NRA

Glenn Beck broadcast his television broadcast last from Houston, TX where is he in town to speak at the annual NRA convention. Prior to telling his audience that the shooting that occurred earlier that today at the Houston airport was a false flag "set-up" tied to the "uber left," Beck was extolling the virtues of the NRA and the organization's dedication to gun safety.

In making the point, Beck pointed to a table full of historical weapons he had gotten from the NRA museum that he is going to be using in his speech tomorrow and recounted how, all day long, NRA staff had been reminding him how to safely pick up and hold a firearm, all of which Beck said he already knows because he took a NRA safety course.

In fact, the NRA is so concerned about safety that staffers even taped a large "T" on the wall of the auditorium to mark the spot at which all of the guns lying on the table were pointed, signaling that nobody should ever be standing in that area.

But when Beck went to point it out, he first had to ask one of his staff members to move ... because she was standing right in front of it:

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• Jeremy Hooper: American Family Association goes after Amazon, Microsoft.
• John Cook @ Gawker: Bill O’Reilly’s Divorce Is So Ugly, God Got Involved.

By now everyone has seen NRA head Wayne LaPierre declare that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” while calling for armed guards in every American school. The NRA’s proposed solution to gun violence can be boiled down to even more guns, and the group wants concealed weapons in all public spaces – including churches, schools, bars and airports.

If there’s one place that I would expect to be able to take a concealed gun, it’s to a gun show. That’s why I was struck by the advice doled out by the NRA’s National Firearms Museum on “How to be a Gun Collector.” In the article, authored by NRA museum director Jim Supica, would-be gun collectors are directed to “practice basic gun safety” at gun shows.

Supica starts off with the most basic rule of gun safety, warning against allowing “the muzzle of a gun you're handling to point at other folks.” But then he stumbles badly off-message (from the NRA party line) with some commonsense advice that, were President Obama to say it, would hasten comparisons to Mao and Hitler.

The NRA’s Supica directs gun collectors to “keep your guns tied inoperable” (like this) when attending a gun show, noting that this is a “requirement at the better shows.” And he isn't done.

Supica then directs gun collectors to “never bring a loaded gun into a show,” even if it’s a “legal concealed carry gun.” Furthermore, collectors should never “test chamber a round in a show.” Of course, your typical armed guard or concealed carry enthusiast already has a round in the chamber, but never mind that.

Supica observes that “negligent discharges are very rare at shows.” However, when they do happen they typically involve “a concealed carry gun that was brought in loaded.”

You might be wondering why this namby-pamby Supica character hates the Second Amendment so much or whether the NRA knows it has a gun-hating pinko running its museum. But in their defense, Supica’s article bears this disclaimer: “Opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of NRA or the National Firearms Museum.” Well, that’s a relief. Supica may be an NRA employee and run their museum, but at least his commonsense, life-saving advice can’t be pinned on the NRA.

But maybe Supica isn’t such an outlier. As Scott Keyes reported in January, gun shows typically ban attendees from carrying loaded guns. Yet the NRA categorically supports efforts to expand concealed carry to “previously prohibited places.”

The takeaway, then, is that guns should be unloaded, tied inoperable and held out in the open at gun shows. But if you’re at a church, school, bar or shopping mall, you should feel free to conceal and carry a loaded gun with a bullet in the chamber. And that is how you practice basic gun safety.

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• Andrew Kaczynski @ BuzzFeed: How The NRA Twitter Handles A Mass Shooting: Silence.

Last night, the Discovery Channel ran a one-hour special on guns that stars a fanatic who threatened to kill President Obama and other officials and was investigated by the Secret Service in April. In 2007, the Discovery Channel’s new star wielded two machine guns while yelling, “Obama, he's a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Then, raising up one the guns, he said, “Hey Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.”