People have always joined groups that support certain causes. Some people support the ACLU’s state mission of preserving civil liberties. Others join the Anti-Defamation Leauge in an effort to support their stated mission. People join all kinds of groups for all kinds of reasons. It’s kind of why we have so many groups out there.

The problems start when people decide that you shouldn’t be allowed to join groups that they don’t like.

For example, if Republicans started supporting bans on ACLU membership, those who support that group would be understandably outraged. It’s one thing to oppose a group or its mission, but quite another to want to ban membership in a group that doesn’t actually hurt people.

Despite that, though, it seems a lot of Democrats don’t really get it. Maybe that’s why almost a third of Democrats surveyed recently think it should be illegal to join the National Rifle Association.

The National Rifle Association is America’s largest gun rights organization with more than five million members. But a sizable number of Democrats views it as a terrorist group and believes it should be against the law for Americans to belong to pro-gun rights organizations like the NRA.

Following several recent mass shootings, officials in San Francisco declared the NRA a domestic terrorist organization. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that nearly one-out-of-three Likely Democratic Voters (32%) favor declaring the gun rights group a terrorist organization in the community where they live. Fourteen percent (14%) of Republicans and 20% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Democrats say Americans should be prohibited by law from belonging to pro-gun rights organizations like the NRA, a view shared by 15% of Republicans and 10% of uanffiliateds.

Among all likely voters, 23% favor declaring the NRA a terrorist organization in their home community, while 18% think it should be against the law to belong to pro-gun rights groups like the NRA.

Only 13% believe NRA members are more likely to commit a crime with a gun. A plurality (47%) says members of the group are less likely to commit such a crime, while 28% think the level of gun crime by NRA members is about the same as in the population at large. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.

In other words, most folks don’t see NRA members as being more dangerous than the population at large, yet 28 percent want to ban membership in the NRA by declaring it a terrorist organization.

Well now.

That’s just special, isn’t it?

They’ve made the NRA such a boogieman in their heads that they’re ready to infringe on people’s First Amendment rights in their effort to infringe on their Second Amendment rights.

At least they’re consistent for once.

For what it’s worth, the NRA has already filed a lawsuit against the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. As for myself, if they wanted to make sure I’d renew my membership, there were easier ways to do so.

The truth of the matter is that the NRA and NRA represent no threat to the public at large. Lawful gun owners are historically the most law-abiding people in the nation. Those with carry permits are less likely to commit a crime that police or judges, according to multiple studies. In other words, we’re not the threat and we never have been.

It’s time for these anti-gun Democrats to grow the hell up and stop treating us like the enemy.

Hat tip: PJ Media