'They lost me forever': Ex-NRA member explains how gun-loving group finally pushed him too far

A former NRA member has written an editorial for USA Today explaining how the gun rights advocacy group finally went too far for him.

In the op-ed, Rutgers University political science professor Ross K. Baker recounts the time that he went to an NRA event and was disturbed by seeing lots of Nazi paraphernalia on sale along with the usual guns and ammunition.

"The best possible interpretation of these vendors was that they were selling the Nazi items to World War II re-enactors, but the more I observed, the more I became convinced that my initial understanding was naive," he writes. "In some cases at least, these items were being purchased as objects of veneration."

This, Baker writes, was "the day they lost me forever," and he hasn't looked back ever since.

In fact, he believes the NRA has grown even more depraved in the years since he left.

"Today, the organization has become nothing more than a front for firearms manufacturers and its leadership is corrupted by vanity and self-dealing," he writes. "Today’s NRA is a degraded and morally-compromised organization that bears no relationship to the one I looked up to as a kid."

Read the whole editorial here.