In Purfuit of Privacy

We usually ignore phone calls when caller ID shows an unfamiliar number. If the caller won’t leave a message, fine. But when the same number calls back night after night it can get a little old.

I’ll generally google on an unknown number and find comments at sites like whocalled.us where posters report on a caller’s identity. And so when I looked up the number  (703) 656-9940, which was showing up repeatedly, I was a little startled to discover it was the NRA.

I make no bones about it: I think the National Rifle Association is scum. A blight on the American political landscape that has taken defense of the 2nd Amendment to new lows and pours money into elections as if theirs was the only issue that mattered.

The 2nd Amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Never mind the punctuation (which apparently was corrected in the copies sent to the states for ratification), that’s just a fluke of eighteenth-century penmanship, same as writing a cursive “s” so that it looks to us today like an “f” (resulting in “purfuit of happineff”). It’s become part of the American tradition to second-guess the Framers, but I’ll stick to this interpretation: if they had meant for the right to bear arms to be carte blanche, they wouldn’t have included those first thirteen words. So when the NRA justifies free access to assault rifles and tells us to not worry our silly heads about events like Columbine or people going postal but to instead arm ourselves against nutcases, I clench my teeth. But no matter, I’ve ranted about this before.

A couple of nights ago when the 703 number showed up again, I switched on the phone but said nothing. After about 20 seconds a woman asked for me and I asked who was calling. When she said it was the NRA, I told her I wasn’t interested in the NRA and asked her not to call again. I considered this to be admirable restraint on my part, but I sometimes find it difficult to articulate through clenched teeth.

A few years ago I had to stop calls from the ACLU, a group that I once supported until they started harassing me by phone. Too bad that these organizations that want to protect my rights don’t have any regard for my right to privacy.