Right to Carry

There's a lot of jobs I'd want.

A lot.

I mean, I'd be perfectly happy switching up careers - oh, I don' t know - say, every other week? Maybe start off November as an archaeologist, rotate mid-month to film directing, and finish off the year as a marine biologist...or a singer-songwriter, tough call.

I can, however, tell you one job I would NOT want - Director of the NRA Grassroots Division. Glen Caroline, the towering bald man with surprisingly gentle eyes who did a little presentation for our class today, has to deal with more opposition in a 10-minute time span than I have had to in my entire life (and quite honestly, will probably ever have to).

Glen Caroline   (I forgot to take a picture - oops - but I thought you'd like a visual anyhow - so this is actually from Hupy and Abraham's website)

Among his extensive list of gun-related credentials lies his responsibility to represent the NRA in debates, so after his PowerPoint presentation of carefully selected statistics he had to face questions from our skeptical (to put it nicely) class of journalist-hopefuls - who, I might add, were not at all intimidated Mr. Caroline's surefire competency with a range of deadly firearms.

The NRA was created in 1871 and is the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S., and now, the most effective lobbying organization. Mr. Caroline's main point was that there are two separate goals when it comes gun use, 1.) Reduce gun crime & 2.) Reduce gun accidents. Distinguishing between these two types of problems is essential, he said, and something that "opponents don't do."

Gun control laws fail at reducing crime, he continued, because law abiding citizens aren't the ones abusing their rights - and criminals aren't going to adhere to any laws ("they're not going to stop to register their gun with the state on their way to rob a bank"). Accident-wise, education, not gun-control, is his proposed solution (Eddie Eagle).

Eddie Eagle (pic from NRA's site)

Our class basically spent the time poking holes in his logic and statistical evidence, which was shady to say the least. But from what I've heard, the opposition's statistics were picked and chosen with just the same manipulative intentions.

Interestingly, Mr. Caroline stated very bluntly that his primary motivation is FREEDOM. We are a rare nation, he said, something he realized after seeing terrible abuses in other countries - e.g. Tieneman Square - and the fact that we have these constitutional freedoms is why he is an NRA advocate. It is not the tool, but the underlying meaning, he said, that matters.

I thought it was a very insightful moment; this big intimidating figure suddenly becoming all righteous and founding-father like.

I don't know what I think about gun-control, but if nothing else, I'm at least relatively impressed with the fact that a man has decided to devote his entire life to one cause - and nothing else.

For someone who wants to change careers twice a month, the thought of a life consumed by one topic alone is, frankly, unfathomable.