> In the gun community the NRA is generally seen has having failed gun owners.
NRA accomplished some wicked and absurd goals (one might not think it possible if it hadn't already happened) and I think by proxy accomplished a huge one through Justice Scalia which significantly, drastically and fundamentally changed the meaning of the 2nd Amendment from a selfless right to stand guard against tyranny to an intensely and grotesquely selfish right to legally murder in defense of trivial things such as property and indulgences such as pride. This was illegal, unconstitutional, and a massive overreach by Scalia, because obviously he undermined the Founders' expressed requirement for a Constitutional convention and 2/3rds both houses of Congress or of State legislatures to change the Constitution. That this defacement of the Constitution occurred in the way that it did, the 2nd was vandalized without altering the literal words, is interesting, but I believe it only a matter of time before parts of DC v Heller (2008) are overturned for lack of accuracy, overreach, and flippantly reversing a hundred plus years of court precedent with garbage reasoning. Scalia claims knowledge of what most Americans believe, without any support or any evidence whatsoever, which is what he bases his argument and ruling that the right of self-defense is inclusive in the 2nd (a small part of the decision which was entirely skewed to the rest and the case before the Court).
First of all, even one Supreme Court Justice claiming to know what all Americans think and basing decisions on that... is crazy, so he was probably a little senile by then. But I think Scalia knew (or knew once) and we also know from the minutes of the Constitutional Convention that the Founders debated including self-defense in the 2nd and intentionally left it out, and we also know that the 2nd specifically concerns militia (to guard against any tyranny from a professional military) and not a personal right to firearms, which it never meant until the NRA made up that it did and ran propaganda to manipulate others into believing what they, really, just invented, which itself is merely a lie. So the NRA succeeded in campaigns they ran, I think starting in the early 1900s and onwards to try to get Americans to believe the 2nd Amendment meant self-defense and guaranteed it.
But by 2008, contrary to Scalia's claimed omnipotence, I suspect most Americans were far better educated and aware of, at least, the fact that that the NRA's propaganda regarding their claims the right of self-defense was guaranteed by 2nd, was false, and knew and know that the right of self-defense is a natural right that would be redundant to include in the Bill of Rights, and is far older than the 2nd, which concerns militia. Personal gun ownership, right to carry permits, and all other ownership of guns beyond beyond militia (hunting, collecting, engineering & manufacturing, etc.) is really covered by the 10th Amendment. I don't know why the NRA, and everyone that listened to them, got hung up on the 2nd, and obsessively tried to, in large part successfully, mindcontrol Americans into believing literal BS and the NRA's wet dream, which of course could only have led to a needless increase in gun deaths since 2008.
Sure the close knit and loving gun community blames the NRA when it's gun owners that failed America by being duped by the NRA into shirking their 2nd Amendment duties, and falling down on the job by not being well-regulated militia, but instead playing with guns, or leaving guns unsecured resulting in tragedy, or being vigilantes, or intentionally placing themselves where they might get antagonized to use lethal force when such situations could easily have been avoided.