CIN

Margaret Carlson is a Bloomberg View columnist.

Second Amendment absolutists complain that gun-control advocates are an out-of-touch elite seeking to destroy the way of life of real men who pack heat, pass weapons on to their sons and are a rampart against government tyranny. It’s dangerous out there.

At the National Rifle Association’s convention in Indianapolis recently, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre warned his members that their lifestyle was under assault.

“I have never seen it on edge the way it is now,” he said. “If it’s going to be saved, it’s in our hands. It’s in your hands.”

There’s no better venue than this gathering to experience the pain and joy of gun owners.

To those not steeped in guns, the exhibition hall with weapons arrayed as far as the eye can see is a frightening display.

It is also a place where the young and female are pursued. Kids are encouraged to fondle semi-automatics and take virtual target practice.

Women have their own events, including one that features the latest fashions for heat-packing ladies. You don’t want your Glock to add 10 pounds.

As you watch the lobbying group at play, you swing between thinking its members own the world because the $250 million budget allows the NRA to put on a Las Vegas-worthy show, and the feeling that Big Government is about to burst in and confiscate their guns.

Triumphalism punctuated by doomsday scenarios keeps the membership on its toes.

The NRA’s 4 million members don’t seem to feel a corresponding obligation to understand the 90 percent of Americans who say in polls they would like to see universal background checks for gun buyers.

“It’s a cultural thing,” Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia told me. He said his “A” rating from the NRA helped the background check legislation he introduced last year with Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania get as far as it did.

Manchin is still using that crossover cred to try to find the five Senate allies he needs to get the bill up for a vote again. He can’t explain to me those gun owners who will listen only to Ted Nugent (who gave a speech), or those who cheer stand-your-ground laws (there was a session on how not to have any post-traumatic stress should you shoot someone), or those who applaud the flip-flop of the Rev. Franklin Graham. Last year, after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Graham came out in favor of universal background checks. He quickly abjured the heresy, and has returned to the fold with honor, giving the keynote address Sunday. His current positionis that “God has already done a universal background check on all of us.”

Politicians were well represented at the convention. Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Gov. Sarah Palin, among others, came to pay homage. They can’t envision the day when the 90 percent might defeat them, only of past elections when single-issue voters stirred up by the NRA could defeat them.

For the NRA, the cultural divide is between real Americans (its members) and those other Americans who would leave you and your family defenseless. ■