Risk Profession

They call them “risk professions,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s a job that by its nature tends to carry a higher than normal risk of injury or death just in the normal performance of your job. being a soldier is certainly one of them. So is being a cop, a firefighter, or working the high iron in construction. It takes a special breed.

It takes a special breed to love them too. You have to have a special kind of intestinal fortitude and inner strength to walk them to the door, kiss them goodbye, and then watch the get into the car and back out of the driveway, wondering all the time whether you’re actually going to see them walk back in the door 10 hours from now.

But now, thanks to the machinations of the NRA, and its Satan spawn head honcho, Wayne LaDerriere, we all get to experience the dread of loving someone in a “risk profession,” whether we want them to be in one or not. Now you too can carry the uncertainty of watching your third grade teacher spouse walk out the door, and then dread having the news on in the background for fear of hearing the “breaking news” tone on the television. Screw college admissions exams, the next craze for affluent parents is going to hiring muscle packing heat to sit next to their kids in the classroom. And companies are going to have to start making kevlar vests and helmets a standard part of their work uniforms.

Back in the late 1980’s, Camel introduced their official mascot, “Joe Camel,” a hip camel with a cigarette ever present hanging from his lower camel lip, and cigarette manufacturers started putting green stamp “coupons,” with point values on them in their packs and cartons, allowing you to get merchandise from a catalog, oddly enough stocked with merchandise attractive to teens. The government finally stepped in and required the tobacco companies to stop specifically trying to market their addictive product to minors. Yet the same government has failed to stop gun manufacturers from marketing specifically to the mentally insecure. One weapon style actually has the catch phrase “Reclaim your manhood” at the top of their ad. What comes next, “Girls don’t like your little dick? Wait til they see this boom stick!”?

The entire premise of the NRA is the founding principle that you are free to purchase, possess, and carry your instrument of death with you anywhere, at any tie. GOP politicians, desperate for NRA campaign cash, are passing “open carry” laws, designed to turn every town into Dodge City, circa 1850. But you can’t carry your rod into the annual NRA convention, regardless of whether the President is speaking or not. And here’s a little remembered fact. Back in the 1970’s, the NRA was headquartered in Washington Dc. But following two separate incidents of NRA employees being shot in their parking garage, the NRA decided to flee the city they had helped to arm, and move across the state line to Virginia instead.

And now the news is that the NRA may be imploding, due to the normal reasons, greed, corruption, and incompetence. The NRA has a cash shortage, since many of the armament dealers they cower before are filing bankruptcy, and not able to pay their corporate sponsorships. Maria Buttina has put them under a microscope for possible illegal foreign money being laundered into political donations. And a pissing contest between LaDerriere and Lollie North has shown possible mismanagement of funds. Internal fighting has erupted, and everybody is busy investigating everybody else.

I say “Good on ya, mate!” The NRA has turned into nothing more than a giant can of political whitewash for the peddlers of death, and if it doesn’t collapse soon, then the rest of American society will. Good riddance, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.