Breaking News: NRA Educational Funding Announced

The National Rifle Association announced today that it will be setting up a number of educational organizations to counter public perceptions of the organization.

"We want folks to know we're not just a bunch of trigger-happy gunslingers," NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre said. To that end, LaPierre announced, the NRA is fully funding the following educational endeavors:

· The James E. Holmes School of Film Criticism
· The Adam Lanza Center for the Study of Educational Reform
· The Chris Dorner Institute for Community Policing Studies
· The Jared Loughner Center for Congressional Evaluation
· The John Hinckley School of Presidential Studies
· The Mark David Chapman School of Music Criticism
· The David Berkowitz School of Human Relations
· The Arthur Bremer Center for the Study of Presidential Elections
· The Charles Whitman School of Aerial Marksmanship
· The Giuseppe Zangara Institute for Political Reform
· The Gavrilo Princip School of International Relations
· The Leon Czolgocz Institute of Governmental Criticism
· The Charles Guiteau Center for the Study of Presidential Succession

LaPierre also emphasized that there was no truth the the rumors that the NRA was also funding the Albert DeSalvo School of Respiratory Therapy, the Theodore Bundy Institute of Interpersonal Relations or the Jeffrey Dahmner Center for Culinary Arts & Sciences.

"No guns, no glory," he said. A spokesman for LaPierre later denied that he was smirking as he said it.

More details to follow as they become available.

The Hidden History of the NRA

Those of us who are a certain age can remember the National Rifle Association back in the 1950s as being different from the NRA today.

Back then the emphasis was on gun safety and marksmanship and recreational shooting. The organization was even behind a number of gun control laws that developed as a reaction to the lawless 1920s (they helped to outlaw machine guns) and urban unrest of the 1960s (too many black people having easy access to guns). As hard as it is to believe today, there was no undue reliance on an absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment.

There's an excellent history lesson on the NRA and how it got taken over by the paranoid libertarian wing of American politics as recently as 1977, The Surprising Unknown History of the NRA that is well worth the read.