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by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 04/22/2016, 8:20pm PDT |
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A few weeks ago I became a member of the National Rifle Association for reasons which are a little too complicated to explain now (and I might do so later), but basically the offer was so much better than their usual membership offers that it was worth taking.
So now I get mail from them, probably mostly fundraising. I usually don't read the extra junk mail they send beyond the initial one with my membership card, "good ol' boy NRA baseball cap perfect for a redneck to wear backward" and the "NRA Eagle" belt buckle to wear in place of the old Confederate Flag buckle that is now too politically incorrect to be worn by your average Southern Bigot. (Unless he is currently exercising his 2nd Amendment right and is carrying against someone else who might be willing to use force to say they disagree with the redneck's opinion about displaying the Battle Flag.)
The latest one was a letter basically screaming about how if Hillary becomes President, she's going to do her best to implement Australia-style Gun Control (where the legislature just up and made almost all gun ownership illegal, then instituted a buy-back program and bought all the guns it ordered turned in, then scrapped them, similar to Cash For Clunkers although nobody had to force people to turn in old automobiles that had reached the Eurotrash "piece of shit" stage). Their letter was even saying it was likely she'd want to put someone in the spot of the late Justice Scalia[1] with someone with an extreme anti-gun philosophy and push to overturn the Heller and McDonald cases[2]..
It may not be 100% fear mongering, because - if true, and I strongly suspect it is - it has quotes from her saying that she would want to see an Australia-style gun control system instituted in the U.S. But Hillary is, if nothing else, an extremely skilled politician / chameleon who changes her opinions to fit the public zeitgeist, and a gun bad would be very unpopular, especially in some of the Western and Mid-Western States that are basically one big riot away from having an insurrection and trying to secede from the United States, just like the South tried circa 150 years ago. (For an idea of how this could happen now, see Ernest Callenbach's 1970s book Ecotopia and the prequel, where the Pacific Northwest successfully secedes from the U.S. because of environmental issues.)
I find this sort of scenario unlikely - at least in the foreseeable future, that is, the next two years or so - and I saw it as fear mongering for donations. But they do send a prepaid envelope:

So anyway, to help them out, I included my 2c - literally - along with the reply coupon and mailed it to them in the above envelope, which will cost them 49c plus the BRM fee of at least 6c. Maybe that will encourage them not to send me more junk mail.
And if you feel you want to contribute to the NRA's attempt to prevent Hillary from moving back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW - or just send the NRA a comment - well, there's their address and you even have the permit number if you want to use your printer to create a postage due letter and mail them for free,
A couple of things, though. One thing I've noticed is that for 9-digit Zip Codes, the 4-digit extension for post office boxes is almost always the same as the post office box number, or the box number is six digits and the first two digits are the same as the last two digits of the 5 digit Zip code, e.g. an address of Po Box 1234, Beverly Hills CA, 90210, would either have 90210-1234, or the box address would have been P O Box 101234, Beverly Hills CA, 90210-1234.
So I went up on the USPS zip code look up page, and guess what, the 4-digit extension zip code is wrong (25438-9892), it should be the same as the P O Box number (25438-5200), as I expected. Additionally, the actual city is Ranson, WV; on the lookup city by zip code page, for Zip Code 25438, it says to use Ranson, WV and to avoid delays. DO NOT use FORRESTER CENTER, WV which as you can see, is exactly what their envelope is doing. (I do note that it's interesting their /BRM permit (Freepost number, for those of you from the UK) is issued out of Ranson.)
So they're not only fear mongering, they're stupid!
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[1] The letter doesn't say it, but since the near-deadlocked current Congress with a Republican majority will never approve any Supreme Court nominee Obama could make, and basically want to run the clock out in hopes a Republican would become president. Interestingly, the letter does say that President Hillary Clinton might nominate Barack Obama as an associate justice, which hasn't happened in over a hundred years, since President Taft's successor nominated him as Chief Justice. [2] The two cases are Heller v. District of Columbia which clarified the Second Amendment to mean - as it does in every other place it's used in the Constitution - thst the term "the right of the people" means that the Second Amendment refers to a right of individuals, not a right of the states, and a blanket ban against owning weapons by the District of Columbia - a branch of the Federal Government - is unconstitutional. The subsequent case, McDonald v. City of Chicago held that the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause makes the 2nd Amendmwent applicable to the states, meaning the states can't have sweeping bans on private ownership of arms either. |
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