I like guns. When used by kitties and angry bears. No, seriously, when handled responsibly by sane individuals for purposes of defense, I have no issue with firearms. In fact, my personal, somewhat-irrational fear of the world coming apart at the seams has prompted me to look into purchasing a handgun, though I have as of yet not done so.
But the point of this post is that I was trying to catch a snooze on my lunch break today and a call came in from Virginia. Okay. So I picked it up and it was a call from the NRA. "This is 'Sally' from the National Rifle Association and we would like your opinion on a poll. The Obama administration - you would not believe what they are doing. They are trying to take away your guns. We have a statement by NRA VP that we'd like you to listen to and would like your comment."
I knew it wasn't a robocall because of how bad the reading was. Terrible. It was a Saturday Night Live skit gone horribly wrong. "...you would not believe..." was delivered in such a way that the woman herself had just been introduced to this script, it was written in crayon by a 3 year old and she was told to feign outrage but wasn't quite sure what the word outrage or the word feign meant - and her supervisor had his thumb in her butthole.
So at that point, not wanting to further my pain, I replied calmly and concisely: "Stop scaring people with made up bullshit and I might consider it." *click*
And the thing that pissed me off was not that they had my number from who-knows-what or that they interrupted my lunchtime nappy or that Obama has no intention of taking people's guns away from them but that they were totally gaming the system.
Here in the USA since 2004, if you put your number on the Do Not Call Registry, then you're solid - bitches can't call you and bug you to sell you something. But the U.S. Chamber and lawmakers inserted a couple of notable exceptions for exemptions:
- Any not-for-profit organizations
- Any political organization
- Companies conducting surveys
So I got double-punked on this call: I've got a not-for-profit organization "conducting a survey." They're using those two to spread biased, fear-mongering misinformation to strike political terror into the hearts of "patriots."
Now I didn't go through the whole survey and maybe I should've - I know you enjoy when I put my mind in the line of fire by listening to Rush and Glenn and Sean on a regular basis. But I can tell you the last question in that survey:
Are you interested in how you can stop this threat to your liberty and the United States Constitution? And then you tell them they are allowed to contact you.
Bottom line: The NRA is using deception and lies and misinformation and loopholes to scare the shit out of ignorant Americans and boost their dues take. And isn't that the image they're trying to avoid?
So when I do decide it's better for me to have a gun and not need one than need a gun and not have one, I will make my purchase(s) happily and proudly. But I will not join the NRA. They can take their political misinformation and put it in Sally's bunghole with her super's thumb.