The NRA can’t help itself because the caricature is real. We call them “gun nuts” because there’s something fundamentally wrong with people who have a fetish for a piece of metal and an obsession with violence. There is no other way to explain why the President of the NRA, David Keened, today defended comparing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to Hitler.

Who does that? What organization would actually compare a political leader on either side to Hitler, and then when asked about it, defend it?

These are not sane people. Though they are, sadly, typical of the mainstream of the Republican party today.

The gun nuts were protesting yesterday in Albany, the capital of New York state, against the state’s new gun control law, passed following the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in which 20 six- and seven- year old children were murdered in cold blood by the son of a responsible gun owner.

A number of the signs held by protesters invoked Hitler, with one showing Governor Cuomo as Hitler, with the tell-tale moustache and Nazi military hat. The New York Daily News has a good photo of it here.

NRA President Keene defended the Hitler comparison today:

“Folks that are cognizant of the history, not just in Germany but elsewhere, look back to the history and say we can’t let that sort of thing happen here,” Keene said during an Albany radio appearance.

Actually, folks that (sic) are cognizant of the history know that gun control was not the deciding factor of the Holocaust.

But don’t let that stop gun nuts like Keene and the NRA. The extremists who run the Republican party love Hitler comparison because, to them, the American government is Hitler. The American government is the enemy. What drives gun nuts is the notion that the day will come that they’ll need to take up arms against the American government and “start killing people.”

It’s why NRA boarder member Ted Nugent last year said that he’d be dead soon after President Obama’s re-election.

It’s why the Tea Party recently called President Obama Hitler in a rambling email and Web page going on about how America was turning into Nazi Germany.

Republican front-man Matt Drudge did the same a few months ago:

Things have gotten so bad with the gun nuts and Hitler that the ADL finally had to weigh in.

It should be noted that the small num­ber of per­sonal firearms in the hands of the small num­ber of Germany’s Jews (about 214,000) remain­ing in Ger­many in 1938 could in no way have stopped the total­i­tar­ian power of the Nazi Ger­man state. When they had weapons, Jews could sym­bol­i­cally resist, as they did in the 1943 War­saw Upris­ing and else­where, but could not stop the Nazi geno­cide machine. Gun con­trol did not cause the Holo­caust; Nazism and anti-Semitism did.

As I wrote the other day, what’s particularly troubling with the NRA’s, and far too many Republicans’, obsession with Hitler is that what their criticism really suggests is that they think America herself is the enemy:

This is, at its core, the gun nuts’ central tenet. Not that governments generically shouldn’t be trusted. But thatour government in particular is evil and must be stopped at all costs. It’s philosophical terrorism that far too often leads to the real thing, whether it’s a shot-up movie theater by a guy dressed like Rambo, or a blown up federal building. It far too often comes down to the individual in question thinking they are the last defense against tyranny. The problem we face as a nation is that the men who control today’s Republican party neither trust, nor particularly like, most of America, or Americans. If you truly see a commie and a Nazi around every corner, then you’re obviously not very thrilled with where you live. The Republicans don’t have a problem with Obama, they have a problem with America.

The gun nuts’ hatred of America is starting to cause them problems. Thus the reason the NRA’s other loony head, Wayne LaPierre, recently went to pains to explain that gun nuts aren’t collecting guns to protect themselves against the government, they’re supposedly now collecting guns to stop the coming zombie apocalypse.

Let me quote at length from my previous post about this, starting with a recent quote from LaPierre:

“Responsible Americans realize that the world as we know it has changed. We, the American people, clearly see the daunting forces we will undoubtedly face: terrorists, crime, drug gangs, the possibility of Euro-style debt riots, civil unrest or natural disaster.”Gun owners are not buying firearms because they anticipate a confrontation with the government. Rather, we anticipate confrontations where the government isn’t there—or simply doesn’t show up in time.” Did you catch that? Someone is awfully paranoid about the growing public perception that gun nuts simply want their guns so they can overthrow the government. And despite the NRA’s claims to the contrary, scratch a gun nut and the first, or at most second, thing he’ll tell you is that he needs his guns to stop government tyranny. He won’t tell you it’s about stopping the zombie apocalypse, he’ll tell you that it’s the only way to stop America from becoming Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. And I got news for you, he’s not talking about Nazi Germany’s hurricane response. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre in a book he wrote, discussing the potentially imminent mass slaughter of gun owners by the government (not by a hurricane or by looters). Via Media Matters: In his book, America Disarmed: Inside the U.N. & Obama’s Scheme to Destroy the Second Amendment, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre likened the United Nations Small Arms and Light Weapons Destruction Day, held on July 9, 2001, to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels’ order that books authored by Jews be publicly burned. LaPierre then suggested that the burning of guns could “help set the stage for mass executions of gun owners” just as Goebbels’ order precipitated the mass killing of Jews. July 9 was not the first time bonfires were lit to destroy resistance to the power of the government. Nazi “Germany’s Josef Goebbels ordered all Jewish books to be burned in public in May 10, 1933. University towns were centers of Jewish Books Destruction Day.” As the Völkischer Beobachter (Populist Observer) reported on May 12, 1933, “The German student body of the Berlin universities assembled yesterday for a torchlight procession on Hegel Platz. They formed up, accompanied by a truckload of 25,000 books and writings harmful to the people. The procession ended at Opera Platz where as a symbolic act, these un-German writings were set aflame on a pile of logs.” The burning of Jewish and un-German books was followed within a few years by the burning of Jews and other supposedly un-German people. Jewish Books Destruction Day helped change popular consciousness so as to pave the way for genocide. Likewise paving the way for genocide was the systematic disarmament of Jews and all other opposition elements, in Nazi German itself and in conquered territories. How long until a U.N.-declared official day of hate is celebrated with governments actually killing people? [America Disarmed: Inside the U.N. and Obama’s Scheme to Destroy the Second Amendment, Pages 106-107] LaPierre concluded by asking, “Will the mass burning of firearms help set the stage for mass executions of gun owners?” [Page 108] Right. Gun nuts aren’t stockpiling weapons in preparation for a violent confrontation with the US government. I don’t know where we got that idea? Oh that’s right, from James Yeager, the CEO of Tactical Response, a Tennessee company that specializes in weapons and tactical training, who posted a video on Facebook and YouTube the other month, detailing what he’ll do if President Obama issues any executive orders on gun control: “I”m not f’g putting up with this… if it goes one inch further, I’m gonna start killing people.”

So, is the problem riots, and gangs, and terrorism and hurricanes — or is it the government?

The NRA keeps invoking Hitler because they’re worried about a government tyrant, an American government tyrant. Hitler had nothing to do with gangs and hurricanes, but he had a lot to do with a people who didn’t (or were unable) to stand up to their own government.

America’s gun nuts keep talking about Hitler because they’re arming themselves for an expected battle with the American government. And it’s the best justification yet to simply take away all of their weapons and be done with it.