So here I was, getting’ all ready to drive down to Nashville next month for the NRA show, and America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ cancels the show.  I went to my first NRA jamboree in 1980 – it was held (believe it or not) in Philadelphia and a Presidential candidate named Ronald Reagan showed up to give a speech. I don’t remember anyone actually walking away from the exhibition area to listen to the speech. After all, how can you compare the joys of eating a nice, greasy corn dog to some political pandering about a ‘welfare queen?’

That was then – this is now. What I find so impressive and even somewhat quaint about the NRA show is how little things change from year to year. The guns are the same, the appeals to liberty, freedom and all the other patriotic co-branding is the same, the food is the same (nothing that could remotely be considered ‘health food’ is sold at the show) and the t-shirts are the same.

Most of all, the people are the same, and if there is one concession I would love to have at an NRA show, it’s the renting of those little, electric carts which allow people to ride around who otherwise can’t walk. Oh, you say, it’s too bad that so many gun owners have been crippled by some kind of accident or disease. Wrong. They can’t walk because they are too fat. You’ll never see so many huge people in one public space at the same time.

Thanks to the ‘Chinese’ virus (Trump’s use of that word is the single, most disgusting thing that any American President has ever said) I’ll have to wait until 2021 to visit with all my friends at the NRA. But my visit to next year’s show assumes there will be a show. And the way things are going for the organization of which I happen to be a Hall of Fame, Defender of Freedom, Benefactor Member, I’m not sure there will be a 2021 show that I can attend.

I was even hoping to wear the NRA Patriot’s Medal I received after I sent Wayne-o some extra cash. But from reports that have recently surfaced in the media about all kinds of cash-flow problems in the Fairfax home office, even the organization’s top leadership is feeling the crunch. Staff have been laid off, some temporarily, some permanently. Local meetings and get-togethers have been cancelled as well. Until last week, you couldn’t go to a gun show anywhere in the United States without seeing a big Welcome! Banner from the NRA. Now there are no gun shows.

What caught my eye in the NRA’s shut-down announcement, however, was not the fact that their remaining staff is going to be working from home. Rather, it was a comment in Wayne-o’s letter sent to the entire organization which told employees to “contact any germane state or federal agency to determine eligibility for any additional aid.”

Hey, wait a minute! Just wait one gol dern minute! I thought the only people who ever go to the government for ‘aid’ are the welfare cheats, the illegals scamming the food stamp system, all those good-for-nothings who steal hard-earned money grabbed by the government from honest, decent, law-abiding folks like you and me. The NRA is now saying that the same government whose jack-booted thugs assaulted legal gun owners is the same government that can be trusted to hand out financial aid? What?

If the Covid-19 virus had stayed in China like it was supposed to, the NRA would have held its annual meeting in Nashville and welcomed another visit by our ‘wartime President’ who would have reminded his adoring audience that he could always be counted on to defend their 2^nd-Amendment ‘rights.’ He would have trashed all those ‘Socialists’ on the other side, probably thrown in a few curse words as well, and then run off to hold one of his Nuremberg rallies in another friendly, red-blooded state.

No wonder Trump is considering lifting the ban on stay-at-home orders. He’s the last person who ever stays home.