If you’ve ever owned a cat, you know that on occasion it won’t use the box. If you’re careless about cleaning it or don’t have a sufficient number of boxes, cats will often find someplace else to do their business. But, what you’d never consider doing after finding a misplaced poop is torture and kill the animal. Sadly, that’s true for all of us but Douglas Hamlin, the new head of the National Rifle Association.

According to media reports, which are based on court records, Hamlin’s fraternity had a cat named BK living in the frat house. After the cat refused to use the box a number of times, fraternity members took the cat out, cut off his paws, strung him up, and then burned him to death. One of the fraternity members felt guilty afterwards and confessed to friends, who then reported the incident to police, who charged them all with animal cruelty (a misdemeanor in 1979-80). Other reporting and a purported internal NRA e-mail indicates that Hamlin was not directly involved in the torture and killing, but was charged after the fact for participating in an effort to cover the crime up.

While a judge had harsh words for Hamlin, who was the leader of the fraternity, for not stopping the torture and killing and then covering for the killers, even calling it an “unconscionable and heinous” act, the young men had the crimes expunged from their records after performing 200 hours of animal-related community service. Since 1980, animal torture and extreme cruelty have been elevated to felony-level crimes in a growing number of states, so this slap on the wrist would likely not happen today.

But, my goal in writing this article isn’t to take Hamlin to task. He got the punishment the law demanded after committing the crime (or covering up for it if that’s how it really went), and now his career is likely to be threatened if not ended by this disgusting crime coming to light. People who thought they knew him are probably not going to look at him the same way now, and this will have severe social and financial costs in the long run. Nothing I could do here would make his situation any worse than it already is, nor do I want to pile on.

What should concern us is the effect it has on the overall gun rights community. To illustrate that, let’s look a little more at the media reporting on the subject. As is normal practice, writers with The Guardian looked at old newspapers (probably on microfiche) to see who might be able to tell them more. Shelagh Abbs Winter was named in one of these articles as the person who told the police what she had heard.

Today, though, she had no idea that the person she had reported on went on to lead the NRA. When The Guardian contacted her, she said, ”You don’t know how amazing this is to me, because I am a member of Moms Demand Action.” and later added, “Once a creep, always a creep.”

Obviously anti-gun groups are all piling on now that this has come to light. The general idea that gun rights activists are “heartless” gets some support in the public imagination. After all, they say, if we don’t care about the deaths of children, they shouldn’t be surprised that our “leader” would cover for the gruesome killing of a pet. All you have to do now is search for “NRA Cat” on social media to see all of the popular voices making the connection here.

On top of this, many people assume that gun rights is a strictly conservative position. There certainly are more conservatives into guns than independents and “liberals”, so despite the many exceptions people tend to focus on the rule. Because the wider public thinks guns=conservatives or even guns=MAGA, this makes the wider conservative movement look hypocritical after all of the noise about alleged dog and cat eating going on in Ohio.

While I know there are certainly people who think hurting animals is no big deal, or who want to talk about how this happened decades ago, this isn’t the time to defend “our” side. We have to keep in mind that the NRA has had serious problems for decades and has largely dropped the ball on gun rights while other organizations have picked it up.

The NRA’s bad habit of choosing problem leaders isn’t something we’re obligated to reflexively defend. The gun rights movement and the wider conservative world doesn’t owe the NRA a duty to go down with the ship (again). Instead, we should be reminding people that the NRA isn’t us, and doesn’t represent anybody but their members who are a small fraction of gun owners. We should also speak out against evil things like animal cruelty instead of trying to minimize and defend it.