally they’re so flagrantly annoying with their stance.

And then this morning as I was brushing my teeth, I heard a spokesman for the NRA on the radio admonishing the media, video games and violent movies, and saying the solution is more guns. Specifically, their solution is having armed guards at every school in America.

I’ve never heard of anything quite so idiotic. So, in order to make children feel safe, we’re going to expose them to more guns with armed men roaming around their schools? More guns are not the answer. Besides, who’s going to pay for that?

I say this from the bottom of my heart, fuck you, NRA. You do not speak for all gun owners. Crawl back into the hole you’ve been in for the past week and get bent.

I am a gun owner. I own a rifle and a 9mm handgun. Did you know that? Does that surprise any of you? It shouldn’t. I am about as liberal as you can get without being an ideologue, but I own firearms.

I own firearms because I enjoy shooting them. I find shooting guns to be relaxing. Some people meditate, I shoot things and I’m not a bad shot.

So when I heard the head of the NRA on national public radio this morning speaking for all gun owners, it made my blood boil. I would rather join the Church of Scientology than the NRA. The NRA is a bigoted, misogynistic, right-wing, political lobbying machine and they can have my membership dues when they pry them from my cold dead hands.

I don’t belong to any gun owners associations, but if I did, it would probably be this one:

The mission of The Liberal Gun Club is to provide a voice for gun-owning liberals and moderates in the national conversation on gun rights, gun legislation, firearms safety, and shooting sports. We serve as a national forum for all people, irrespective of their personal political beliefs, to discuss firearms ownership, firearms use, and the enjoyment of firearms-related activities free from the destructive elements of political extremism that dominate this subject on the national scale.   We also actively develop and foster a variety of programs for the purpose of firearms training and firearms safety education, for both gun owners and non-gun owners.

Sounds alright to me, but if you think they have even one tenth of the lobbying power of the NRA, you’re mistaken. And that’s what’s wrong. The NRA is so powerful, it’s nearly impossible to fight them. Groups like the LGC couldn’t even dream of being on even ground.

I live in California, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States. Some of the restrictions are reasonable, but California also does some really idiotic things, e.g. not allowing thumb hole stocks and pistol grips as if the way you hold a rifle has any bearing on how well it kills:

As a liberal gun owner, I don’t think that a civilian ever really needs a machine gun. I believe that there should be a waiting period to buy a gun. There should be a background check. I think that you should have to pass a handgun safety test and prove that you know how to handle a gun before you can take possession of it.  Those are all things California does already. These things should be national otherwise people will just go to the state next door and buy them.

I’m not sure what the answer is since there are already so many guns in America, but I do not think the answer is guns in schools.