The latest cover story from the National Rifle Association magazine America's 1st Freedom pushes a baseless conspiracy that a proposed United Nations treaty to prevent the diversion of weapons to human rights abusers will be used by "the minions of tyrannical and thieving governments" to achieve "total disarmament of freedom-loving people all over the world." In reality, the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) seeks to address the fact that as many as 500,000 people are killed in armed violence each year worldwide by implementing -- on an international scale -- arms trade standards that are already used in the United States.

The National Rifle Association is a scam. Pure and simple. There's no larger message there, there's no nuance you need to parse out, nothing: They exist solely to promote the views and goals of the gun manufacturers themselves, and that means they exist solely to sell guns. And if that means blocking action meant to restrict international black market access of guns to drug cartels, the sex slavery industry, child armies, enablers of genocide and good old fashioned murdering dictators, then you can bet your ass they will have a breathless story in their official magazine about how those efforts at trying to keep guns out of the hands of drug cartels, child armies, genocide-enablers and all the rest is just a secret plot against you, damn every bit of logic and evidence to the contrary, and gun manufacturers need to be able to have their products sold freely on the black market to those worst-of-the-worst groups because freedom.It's a scam. The author of the article himself knows full well that the premise of the U.N. coming to take your guns is hogwash, and has to jump through a great many hoops to make it sound like something that even could possibly happen someday because of slippery slopes, Obama-appointed judges and the lonely isolation of other countries just plain not having as many guns as we do (which is a bad thing, to the NRA. Just wanted to make that clear). The proposed treaty in question is meant to help codify some minimal international standards for curtailing black market weapon sales to organized crime, to terrorists, and to other violent groups. As with the recently scuttled U.N. treaty on countries maybe not treating disabled people like crap, it's largely based on existing United States policies in the first place, meaning Joe and Jane Six-Shooter don't have one damn thing to worry about unless they've got a side business selling black market guns to child sex traffickers or the like.

Like every single other position taken in recent memory by the NRA, however, the NRA comes down quite happily on the side of selling more guns, all guns, all the time, with no possible tightening of international standards ever because that would be a slippery slope to something-something indoctrination camps or what-the-fuck-ever—even when, in this case, if it means siding against efforts explicitly aimed at not selling guns to terrorist groups, drug cartels and roving genocidal gangs. Oh, and then you'll get a new op-ed written by the same NRA voices on how those same armed-to-the-teeth drug cartels and roving genocidal gangs are coming to your neighborhood anytime now, so you need to buy better guns as well. Assault rifles at minimum. You know—to defend yourself, you hapless sucker, you.

There's only one way to interpret any of it, and that is that the NRA exists only as a shell for the small arms industry to promote and sell as much of their product as possible, without regulation, and to whatever groups of crooks and criminals wants to pay good cash money for them. When you can't even agree that maybe the world shouldn't be so easily selling guns to goddamn child armies, you are a soulless fucker who really ought to be dropped off on the Somali coastline and left to fend for your goddamn self without the rest of us bothering to interfere anymore.

Rant over. And at this point, everyone knows full well how unhinged, dishonest, and outright corrupt the NRA is, so anyone who gives them so much as a wayward fleck of spit by way of respect should be considered just as corrupt as they are. Once you've come out against even weak attempts to not sell guns to the purveyors of genocide, you are done.

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