From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
I don’t think it’s wrong to say that the NRA has evolved from gun safety and education and being a general proponent of second amendment rights, to being a political monster that supports the Republican party (or is just very necessarily supported by Republican candidates because you can’t be a real Republican if you aren’t NRA cleared, so…) and that NRA rhetoric has gotten very…extra in the digital age. But the connection between the group that explicitly supports the second amendment seems to thrive on its connection to the folks that think they have reasons to stockpile weapons, and that’s really concerning. Call it the “Chekhov’s gun” of politics–you show people being really concerned about using weapons and buying loads of them in the first act, and you should be expecting them to use them, eventually.
The reason this is exceptionally egregious right now, though, is that the same weapons-stockpiling formerly anti-government violence-oriented types are gravitating to pro-government so long as it’s their sort of folks–and the violence they want to bring isn’t really good for democracy or peace.