As a civil libertarian and a gun owner, I understand all too well that tragedies like the Newtown mass murder invariably mean a new wave of assaults on our most fundamental rights as human beings. 9/11 brought us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and the War on Terror, and every mass shooting brings out the same authoritarian coalition calling for an end to video games, movies, secular education, and, of course, guns. I have written in the past about why we should cling most dearly to our rights in times of crisis, but have only recently caught on to a much more deceptive (perhaps unwitting) foe of our right to bear arms: the National Rifle Association.

I admit, the suggestion seems ludicrous on its face. After all, the NRA ostensibly represents millions of gun owners and wields immense pro-gun lobbying power in Washington. But it is precisely this perception of the NRA as the end-all, be-all of Second Amendment advocacy, when combined with a perpetuated misunderstanding about the primary functions of both the NRA and the Second Amendment, that makes the organization a threat to gun liberty.

In fact, the NRA has quite a history of supporting restrictions on our fundamental right to bear arms. The NRA supported the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (the first comprehensive federal restrictions on the right to bear arms). The NRA supported gun-control measures throughout the 1960s and continues to do so to this day. It even supported Mitt Romney’s candidacy despite Gov. Romney’s horrid record on gun rights (support which Gov. Romney was always quick to point out in defense of his record). Wayne LaPierre, the current CEO and executive VP of the NRA, testified in 1999 in support of the Federal Gun Free School Zones Act and many other federal violations of the Second Amendment. In short, the NRA’s history is the history of a group more concerned with protecting the commercial viability of the gun industry than protecting the principle of the Second Amendment.

So when Mr. LaPierre took to his massive national platform last week to respond to the horror in Newtown and the subsequent attacks on gun rights, his speech left little doubt what the NRA is worried about. Mr. LaPierre blamed the weather, he blamed the media, he blamed video games, he lashed out at every target he could think of in a transparent effort to deflect, rather than engage, the anti-gun argument. He then insisted that the government should arm hundreds of thousands of government agents and put them in every school in America.

This was not the reasoned, principled argument of a scrupulous believer in the Second Amendment; it was the nonsensical, desperate plea of a charlatan trying to defend his product at the expense of any principle at stake.

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