Good morning, NRA

Nick Anderson, killing it as usual.

Click, view, absorb, repeat.

This is a national story now. Bill Maher also smacks 'em down: "The Axis of Assholes".

Bill Maher coined the perfect term. Rick Perry, Ted Nugent, and Sarah Palin are the axis of a**holes. From bashing charity events because they weren’t invited, to running campaign ads suggesting that Obama isn’t a Christian then cozying up to the president after your lack of regulatory oversight causes one of your towns to blow up, to blaming Obama for veterans’ suicides when you were a coward who refused to serve your country, these three are a**holes. In fact, they are three of the biggest a-holes in American politics. 

At Ground Zero, there were conversations described as civil and spirited.

"How many of your members supported universal background checks?" asked Aaron Black, an activist who flew in from New York to protest. He cited polls showing the number as high as 92%.

"I've told you three times today, I don't believe there's a 92% —" (NRA board member Todd) Rathner said.

"You have not told me three times," Black said.

"It's a bogus number," Rathner said. "If you explain to people that universal background checks require registration, that number would plummet."

"What endgame do you see?" asked Jeff Hunter of Houston. "Is the NRA going to form militias when the government comes to get your guns?"

"If there's no registration, we don't have to worry about it," Rathner said.

Black gave credit to Rathner for engaging the protesters. "This guy thinks he's representing gun owners? He's not representing gun owners. He's representing gun manufacturers."

He tried to confront Rathner with autopsy photos of 16-year-old Brishell Jeffries, one of three teenagers killed in a drive-by shooting in Washington, D.C., in 2010. "Gun violence is so sterilized, and dumbed down and Disneyfied, that no one cares. It didn't even faze this guy."

Rathner acknowledged a problem with violence in America, but said he doesn't blame the guns. Protesters, he said, have been misinformed by the media.

"I'm comfortable debating it, but I'm not going to change their minds, and they're not going to change mine," said Rathner, a gun lobbyist from Tuscon, Ariz., and self-described "Jewish redneck."

I'm so old that I remember when protests at Houston NRA conventions were all about Tom DeLay.

Thanks for coming, gun nuts, and we hope you spent a lot of money while you were here. Now GTFO and make room for the OTC. (Was it just a year ago that the big story was the Chronicle's un-coverage of the oil and gas confab?)

Update: More pics, and not of the inside of the GRB.