The NRA seems to have adopted a new strategy in their efforts to push back gun control: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.  Oh, they’re not falling in line with gun bans and magazine limits — they’re just adopting Barack Obama’s playbook in arguing against them.  Via Buzzfeed, here’s a new 30-second ad painting Obama as “just another elitist hypocrite” for disdaining the NRA’s proposal to subsidize armed guards in schools while send his own children to a school that has armed security on site.  Why should the rich and powerful be the only families with armed security guards for their children?  Redistribute the security!

You have to admire the strategy, even if you may be skeptical of the proposal.  These types of events are rare to the point where most armed guards won’t ever see anything close to a Newtown over the course of their lifetimes, and school security isn’t a federal issue; it’s local, and schools can add guards now, if they want them.  This is more of a pushback against the scorn heaped on the NRA for proposing the idea in the wake of Sandy Hook, even though the same scorn-heapers backed Bill Clinton’s COPS program, which subsidized armed guards in schools.  That blatant hypocrisy had the White House at least belatedly considering the NRA’s proposal as one part of their response.

The NRA must be doing something right in public relations, by the way.  Either that, or the nation’s best gunseller is even better than we imagined:

A day before President Barack Obama is scheduled to release Vice President Joe Biden’s recommendations to curb gun violence in the United States, the National Rifle Association told U.S. News and World Report that they have seen membership grow by 250,000 in the month since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Politico reported membership had grown by more than 100,000 five days ago. The NRA says that when Politico reported the story, membership was close to 200,000, but the number has drastically grown in just five days. The association now has over 4.25 million members, but the NRA says that number is always fluctuating as memberships expire and new members join.

“I would say that every time President Obama opens his mouth and Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein opens her mouth and they talk about gun bans and restricting the rights of law abiding Americans, people pay attention to that and sign up,” says Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA’s public affairs director.

Yes, I think people are paying very close attention these days to Washington and the gun grabbers.