Attn Martin Dyckman, FYI the NRA Protects the 2nd Amendment

By Marion P. Hammer

Marion P. Hammer
Marion P. Hammer

Florida –-(Ammoland.com)-  In the latest in a long career of hate mongering, Martin Dyckman, a retired associate editor of the Tampa Bay Times, wrote yet another nasty opinion editorial, this time in the Sun Sentinel, attacking the National Rifle Association. (NRA once had principles, now they just push anarchy, Jan. 2.)

For decades, Dyckman has railed against guns, gun owners, the NRA, and sometimes me personally, often inventing facts in an effort to score political points.

He began his most recent rant by chanting like a school-yard bully, “Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids will we kill today?”

Along with his childish name-calling and finger-pointing, he launched into a diatribe, claiming that, “Not so many years ago, the NRA was a moderate force … The NRA could be reasonable with respect to regulation of weapons … But the moderate leadership was overthrown, likely with significant help from arms manufacturers and sellers — the merchants of death.”

He clearly shows how little he really knows about NRA. Here’s what NRA-haters like him will never understand: The NRA never has been, and never will be, “moderate” in its defense of the Second Amendment and freedom in America.

The NRA was formed to protect America’s freedoms, starting with our earliest mission of providing firearms training for those who might be called to serve our country and continuing with our training programs today, which teach private citizens and law enforcement officers alike to defend themselves and their communities.

And when our constitutional rights come under threat from those, like him, who would disarm America, we take up the mission of protecting the Second Amendment, which is at the very heart of freedom and safety for the law-abiding.

Then there’s his arrogant claim that in the past, the NRA “could be reasonable,” implying he thought NRA once supported the kind of anti-gun laws he does. I don’t know where he got that idea.

The NRA supports laws to stop criminals, drug abusers and the mentally incompetent from purchasing or possessing guns and laws that target criminals who use guns to commit crimes. That’s not supporting gun control, that’s supporting laws that attempt to control the criminal conduct of people who have been proven to behave badly.

NRA also supports laws to stop gun trafficking, such as “Operation Fast and Furious” — where the Obama Administration helped traffickers put guns in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.

He also suggests that the NRA is an anarchistic “relic,” but the real relics are him and his ilk— those who cling to their misguided gun-ban policies as a solution to the ills that plague society.

  • Instead of blaming poor parenting for producing gang-bangers, they blame guns.
  • Instead of blaming the misguided closure of mental health facilities where the troubled could get treatment and help, rather than roam our streets and fill homeless shelters and prisons, they blame guns.
  • Instead of supporting the same security for our schoolchildren that we provide banks, courthouses and even news media offices, they blame guns.

The one thing he is right about is that NRA won’t go along with banning guns and trying to make law-abiding gun owners take the fall for criminal activities. There are thousands of gun laws on the books in this nation and most of them are not enforced.

Was there anything that madman did that horrific day in Newtown that wasn’t already against the law?

  • He is alleged to have murdered his mother.
  • He is alleged to have stolen his mother’s guns.
  • He is reported to have been using his brother’s ID.
  • He made an unauthorized entry into the school.
  • He murdered 20 innocent children and six innocent adults.
  • What good did laws against those crimes do?

The one thing we know might have helped would have been an armed individual or individuals who could have stopped him to protect those children.

Yet this hate-spewing retired journalist attacks the NRA for having the “gall” to promote school security options that don’t infringe on constitutional rights. Instead, he acts like he knows what he’s taking about, demanding more laws that have been proven to fail in the real world. Now, that is real gall.

Marion P. Hammer, of Tallahassee, is a past president of the NRA.