NRA aims straight but misfires

Baltimore Sun: It is a comfort, albeit one of small caliber, to learn that there are actions people can take in the cause of gun rights that are so extreme they give pause to some poor soul within the headquarters of the National Rifle Association. Recent demonstrations in Texas in which proponents of open-carry gun laws have toted rifles into fast-food outlets en masse got a written reprimand from the NRA — until a spokesman apologized for the criticism.

Got that? NRA says don’t go so far, gun demonstrators, then apologizes because, well, somebody went too far in suggesting scary tactics are ill-advised.

For those who have not followed the travails of Open Carry Texas and its allies, just be thankful that you don’t live in the Lone Star State and have a hankering for a barbacoa burrito. In recent months, it’s become common for demonstrators to show up at variety of public places with AR-15s or similar long guns strapped to their backs, which is legal in Texas.

Let these several-fries-short-of-a-Happy-Meal activists keep going down this path of weaponizing fast food while more rational heads within the gun-rights community stand mute and see where it gets them. One can only hope that the public backlash will, eventually, get all of us back to a conversation about how to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill, common sense protections that the families of shooting victims from California to Connecticut deserve to see enacted.