NRA Represents Gun Makers/Sellers -- Not Gun Owners

The National Rifle Association (NRA) likes to proudly claim that they represent the wishes of America's millions of gun owners. Is that really true? Why then do they oppose reasonable restrictions on gun sales that are wanted, not only by the general public, but by the huge majority of gun owners?

We know that 90% of the general public, and around 85% of American gun owners (and nearly as high a percentage of NRA members want to see background checks required of all people trying to buy a gun -- including those who are trying to buy that gun from a private individual. Why then, does the NRA so rabidly oppose a law requiring background checks? Could it be that they don't represent gun owners at all -- but only gun makers and sellers?

The charts above (from Mother Jones) show something that most Americans don't realize. The NRA gets a lot of its funding from gun makers/sellers -- and a lot of those gun companies are not even located in this country. These companies shipped over 3.9 million guns to the United States in 2009 (16 times more guns than the U.S. exported). The lack of gun restrictions in this country make us a great market for these foreign gun companies (who have much stricter regulations on guns in their own countries). They don't want to see the laws tightened in the U.S., because that would hurt sales of their guns (and they could care less how many deaths are caused by our lax laws).

The NRA may trumpet that they support gun owners in America, but what they really support are the gun companies. They don't want to lose the funding provided by these gun companies, so they oppose any new gun law at all -- regardless of what the American people (or gun owners in the U.S.) want to see done.