NRA, you have launched your national TV campaign to block any kind of legislation that could save the lives of our children from gun violence – the first shot fired in your so-called “war of the century”. Your campaign screams that the President is a hypocrite because he wants gun free zones in schools while his daughters get armed Secret Service protection. Is that all you got? Is that the best you can come up with?
NRA, you have launched your national TV campaign to block any legislation that could save the lives of our children from gun violence – the first shot fired in your so-called “war of the century”. Your campaign screams that the President is a hypocrite because he wants gun free zones in schools while his daughters get armed Secret Service protection.
Is that all you got? Is that the best you can come up with? Do you mean to tell me that your gold-plated, white shoe ad agency has nothing better than that? Your “war of the century” is to attack the President’s children because their father follows the Secret Service policy required of every President since Kennedy? You are really on the skids.
Perhaps you have seen the polls that 59% of Americans approve of the recommendations the President announced this morning. Maybe you have seen the surveys that show that as many as 77% of your members disagree with your position on background checks. Maybe you have noticed that 90% of Americans disagree with you on regulating gun shows. And maybe you noticed that while you were bragging that 100,000 new people signed up to be NRA members, 400,000 joined Mayors Against Gun Violence.
Now, I know that you know that fewer Americans are buying guns every year, threatening the profits of the gun makers. But I am disappointed that your response is to fear-market to anti-government conspiracy theorists so they will stockpile weapons. Telling fearful people that the government will take their guns away, which you know it is not, seems to be a great boost for the bottom line of the gun companies that pay your salary. But it’s an act of desperation. When you have nothing left but lies and fear you are desperate. Which is why Secret Service protection for the children of Presidents is all you can come up with for your “war of the century.”
I would be desperate too if saw these trends. Americans are joining anti-gun organizations. Americans ignored your campaign to defeat Democrats. Fewer Americans are buying the products of your sponsors in the gun industry. Public opinion is turning against you. You need to do something, but doubling down with a laughable, lame attack the President’s children? Desperate
I have some advice for you. If I was in charge of the NRA my response would not be to demonize the President for doing what the Secret Service requires of every President, including your darling, George Bush. My response would be to go back to my roots, to the time when you represented gun owners, not gun makers. Back to when you worked for gun safety, not gun promiscuity. My response would be to listen to America and support the President. My response would be to work openly and responsibly to help the President and the Congress to create a policy of common sense responsible gun ownership. My response would be to stop paying off legislators with campaign money to block attempts to help America become a nation of responsible gun owners. And my response would be to do some soul-searching – if I could find a soul in the NRA to search – and understand that I need to change to stay relevant.
But you didn’t do any of that. And the result is that every day, every time you are on television or radio or run an ad, Americas are saying to themselves that you are the problem, that guns don’t kill people, gun lobbyists do. Americans are saying to themselves that each time you campaign-bribe a Congressman to stop a ban on high capacity magazines, it was your hand that slapped the second clip into the rifle at Sandy Hook; every time you intimidate a Senator to filibuster an assault weapon ban it was your finger that pulled the trigger in the Aurora theater; every time you demonize the President for wanting to help responsible gun owners, it is you standing over the bleeding body of Gabby Giffords . Games up, NRA - Americans now see that guns don’t kill people, gun lobbyists do.
So it is time for your members and all gun owners to ditch you. You were founded to advance gun safety and to train Americans in the proper use of firearms. I even took your classes when I was a kid and learned to handle and shoot a borrowed 22. That experience served me well later in high school when I shot a military rifle on the ROTC team. But the days of your focus on gun safety and responsible gun ownership are gone. You have been hijacked by the gun and ammo industry and now you are nothing but a marketing tool for high caliber instruments of death. Responsible gun owners – the decent Americans who collect guns and hunt and target shoot - should abandon you and form a common sense organization that represents them and not the hedge funds and Wall Street investment banks who own stakes in gun companies and the executives who run them.
You see, NRA, the Second Amendment is not about prying guns from cold dead hands. It is about insuring that guns are in the warm living hands of responsible gun owners -who, incidentally, appreciate that the every President’s children are safe and because of it, the nation is a little bit safer.
Read on Fairness Radio with Patrick O'Heffernan 1/15/13 and posted on fairnessradio.com