The NRA's "Celebration of American Values" conference last week was supposed to be a ritual of public dotage in which presidential candidates kiss the hem of the NRA's camouflage jacket.
But a month before the two day event in Washington D.C., four young people were killed execution style in Newark, N.J. and four Miami police officers were shot at a traffic stop. One died.
A week before the event, the International Association of Chiefs of Police--20,000 police administrators from the US and 88 countries--asked Congress to renew the federal assault rifles ban which expired in 2004.
And during the conference itself, two students were shot and wounded, one seriously, at Delaware State University even as candidates spoke.
No wonder Governors Mitt Romney and Bill Richardson just sent videos!
Of course most politicians know what a sham trying to receive the NRA benediction is, anyway. It can't be done.
Look what happened to shooting spokesman Jim Zumbo earlier this year.
The nation's top outdoors writer was stripped of his cable show and magazine column overnight for daring to call black rifles terrorist weapons and suggesting they were inappropriate for hunting. Whoops.
Sure the NRA enjoyed the way Arizona Sen. John McCain ripped into former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani at the conference, calling him a big-city mayor who "decided it was more important to blame the manufacturers of a legal product than it was to control crime in their own cities," "bankrupting" the poor gun manufacturers.
Sure it reveled at McCain's outing of Romney as a pseudo hunter who thinks "hunting ducks or varmints or quail" can cover up "support for gun control."
But there's the little matter of the Campaign Finance Reform Law--which would curtail NRA TV advertising during political campaigns--that McCain coauthored. Even Mitt--not to play the two against each other--opposes it!
Sorry, John: C minus.
But even if a candidate could get an A plus, the NRA is going to need more than a pol in its pocket--its favorite concealed weapon--in the upcoming legislative sessions.
Its very agenda is in a tailspin thanks to the Virginia Tech shootings and the school, church and assault weapon shootings which have followed.
In Florida, traditionally so pro gun it's been called the "Gunshine" state, the murder of 37-year-old Police Officer Jose Somohano and wounding of three of his colleagues has changed the dialogue.
How did Shawn LaBeet, the man who killed Somohano, buy nine guns in the past year, including six assault rifles and the Mak-90, a modified assault rifle with which he shot four officers, people are asking.
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