The National Rifle Association may have just helped save the US intrastate online gambling industry.

Wednesday brought the latest Congressional hearing of the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA), the Sheldon Adelson-supported bill that would ban most forms of online gambling in the US of A.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who chairs the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and who introduced the House version of RAWA, is a loathsome human being with no real interest in learning the truth about online gambling. Sorry, but that needed saying before proceeding further.

Right from the start, Chaffetz struck a sneering tone, claiming that “nobody with a straight face” can claim the internet can be “walled off” and thus there was no way to prevent intrastate online gambling from bleeding into other states that might not want gambling, like his home state of Utah.