For the past four years, the National Rifle Association has fomented panic among the pistol-packing, assault rifle-collecting gun nuts that President Obama is going to take away their Second Amendment rights. Of course, this fear has about as much veracity as the claims that President Obama is a foreign-born, un-American, freedom-hating Muslim. But wingnuts and the NRA have never let the truth get in the way of a good fear-baiting story.
The truth is that Obama has never publicly stated a position on gun ownership.
Nevertheless, the NRA-fueled concerns persist, creating a huge windfall for the gun industry. Domestic gun sales have soared. And with each new mass killing, the sales spike higher, putting even more guns in the hands of the paranoid, the bullies, the cowards and the mentally-disturbed. According to Sturm, Ruger & Co. President and CEO Mike Fifer, “It took us nearly all of 2011 to build 1 million firearms, but in 2012 we accomplished it on August 15th.
The NRA rumors and racist lies about Obama have even given birth to a new industry that of prepping. Demand from hate-mongering wingnuts, domestic terrorist groups and the tinfoil hat crowd has led to thousands of Americans building safe houses and stocking them with enough food to last for years and enough weapons to launch World War III.
Of course, it can’t all be credited to the irrational hatred of our first black president.
Some preppers believe in the Mayan 2012 prophecy. Some believe the Teapublican lies that liberals have led our nation to the precipice. Others are worried about the black-shirted New World Order taking away our freedoms. Even more are worried about the growing Latino, African-American and immigrant populations which will relegate angry old white people to minority status.
Let freedom ratta-tat-tat-tat er, ring.