While there may be some people who have some reasonable arguments for owning a hunting rifle, it doesn\u2019t help their cause to have the NRA espousing the most radical, irrational positions against reasonable regulations on gun ownership. And for those who attended the recent [May 2013] NRA convention, the crazy was on full display. AlterNet recently reported on the worst of the worst. Here\u2019s AlterNet\u2019s top five<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1. Armed\u00a0children\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The NRA wants to appeal to….children! The\u00a0 New York Daily News<\/em>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that at the convention, \u201ctwo 10-year-olds took aim with air pistols, an 11-year-old gawked at a semiautomatic weapon and a 3-year-old soaked up applause for being the youngest member.\u201d<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the only instance of children attending the NRA convention. The\u00a0 Daily Mail Online<\/em>\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0that Will Marshall, a 12-year-old from Florida, \u201chas been a member of the NRA for 11 years and owns four guns.\u201d In other words, he joined when he was one.<\/p>\n

The presence of young kids at the NRA comes as the problem of children holding guns has been tragically highlighted. One April week saw four people shot by toddlers. And\u00a0 in early May<\/a>, a five-year-old boy in Kentucky accidentally killed his two-year-old sister with a small rifle.<\/p>\n

2. A bleeding target that looks like Obama<\/strong><\/p>\n

For two days, a vendor at the NRA convention hawked a gun target that had an image that looked like President Obama bleeding on it. The vendor, Zombie Industries, was asked to take the product down because it looked too much like the president. Zombie Industries sells life-sized targets for gun owners to shoot at.<\/p>\n

Asked by a BuzzFeed<\/em> reporter<\/a> whether the Obama likeness was intentional, a Zombie Industries worker replied: \u201cLet’s just say I gave my Republican father one for Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Guns and the Boston Marathon bombing<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s plenty to parse in NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre\u2019s speech at the convention. But what attracted the most attention is this remark<\/a>: \u201cHow many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?”<\/p>\n

LaPierre continued by saying that Bostonians were \u201cfrightened citizens…sheltered in place with no means to defend themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. Pink bra holsters<\/strong><\/p>\n

The NRA is an overwhelmingly male organization. But they\u2019re trying to broaden their appeal to women–and so vendors\u00a0 sold bras that could hold gun<\/a>s.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Mayor Bloomberg as a Nazi<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Obama image wasn\u2019t the only distasteful optic that occurred at the convention. In this case, though, the speaker wasn\u2019t asked to take it down.<\/p>\n

Glenn Beck delivered a speech to the NRA that was supplemented by an image of Mayor Michael Bloomberg looking like a Nazi, as\u00a0 New York<\/em>\u00a0magazine\u2019s Joe Coscarelli notes<\/a>. Bloomberg has been in the NRA\u2019s sights since he started railing against lax gun laws in the country and funding candidates favorable to gun control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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