Worst. Hero. Ever.

There is a hero on the streets of America. A hero we’ve been promised will rise to the occasion, who is our best defense against psychopaths armed with assault rifles and body armor. The vigilant armed citizen, let’s call him NRA man.

Now I don’t know where NRA man is whenever he is needed, only that he is never there. Maybe he’s out in the woods, stumbling around buzzed on cheap beer and stalking Bambi’s mother. Maybe he’s standing in line at a gun show waiting to buy high capacity clips for his semi-automatic rifle. Maybe he’s busy gunning down unarmed kids in Florida, because they certainly make easier targets then his fellow well-armed citizens. But whatever he’s doing he’s certainly not fulfilling the NRA’s promise that well-armed citizens make the rest of us safer.

The biggest problem with NRA man is not that he wants to be a responsible gun owner, it’s that he wants to be a privileged gun owner. Any attempt to regulate his constitutional right to own a gun is somehow an affront to his liberty. He doesn’t just oppose restrictive gun control; he opposes every little bit of gun regulation that might slightly inconvenience him. He doesn’t want to wait 10 or 20 days to allow for more thorough background checks, he needs his goddamned gun today. He doesn’t want to just own a gun or hunting rifle, he needs to have a military grade assault rifle. To NRA man the imposition of any regulation that stands between him and the purchase of his gun is a greater tragedy than the death of 20 children.

Image by mariopiperni.com

While NRA man rarely plays the hero, his paranoia and sense of privilege enables the arming of psychopaths. His obsessive fetishizing of guns and demand for easy access has enabled evil people to be more destructive than they ever could have been on their own. His sad cries that “evil will always find a way,” hardly absolves him of the responsibility he bears for the death of so many. And maybe the time has come to not only create some kind of gun regulation that will at least slow down, if not stop, the next massacre, but to hold NRA man, or at least the organization that represents him, responsible for their false promises.

Late in the last century, when groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center wished to break the power of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups, they employed a strategy of civil litigation, suing the Klan for the hate rhetoric that led their members or associates to assault or murder people. Maybe the families of mass shooting victims should employ a similar strategy, suing the NRA for the lobbying activities that have blocked reasonable gun legislation, or for the failure of that oft-repeated promise that well-armed citizens would protect us all. These promises have proven to be nothing more than false advertising. It is not merely a case of reckless free speech that would be protected from legal action, but this declaration has been offered as a warranty, one that has remained unfulfilled. And for that the NRA should be penalized. I’m thinking a $20 billion lawsuit is a good place to start.