It’s easy to mobilize people for political purposes if you scare them into thinking that their rights are about to be taken away. Inventing urgency and injustice can create a mob on the streets or on the blogs. Time and again, we’ve seen such mobs try to impose their will on the majority of citizens. In politics, the vocal minority often helps make the rules.

Some elected officials see through this hysteria. In Georgia, an NRA-backed bill to allow guns in company parking lots is drawing a lot of unquestioning support from its membership. But now, a conservative Republican State Senator is being turned off by the shrill demands of the gun pushers and their allies. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has printed the following e-mail, dated March 24, 2007, from State Senator John Douglas (R-Social Circle) in Georgia, an individual they describe as “one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate� who “usually supports NRA-backed legislation.�

While you are contacting others, contact the NRA and tell them their bullying, threatening tactics are backfiring. I have for the past two years earned an A+ and A rating from them and supported their efforts all the way. They are accusing every major company in Georgia of being anti gun, sending out their alerts every few hours naming more companies as anti gun and acting like a hysterical teenaged girl.

They are falling on their swords over this bill and so am I. There is no way I would vote yes with the way they are conducting themselves.

I am sorry we have come to this point and I look forward to supporting logical, rational gun legislation in the future, but not SB 43. I appreciate your efforts, but the NRA is making their supporters look foolish on this one.

Even the Vice President of the Georgia Sports Shooting Association (GSSA), the official NRA state affiliate for Georgia, has objected to the NRA efforts in support of this legislation. In a March 20, 2007 letter to his fellow Board members of GSSA, Bob Thornton had this to say:

If your boss doesn’t allow guns on his property, LOOK FOR ANOTHER JOB!!!

… GSSA was NOT consulted prior to the introduction of SB-43. That this bill has NOT come UP from the “grass roots�. But, instead has been pushed down from NRA HQ in Washington, D.C. I wish that you would advise them that not all of GSSA Directors support this bill and in fact, if the NRA had brought the bill to the GSSA before the session, there would have been spirited OPPOSITION on the GSSA Board of Directors to this ill-conceived idea.

Too often, people on all sides of any political issue can be reduced to yelling at each other. And too often, this approach is instigated by those in distant national headquarters. If we were better at civil discourse, we might be better at crafting common-sense solutions.