It’s still cloudy and chilly here along the Front Range today, which has me wondering where our normal Colorado sunshine has gone.  To make up for the loss, along with this morning’s story are a couple of sunny summer images, to remind us of warmer times.

The National Rifle Association spends money fighting gun-control legislation.  In fact, the political branch of that organization, of which Mrs. Animal and I are both Life Members, is solely concerned with opposing intrusive gun control laws; they are strictly a single-issue organization, which is why they took criticism for endorsing Nevada Senator Harry Reid for re-election last fall.  Whatever other faults Reid has – and he has them – he has been a reliable vote for legal gun owners.

But how much money does the NRA really spend?  Are they really the lobbying monolith that would-be gun banners portray them as?  Well, not really; the truth is that the general public just doesn’t support gun control.  Here are the numbers.

For those of you True Believers who may not know it, the NRA was founded as a marksmanship organization by former Union officers after the Civil War.  Those officers were disappointed at the lack of marksmanship skills recruited from the industrialized urban north, and formed the NRA to promote civil marksmanship.  This is still a primary focus of the group; if you want to learn to shoot, the gold standard among teachers is an NRA-certified firearms instructor.

So I’ll repeat what I generally tell all those who may be new to the hunting and shooting sports; if you enjoy your guns and want to keep them, join the NRA.