Here’s some news from the land of really sick irony. On May 4, the NRA will hold it’s annual “leadership forum” in Dallas. The speakers list for the event promises the standard mouth-foaming of the NRA’s own Wayne LaPierre. It will bring the reqisite irrational screeds in the form of the latest model Anne Coulter, Tomi Lauren. And it will bring a slate of political speakers.
Those speakers include North Carolina Representative Richard Hudson, who Americans can thank for a bill that would let people carry concealed weapons in any state, no matter what the state laws say. A bill that Hudson brags is “the greatest gun rights boost since ratification of Second Amendment in 1791.”
It includes Ted Cruz. Who is … Ted Cruz.
It includes Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who is best known for blocking enforcement of background checks in Nevada. A little legal finagling that has endeared Laxalt to the NRA, though maybe not to the 527 people in Las Vegas who wish he’d taken his task a little more seriously.
And the list of featured speakers includes one more big Republican name — Florida Governor Rick Scott.
Yes, while Rick Scott has been out there on the thoughts and prayers circuit this week, his reptilian smile has also been gracing the literature handed out to promote the NRA conference. And why not? Scott was also a featured speaker at the 2017 event, where he praised the NRA in saying that “no one had done more” to elect Donald Trump. His 2017 speech called for replacing any justice on the Supreme Court who didn’t “believe in the Second Amendment” so that there was a “9-0” vote in favor of more guns, and for a larger Republican majority in the Senate so that the NRA didn’t have to worry about the “least conservative” Republicans when it came to passing more laws they liked.
He spent a lot of time asserting that the phrase “shall not infringe” meant that no law of any sort could be passed limiting firearms. Somehow the phrase, “ a well regulated Militia,” did not come up. I’m sure the parents and students of his state would be fascinated by Scott’s speech declaring that nothing, but nothing, can stand between a shooter and his gun.
And by the way, Rick Scott, if you’re going to spend half your speech talking about this “three word phrase” and how critical it is, you might want to note that “shall not infringe” isn’t in there, It’s four words — “shall not be infringed.” Picky, I know. But you’d think if you were going to repeat something fifty times, you would at least double-check the source.
Screwing it up the way Scott did makes it sounds as if he doesn’t really care about the Second Amendment at all — just about the money the NRA pays him. It makes him sound like a money-grubbing hypocrite willing to go down on his knees in front of the people who are assiting in the murder of the children of his state.
But hey, he’ll keep giving those thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers.
Come on inside, let’s read pundits.