Just when we thought that the National Rifle Association could not go any lower it did. During its recent ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth pretense of a convention, the NRA leadership featured speaker after speaker who plumbed the depths of the pools of hatred, bigotry and stupidity that are still a part of America. And then there was the use of children as gun-toting tot props.

It should be clear to all by now that the NRA is not about the right to bear arms. The NRA is really about the right to manufacture arms, the right to sell arms and the right to make enormous profits from the manufacture and sale of arms. This means that the leadership of the NRA is really a consortium of salesmen, pimps and proselytizers of profit no matter what the cost in human bloodshed and misery.

The new president of the NRA, James W. Porter, Jr., a knuckle dragging troglodyte from Alabama, decided to up the ante in the gun control debate in this country. With his very first breath as NRA President Mr. Porter linked the gun control debate in this country to the Civil War – of course he referred to the treasonous and despicable acts of nine Southern states as the “War of Northern Aggression”.

What we really don’t need in the aftermath of Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook and the almost daily gun-fueled bloodbaths in our cities is a stars and bars-wearing supporter of white supremacist slavery advocating guns being the solution to just about every problem that afflicts this country.

And because he does have an undeserved platform for his rhetorical sewage, James Porter has the capacity to “inspire” like minded believers to take action – action that he can always moonwalk away from much in the same way that Sarah Palin continues to unsuccessfully distance herself from the carnage of the Tucson Massacre.

Not satisfied with wallowing in the gutter of hatespeak that is fed by torrents of misinformation and ignorance, the NRA has resorted to child pornography, shielding its unspeakable acts by claiming the protection of the Second Amendment. And in the process the NRA actively, affirmatively and intentionally inflicted unnecessary pain on the parents of children who have been the victims of gun violence.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said, “I can’t describe what pornography is, but I know it when I see it.” By those guidelines it is clear that the NRA parading around children as young as five years old who are holding automatic weapons with fearsome killing power is nothing but gun pornography.

There is no redeeming value, no training pretense, and no logical reason to place an automatic weapon in the hands of a five year old. The is nothing cute about seeing a nine year old girl aiming an AR-15 rifle (of the type used in Aurora and Sandy Hook) at human-shaped targets. That the NRA would hype this awful image as proof that it is some kind of family enterprise is as disingenuous as the Mafia calling itself a family business.

The business of the NRA is the manufacture and sale of weapons of individual destruction and sometimes mass destruction. There are already enough guns in America to arm its adult citizens several times over. By now, anyone who wishes to legally buy a gun for sport or protection has one – or seven – of them.

Is anyone safer because they have a dozen AR-15 rifles? Does anyone seriously feel more constitutionally empowered because they own a personal arsenal? Does the NRA seriously think that American citizens should fear federal tanks coming down Main Street to confiscate weapons?

While the answer to those questions would elicit a barely audible “no” in the private quarters of the NRA, you will never get the leadership to admit to that. Just as you will not get the NRA to realize that good taste should have prohibited the publication of photographs of children as young as the Sandy Hook victims holding fierce automatic weaponry.

Unfortunately good taste, compassion, common sense and intelligence have no place in the halls of the NRA. But it does seem that gun pornography has found a home.