Ask A Genius 1137: Kamala Gets an F From the NRA
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/10/31
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: My question: Kamala Harris received an F from the NRA. What does that mean to you?
Rick Rosner: Well, the NRA has been established as a gun rights advocacy group. It used to be described as a gun education and safety organization. I’m not sure if that’s 100% what it was a hundred years ago, in the same way that some born-again Christians tell stories about how they were the worst sinners before finding Jesus.
There’s a certain type— when I was in college, there was this guy from the Church of Christ who would go on about what a terrible sinner he was, but he was only 20 years old. He wasn’t old enough to drink, and he’d wear tight disco pants and say things , “I want to look good for Jesus.” He had gerbils named after long biblical figures, and we all knew he wasn’t the bad boy he pretended to be. It was performative. So, the NRA might be a bit that—people say it was pure and all about gun safety a hundred years ago, but I’m not sure it was ever quite as wholesome as people claim.
Jacobsen: So, what’s the NRA now?
Rosner: Now it’s completely corrupt. Wayne LaPierre ran the NRA for over 20 years and was found to have embezzled millions. It’s also been revealed that Russia funnelled millions of dollars to the NRA to support its operations. The NRA, in its current form, is more of a chaos agent, working to promote gun sales, with a lot of its funding coming from gun manufacturers.
Jacobsen: And that F grade for Harris?
Rosner: The F grade means the NRA sees Harris as a threat to their goals. They don’t give low grades to people who support gun control—they give them to people who oppose the gun industry’s interests. That’s what the NRA is all about now, pushing guns like the AR-15, which is based on military rifles like the M16, designed for Vietnam, and the AK-47, developed by the Soviet Union. These were weapons of war capable of fully automatic fire. The civilian versions, the AR-15, are semi-automatic—you have to pull the trigger for each shot—but they were originally built for combat.
Anyway, these were military weapons. There were zero of them in civilian hands until the late ’60s, maybe when some people smuggled them out after their military service. You were supposed to turn them in when you left the army, but I’m sure some folks thought they were cool and figured out how to keep or acquire them later. Since 1970, we’ve gone from zero semi-automatic rifles in civilian hands to around 15 million of them in the U.S. today.
And these are highly effective killing machines. Still, most gun deaths in the U.S. are, first, suicides, and second, handgun deaths— regular pistols. But when it comes to mass shootings, it’s these semi-automatic rifles that are most commonly used. The NRA’s magazine, advertising, and politics have helped to sell these guns.
And they run anywhere from $600 to $3,000, making them a pretty big-ticket item in the world of firearms. They sell nearly a million of them each year in the U.S. alone. Suppose you’re a small gun manufacturer selling. In that case, say, 150,000 rifles a year at $3,000 apiece, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. So there’s plenty of money for these companies to donate to the NRA, which in turn gives political donations to a bunch of politicians.
And the NRA takes a cut for themselves. They’re completely corrupt. They’re not even the most extreme when it comes to opposing gun control—there are smaller organizations that are crazier—but they don’t have the pull that the NRA has. The NRA was found to be corrupt, and they had to move their headquarters out of New York because they were being prosecuted there. They may have even declared bankruptcy in New York. But they’re bad guys, plain and simple.
They stand in the way of common-sense solutions, biometric trigger locks. We have the technology now to sell guns with a trigger lock that only responds to your fingerprint or a signal from your phone, making the gun safe and accessible only to the owner. It’s great for safety, but nobody is selling these guns. One company tried, and the NRA almost drove them out of business, accusing them of infringing on people’s freedoms.
But it’s not infringing on freedom—offering a safety option. The argument against gun locks and gun safes is the time it takes to access the weapon if your house is under siege. People buy into this fear fantasy that someone is going to storm their home. However, with a biometric gun lock, the gun could be as accessible as any other without needing to be stored in a safe. You can still use it instantly.
But that technology isn’t being used widely. I assume some small companies are selling them aftermarket. Still, the NRA has blocked any major gun manufacturer from offering this option, which is ridiculous. There are about 100 gun deaths a day in the U.S., on average. The U.S. has ten times the murder rate of Spain. So yes, the NRA is a bunch of self-serving, corrupt individuals who exist for their enrichment.
Rosner: What do you think of the NRA?
Jacobsen: If regulation reduces deaths, then regulate. But we’re not even talking about regulation here. We’re talking about giving people the option to lock up their guns while keeping them fully usable in a split second if needed.
Rosner: Look up Maria Butina—she was a Russian spy. A honeypot. She came over to the U.S. pretending to be all about improving U.S.-Russia relations, but she was infiltrating.
Jacobsen: Maria Butina hung out with a ton of Republican legislators and NRA people. She’s super young—28 or so—and pretty. I wouldn’t be surprised if she slept with some of those gross old Republican guys because that was part of her job.
Rosner: Then she hauled back to Russia. I’m not sure if she went to prison in the U.S., but if she did, it wasn’t for long. Now, she’s in the Russian parliament and hailed as a fatherland hero.
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