How Political corruption infringes on gun ownership

One of the most fundamental reasons behind the decline of America is the amount of money in the political system. Instead of being concerned about the interests of the people they are supposed to represent as the founding father’s had envisioned, American politicians of today are more concerned about protecting and passing laws that benefit the people and political action committees (PACs) who give them money and gifts.

Often called legalized corruption, influencing peddling in American politics impacts every facet of American life from laws regulating the food we eat and laws protecting the environment, to amount of spending the American spend on the military. The recent outbreaks of E.coli deaths in several states due to government regulators not doing their job, to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are prime examples of how influence peddling corrupts a government. Even gun owners have been betrayed by their own lobbying group, the National Rifle Association.

A prime example of how a political action committee like the NRA has put its own interests first at the expense of the individual, is the Connecticut gun law requiring a resident who wants to own a handgun to take a handgun safety course. While this may appear to be a good law in itself, the required fee of $ 125 paid to a “licensed NRA instructor” proves without a doubt of how the NRA got legislation passed to benefit itself at the expense of the gun owner. This is evident in the fact that the entire $ 125 fee paid by the Connecticut resident goes entirely to the licensed NRA instructor and not a single dollar of that “fee” goes to the state. This “fee” is nothing short of a revenue-generating stream for the NRA, enabled by a corrupt political system, where the elected officials often act as agents for the people and groups they receive money and gifts from. This is one of the reasons why the United States is only ranked as the 17th most democratic in the world and the 18th least corrupt government.

If the NRA had the interests of promoting gun safety and promoting the efforts of reducing the flow of illegal guns, than the NRA would have supported some of that "fee" to go towards the government. This would allow the state government to have a revenue stream to fund public service campaigns promoting gun owner responsibility or ensure illegal guns be destroyed. If the American political process was less corrupt, the money generated from this gun ownership law could have helped prevent the accidental death of an eight-year-old boy in Jewett City, Connecticut in 2008.

Instead, the corrupt politicians of Connecticut enacted a law that takes the money from citizens who have the constitutional right to own a gun, and requires them to pay a fee to a political action committee. The money collected by the NRA licensed gun instructors in Connecticut is unconstitutional and another example of why Americans have fewer civil liberties than people living in Canada, Japan, and yes even Uruguay and Mauritius.