The NRA and a Massive Conspiracy to Deceive Voters

The National Rifle Association got off to an early start on OIP Derangement Syndrome by misrepresenting Barack Obama’s political positions in 2008 even before our country elected him President.

The organization’s dire predictions proved unreliable. Once in the Oval Office, Obama not only hasn’t imposed restrictions on firearms but has actually signed legislation to loosen the laws. But by definition, actual facts don’t affect cases of OIP Derangement Syndrome.

In Salon, Steve Kornacki just wrote about the NRA’s annual meeting and its foundation of delusion:

The psychology of the National Rifle Association can be funny.

You might think the gun rights group would be deeply suspicious of Mitt Romney, who signed a ban on assault weapons and small handguns as governor of Massachusetts and assured voters there that “I don’t line up with the NRA.” And you might think its members would have at least grudging appreciation for Barack Obama’s presidential record, which includes signing a law to allow loaded guns in national parks and which is devoid of any major push for gun ownership restrictions – even as two gun-related tragedies captured national attention.

But no, it’s Romney who’s getting the warm welcome at the NRA’s St. Louis convention this afternoon, and it’s the prospect of a second Obama term that has the group in a panic. The president’s passive record on guns, according to Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, is just “a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term.”

Certainly, this reflects the pattern that has defined much of the conservative opposition to Obama’s presidency. He’s governed as a middle-of-the-road incrementalist, but the right decided before he took office that Obama was a leftist radical, so that’s how they’ll treat him. He could get reelected and sit on this hands for four more years and Obama will still be a gun confiscator to the 2nd Amendment crowd.