The Bush administration and the National Rifle Association seems like the perfect match. Both like guns. Both like killing things. Neither has an interest in leaving natural resources untouched. And yet a rift is growing between the administration and the gun-toters, and at the belly of it is Bush’s habit of opening public lands to filthification by oil and gas companies. But the NRA wants to kill things on that land, and don’t think it’s fair that the industry boys are getting first dibs.

“We find our members are having a harder time finding access to public land,” complained NRA second vice-president Ronald Schmeits. This leaves the once blindly Republican NRA finding itself mixing environmental issues with its “cold, dead hands” rhetoric. Unfortunately, the group has long convinced members that environmentalists and Dems are conspiring to take their guns away.

Arguing that the NRA has lost touch with the core desires of gun owners, one anonymous gun company exec says the NRA has focused too much on the right to own a gun and not enough on the outdoors aspect of hunting.

» Scott Saxon