<snark>The National Rifle Association has very helpfully created a list of organizations and people whom all the rest of us should support. But they are so modest about their achievement that they have now hidden this most helpful feature of their Web site. Twice.</snark>
Yeah, sure, as if.
The NRA is running scared. They are on the wrong side of this issue. No, they are the wrong side, and getting wronger, and it isn't going to go away this time. Gun Owners of America and the more serious conspiracy nuts are even wronger, and even nastier about it. But they don't matter. For the public generally, the NRA is the public face of increasingly fuming, increasingly impotent RKBA wingnuttery.
This list that I am recommending to you for your patronage is becoming known as the NRA Enemies List. It is actually the list of those that the NRA says have supported anti-gun legislation: "National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies". Supposedly, they have supported full background checks, bans of various sorts on weapons of mass murder, and allowing public health and law enforcement agencies to do their jobs. I am sure that a lot of them have done so, by the standards of RKBA paranoia on behalf of gun and ammunition manufacturer profits. But some have stated publicly that they don't know why they are on the list, and the NRA won't tell them.
From September to January the Enemies List was a prominent feature of the NRA Web site, presumably for boycott purposes, but they took it down after Lawrence O'Donnell drew attention to it on The Last Word two days ago. Then when HuffPo and others drew further attention to them taking it down, and found a test page holding an earlier version of the list, they took that one down too.
Oh, they can run, but they can't hide from the wonderful Internet Archive Wayback Machine, a search engine for past versions of Web sites. We have the list where they can't take it down again!
Who knew that eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream while watching Star Trek reruns (original or Next Generation) was making a stand on gun massacres?
I just love it when the Right makes itself into the best argument for Progressive issues. Hardly anybody is better at it than the NRA. Richard Mourdock and Todd Akins are pikers. Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, of course, and I am sure that others here have their favorites, but even they can't always outdo the concentrated invective and baffled impotence at changing national public opinion of the NRA.
Lawrence O'Donnell has been alternating between controlled fury and pointing and laughing over this particular story, highlighting different selections from the list for the last two days on The Last Word on MSNBC. On Wednesday, it was medical organizations and a surprising number of Jewish organizations, most notably the Anti-Defamation League. Not AIPAC, though.
Lawrence was complaining that he couldn't understand how the American Association of Neurological Surgeons got on the list, along with the AMA and several pediatric groups. I can tell him: gunshot wounds. Whether accident, attempted murder, or attempted suicide. Which the CDC and NIH are prohibited by law (the Tiahrt Amendments) from studying as public health issues. Similarly there is no mystery in the reasons for listing associations of lawyers, police, educators, mental health professionals, churches, environmentalists, drug stores, local governments, workers, the elderly, Blacks, Latinos, women, and of course any progressive political organizations. I have to admit that I don't know why they list the YWCA, but not the YMCA.
Whew! Who's left? Oh, right. Gun nuts and those whom the NRA can successfully lie to. They're coming for your guns! Tyranny! Loosely organized bands of lunatics can successfully oppose the entire US military! Because tyranny! OMG, he's Blaaaaack! and he's baaaaack! Did I mention tyranny?
My wife was in medical records at Stanford Hospital in California for some years, and it is not violating doctor-patient confidentiality to tell you what she told me yesterday: Stanford had a metal detector and an armed guard at the entrance to their ER because determined would-be murderers have been known to follow their victims into the ER to finish the job. Having detectors and guards (some with guns, some with tasers) is fairly common practice at big city hospitals, even though ER shootings and hospital shootings more generally are fairly rare. Only 154 incidents over 11 years are recorded in a Johns Hopkins study.
So, yeah, doctors against death and maiming. Little kiddy doctors most of all. Because
First, do no harm.
Here is the NRA's description of the Enemies List.
The following organizations have lent monetary, grassroots or some other type of direct support to anti-gun organizations. In many instances, these organizations lent their name in support of specific campaigns to pass anti-gun legislation such as the March 1995 HCI "Campaign to Protect Sane Gun Laws." Many of these organizations were listed as "Campaign Partners," for having pledged to fight any efforts to repeal the Brady Act and the Clinton "assault weapons" ban. All have officially endorsed anti-gun positions.
There you go. The most comprehensive list you are going to find of people and organizations you should support with your entertainment and consumer dollars or with your contributions. Also Garry Trudeau's
Doonesbury, of course, and numerous other cartoonists and commentators.
I'm not going to dissect the entire list here. It has drawn substantial attention elsewhere, and any Kossack can read it and weep. But there are a few things I can't resist sharing, along with links to some of the best commentary.
Daily Kos, Jan. 31: Meet the NRA's enemies list. As you'd expect, it's nuts. We were there first!
NRA Anti-Gun List Missing From Gun Group's Website (UPDATE)
WORD? NRA Puts Beyonce, Bon Jovi & Boyz II Men On Their "Enemies" List (DETAILS)
NRA's enemies list: Most of America
The 15 Most Bizarre People On The NRA's Enemies List
Who You Calling Anti-Gun? NRA Targets Have No Clue Why They Made the ‘Enemies’ List
What do Sara Lee, Hallmark and Bob Barker have in common? They have no idea why the National Rifle Association hates them. Eliza Shapiro on the ongoing mystery of the ‘enemies’ list.
Lane Filler: The NRA has an 'enemies list' and I want to be on it
Get in line. Like Art Buchwald demanding to be put on the Nixon Enemies List (He was, the next day) a lot of people in public life who favor sanity in gun regulation have been outraged, outraged I tell you, not to be on the NRA list.
What Do I Have To Do To Make the NRA's 'Enemies List?'
And from the other side, the Breitbart take: Connecticut Senator Murphy Rants About NRA 'Enemies List'
I have already mentioned Ben & Jerry's Homemade ice cream. Here are some others that you can consider giving some of your business.
- Hallmark Cards
- Levi Strauss jeans
- Sara Lee cakes
- Sprint phone service
- Stonyfield Farms yogurt
- Time Warner entertainment
- Working Assets/Credo Mobile phone service
Even though some of them don't know why, as noted above. I say, think about supporting them anyway. The unwitting enemy of my enemy isn't automatically my friend, but we should certainly discuss it.
And here, representing a laundry list rather than an effective enemies list of such disparate entertainment figures as Mel Brooks, Leonard Nimoy, and Beyoncé (Did you hear that she won the Super Bowl?), is Captain Jean-Luc Picard himself, quoted by HuffPo.
Sir Patrick Stewart, the British actor, wrote on Twitter that the NRA enemies list was "the most prestigious list I've ever made."
Make it so.
Late addition: My message with a link here was posted to the Doonesbury Blowback feed.
From: themanagement@doonesbury.com Date: Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 10:50 AM
Subject: BLOWBACK posted
To: " "
Thanks for your comment, which I've posted on our BLOWBACK page.
All the best,
David Stanford, Duty Officer
Doonesbury Town Hall
On Feb 14, 2013, at 5:55 PM, >
> wrote:
Information
Name Ed Cherlin
Email echerlin@gmail.com
City Columbus
State Indiana USA
Message body
It's kudos to Doonesbury for making the NRA Enemies List while others are outraged that they didn't. The NRA has taken the list down twice, but it is still available on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. See http://www.dailykos.com/...