The NRA has a list of "National Organizations with Anti-Gun Policies" on its website. In his latest column for CNN.com, John Avlon discusses how the list of enemies illustrates the organization's divisiveness and isolation and how it will ultimately backfire.
John Avlon is also a CNN contributor and member of the OutFront political strike team.
NRA's enemies list: Most of America
Question: What do George Clooney, Chaka Khan, the American Medical Association, Bon Jovi and C. Everett Koop have in common?
Answer: They are among the 500 names on the National Rifle Association's absurd new "enemies list."
Richard Nixon would be embarrassed to find that his once sinister form of score-keeping has been revived so promiscuously by the NRA. But there is some redeeming social value here: The list illustrates an organization that has become hermetically sealed from society at large, so caught up in conservative debates that it has forgotten how to connect with Main Street America.
The enemies list was first posted on the NRA's website in mid-September, hiding in plain sight under the banner "National Organizations with Anti-Gun Policies." But with the debate about reasonable gun restrictions reignited after the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter, the NRA's enemies list has become just the latest example of seriously bad judgment inside this once proud organization.
Because whatever staffer was tasked with accumulating the list took the idea of "you're either with us or against us" so literally that everyone who isn't a card-carrying conservative seems to be counted as an enemy.
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