The NRA is not only a constituent part of the Republican Party. It is in some ways a microcosm of it. Its demographics: an aging, male, non-urban, racially anxious, white base. Its policy prescriptions: outlier positions unsupported by science. Its politics: defensive and bitterly opposed to compromise.

Like the GOP, which dominates state governments and has reached peak numbers in Congress, the National Rifle Association appears to be at the height of its considerable powers. It is well-funded, professionally staffed and deeply entrenched in U.S. politics, having fully hitched a major political party to its single cause.

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Having abandoned even a pretense of bipartisanship, the NRA benefits from a conservative network of allies, including the religious right. But it has completely forfeited influence with Democrats, who have concluded that they have nothing to lose in becoming a party fully devoted to gun regulation. With the GOP publicly unraveling, congressional Democrats appear poised to grow stronger. That’s not good for the NRA.

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On some level, those most enamored of firearms must sense that their victories, including a highly qualified 5-4 Supreme Court ruling written by a Supreme Court justice who is now deceased, are fragile. Technology, politics, demography and reason itself will eventually gang up to defeat a movement that demands guns for everyone, anywhere, all the time, for any reason, regardless of the consequences and in defiance of every civilized norm the world over.

http://www.startribune.com/this-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-nra/386828361/