THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 11, 1995 TAG: 9507110002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: ANOTHER VIEW
SOURCE: By WILLIAM A. BROBST
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
I have been following closely the activities of the NRA over the past few years. Its change of direction and focus from guns and hunting to political radicalism distresses me.
I am a life member of the NRA and have been for nearly 40 years. I am a former national open pistol champion and won many all-Navy and fleet championships with both rifle and pistol. I was the first naval reservist and the first naval officer to win both the Distinguished Rifleman and the Distinguished Pistol Shot medals. For years, I was an active NRA-competition referee.
For many years in the 1960s, I was the coordinator of the U.S. Naval Reserve Small Arms Marksmanship Program. I enjoyed many years teaching others about firearms safety and marksmanship as a NRA-certified instructor.
I supported the NRA in its efforts to further firearms safety, hunter safety and marksmanship. I am now finding it difficult to do so because of the distraction of the growing militancy of the NRA.
Instead of trying to corral some of the anti-government dissidents within the NRA ranks and give them cause to take a more positive and constructive approach to national firearms management and utilization, the NRA has chosen to encourage societal misfits to become even more paranoid and active in anti-governmental, militant and separatist activities and to arm themselves to be ready for some kind of insurrection against the government. The NRA has chosen to encourage intolerance of anyone who does not share the new principles of the NRA. That is bigotry of the highest order.
I have yet to see any indication that any of the so-called state civilian militias are well-regulated, yet the NRA encourages them to scream for their Second Amendment rights (as you and they interpret them) to collect and use any kind of arsenal they care to surround themselves with. I regret that it has chosen to coddle such people in order to build its own power base.
When I joined the Navy, I swore to defend my country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I see these self-serving ``patriots'' not as patriots but as enemies of the United States. While I do not agree with all of the policies of the United States government, including the Department of Justice and its BATAF, I prefer to work within the system to make improvements. All of my congressional representatives - Jones, Clayton, Helms, Faircloth - know me well because of my frequent correspondence with them. That's the American way. Stirring up lunatics by encouraging them to prepare for civil war is not the American way.
I am an American patriot. I continue to support the Constitution's provision of the right to own firearms, but I can no longer support the NRA's position of radicalism in that regard. I can see no justification for the NRA's insistence that we are all entitled by the Constitution to keep and bear assault weapons of awesome firepower which have no credible value as target or hunting weapons. Unless, of course, the targets are masses of people. But that's preaching violent insurrection, if only by implication, and I find that reprehensible.
The framers of the 1971 Second Amendment did not foresee the advances in weaponry we have today. They did not know that someday we would have, as we do now, a large, well-regulated, well-trained and well-supplied federal military force for the defense of the free state. They did not know that someday we would have state National Guard and naval militia units, but perhaps that's the sort of thing they had in mind.
To me, the National Guard represents a well-regulated militia; the various self-appointed, rag-tag, uncontrolled and heavily armed local civilian ``patriot'' militias do not qualify in that regard, so the Second Amendment does not apply to them. I see them as the very enemy the Second Amendment was designed to protect us against. The NRA chooses to see it differently, from its own power-hungry viewpoint. It has created an atmosphere of paranoia, passion and power-grabbing which only encourages the lunatic fringe to become bold enough to take terrorist action in the belief that such actions are in the best interests of our nation. Balderdash! Such individual expression of ``freedom'' is really anarchy.
And, yes, I read the NRA's full-page ad in USA Today published in response to former President George Bush's letter of resignation from the NRA. It was a self-serving, defensive, patronizing sermon that convinced me that President Bush was right.
I join President Bush in taking the NRA to task for its extremist leanings. I join him in withdrawing my support of its current political activism. I join him in resigning my lifetime membership in the National Rifle Association. MEMO: Mr. Brobst, a retired naval reserve commander, resides in Kitty Hawk,
N.C.
by CNB