The last few weeks have proven what we all suspected: the National Rifle Association is a serious problem. Not because of guns, specifically, but because it appears to be shot through (no pun intended) with foreign agents. It looks more and more as if the group is not really in the business of promoting, however fanatically, the rights of gun owners, but rather to do the bidding of Putin.

Thus, not long ago, we discovered that the IRS had evidence that the NRA was taking Russian money. Then, we learned that a Russian guns rights advocate, and a long time member of the NRA, Maria Butina, had been jailed as a Russian spy. In rapid developments, we also discovered that she was backed by a Russian billionaire (read oligarch which is another way of saying Putin Associate) who has extensive investments in the United States. Not only that, but the billionaire’s son was a volunteer for Trump in the 2016 campaign. Then, of course, it turned out she’s been rather active on the social scene—courting all the big names in the NRA, and, indeed, in American conservatism. The New York Times has even gone so far as to describe her as a kind of Mata Hari, using sex as a weapon, and acting as the key player “in a calculated, long-term campaign intended to steer high-level politicians toward Moscow’s objectives.”

And so, down and down the rabbit hole we go.

You have to wonder, if there has been one high profile Russian agent in the NRA, are there others? And, while we’re at it, how much money has the NRA received from Russian sources? How completely has the organization become part of that “calculated, long-term” effort to bend Washington to Putin’s will? How dangerous, indeed, is the NRA?

How ironic if it turns out that the NRA, so often cited as a bulwark of the constitution and conservative values proves, instead, to be a Trojan Horse …a sham…a false America…

Meant to destroy us.

 

 

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