The NRA's prime target: NRA members

The biggest victims of NRA propaganda are its own members, which the NRA spends a fortune on propagandizing with the notion that guns = freedom... = power...= virility.

The average NRA member is an aging white man who has seen his world become more & more insecure. Job insecurity. Cultural insecurity. America no longer looks & acts like him outside his rural redoubts. And a black man is President--a thumb in the eye of every redneck.

The NRA's fever dream-solution is more guns. Has to be more guns, because fewer & fewer Americans own any guns. Young men play 1st person shooter videogames instead. Educated men & women know better. And firearms last a long, long time; it's not like owners' current guns are wearing out.

Hence assault weapons. Sexy! Hold one & you're a Commando on a Vital Mission. Never mind that they're inferior for hunting & home defense. They're the world's best fantasy weapon to hold off the hordes or drug-crazed blacks about to invade your compound in Idaho any minute now. That or the UN's black helicopters come to take away your guns.

Reality is less fun.

"A 1998 study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that found that 'every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.'

"Pistol owners' fantasy of blowing away home-invading bad guys or street toughs holding up liquor stores is a myth debunked by the data showing that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gun-science-proves-arming-untrained-citizens-bad-idea&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SP_20130513

Scientific American magazine, published since 1845. won the 2011 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. A third of its 4m readers have postgrad degrees.