Point of View

Series of NRAs likely to dog future students

By Carl Heintze

It was in the year 2010 that the NRA finally gave up and disbanded. The NRA, of course, was not the NRA so well known during the last century, but rather the National Rock Association, dedicated to the proposition that the Constitution entitles all Americans to carry a rock for self-protection.

The latter-day NRA came into being after the former National Rifle Association lost influence with Congress and went out of business. It had conceded by 2005 that assault rifles should not be used to hunt deer and that pistols were not rifles and that concealed weapons could be as artfully concealed by minors as by adults.

So the old NRA went out of business.

But there remained those who felt that they were still entitled to some kind of lethal self-protection and so, at a convention in Helena, Mont., they gathered to create the new NRA, the National Rock Association.

The new NRA was founded on the premise that rocks were not lethal weapons unless used in self-defense, that they were plentiful, although perhaps not as plentiful as the 90 million pistols, rifles, shotguns, assault rifles and submachine guns with which Americans formerly had been armed.

Rocks could be carried more easily and inconspicuously than rifles, pistols, shotguns or firearms, and if used properly were probably about as lethal. Indeed, the new NRA, headed by that venerable hero of the comic strips, Alley Oop, as a caveman well versed in rock handling, gave a series of lessons in how to hurl a rock. This included the use of slingshots and catapults to throw rocks and even boulders on some occasions, such as when members of the new NRA--in a fury because of attempts by lawmakers to outlaw rocks--attacked the Nebraska Legislature.

The attack was believed to have been carried out in part because Nebraska has but a single legislative body, unlike most states, and hence fewer boulders had to be hauled to the catapults to carry out the siege.

In the end the siege was, of course, unsuccessful because the Nebraska legislators adopted the slogan that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but the new NRA will never shake me."

Historians contend that this was the beginning of the end for the new NRA, but most of the public believed this really was the battle which took place between members of the Boulder and Loveland, Colo., high school football teams in the year 2009.

The Boulder team, it will be recalled, arrived at the game armed not only with the usual football equipment, but also with their shoulder pads and other parts of their uniforms artfully lined with rocks.

In the ensuing game several members of the Loveland high school team were severely injured; the hidden rocks were discovered, Boulder had to forfeit the game and a national scandal followed, after which Congress approved a law outlawing rocks.

The press made much of all this with headlines that described the battle between Boulder and Loveland, or, as some papers put it, the Rockheads and the Lovers.

In any event the new law made it illegal for those under 18 to carry a rock without first having a background check to see if they had been in any rock fights.

Rocks generally became contraband and quarries were cordoned off. Road construction was carried out under tight security and airports installed rock detectors, electronic devices capable of detecting a rock within 30 paces.

Despite the fact that the new NRA contended that it was not rocks that hurt people, but rather that those who threw them who were the problem, representatives and senators had become disenchanted with the old NRA.

In addition, as is often the case with Congress, many got confused and could not separate the old from the new.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), nearing his 90th year, and the oldest man in the Senate, fell into an angry debate with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the oldest woman in the Senate, over the right of Americans to bear arms, unaware that rifles, shotguns, assault rifles and pistols already had been outlawed in the last century.

When Sen. Feinstein called him an old rockhead, Sen. Hatch collapsed and had to be taken to Walter Reed Hospital for treatment (at government expense, of course).

So ended the new NRA on an even more ignominious note than the old.

But the fact that there had been three NRAs in American history would dog students through the rest of the new century.

The original NRA, you will perhaps recall, stood for the National Recovery Administration. But that's another story.

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