Internal Senate emails confirmed by NRA Board Members are highlighting just how far the National Rifle Association has fallen.

The organization recently collaborated with the left to obtain a carve out of the DISCLOSE Act, legislation designed to silence bloggers and outside interest groups like tea party activists. This was a first amendment issue and the NRA gladly took a position and campaigned for its members to take a position on the DISCLOSE Act.

One of the NRA’s chief arguments was that it needed the carve out to be effective in its advocacy of Second Amendment issues. But here’s the problem: these internal Senate emails confirmed by NRA Board Members show that the National Rifle Association’s management team has explicitly and directly told the NRA’s board they are prohibited from testifying about second amendment issues during the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings.

That’s right: the foremost gun rights lobby in the nation is prohibiting its board from testifying in the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings about the second amendment.

The NRA did issue a statement on Friday after the internal Senate email began leaking out informing people of the gag order. The statement noted Kagan’s problematic record on guns, but that’s just smoke and mirrors. Don’t believe them when they say they are working with Senators to investigate her record. If they were really working with Senators, they would have accepted an invitation to testify on the Kagan nomination when they were invited. The gag order on board members is not limited to providing testimony, but it prohibits board members from coming out against Kagan in their individual capacity.

If the NRA is really working with pro-guns Senators and Kagan is really hostile to Second Amendment rights, which she is, they will score her confirmation vote and actually make the score count this time, unlike they did on the confirmation of Sonya Sotomayor. With Sotomayor, they waited until several days after RedState began demanding a score and then, in effect, announced they’d score it and ignore it.

First they collaborated with the left to get the DISCLOSE Act through the House, now they are blocking their own from speaking out against Elena Kagan. Is this the deal the NRA cut with the left? They get a carveout and shut up their board?