In Wayne LaPierre Warns Fellow Gun Rights Supporters Of 'Knockout Gamers,' 'Haters' Samantha Lachman of the Huffington Post clips out three disturbing paragraphs from Wayne LaPierre Speech to the Annual Meeting of the NRA," on Friday.
From a transcript released by the NRA we read the National Rifle Rifle Associations Executive Vice President stirring up fear and anger in a rant that reminds me of paranoid ideation - seeing fearsome enemies closing in from every direction, and conspiracies to "destroy our country."
Freedom has never needed our defense more than now. Almost everywhere you look, something has gone wrong. You feel it in your heart, you know it in your gut. Something has gone wrong. The core values we believe in, the things we care about most, are changing. Eroding. Our right to speak. Our right to gather. Our right to privacy. The freedom to work, and practice our religion, and raise and protect our families the way we see fit. Those aren't old values. They aren't new values. They are core freedoms, the core values that have always defined us as a nation. And we feel them -- we feel them -- slipping away.
LaPierre see enemies of all sorts "surrounding" gun owners; terrorists, killers, and knockout gamers, oh my!
We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and carjackers and knockout gamers and rapers [sic], haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all. I ask you. Do you trust this government to protect you? We are on our own.
And who are the champions of these terrorist, killers, hater carjacker, and knockout gamer? ... Well, that would be us, of course... Democrats led by that incorrigible hater herself, Hillary Clinton. (Snark alert!)
This election is going to be a bare-knuckled street fight. They're going after every House and Senate seat, governor's chair and statehouse they can get their hands on -- laying the groundwork to put a Clinton back in the White House. They intend to finish the job, to fulfill their commitment -- their dream -- of fundamentally transforming America into an America you won't recognize. But mark my words: The NRA will not go quietly into the night. We will fight.
A bevy of Republicans appeared including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Indiana Governor Mike Pence and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.
I haven't the stomach to watch the full 21 minute speech or read the full 7 page transcript link above. I welcome readers to cut and paste and deconstruct any parts of it you feel interesting. Samantha Lachman mentions LaPierre mentions the vast conspiracy of haters includes President Obama and the media. I'd like to find that section as I find it highly irresponsible to be focusing anger towards our president during such an hateful speech filled with so much violent imagery at a gun convention.
3:50 PM PT: NRA Cites Eroding Freedoms, Warns Of Hillary Candidacy
(CNN) -- Gun-rights advocates heralded efforts in punishing legislators at the ballot box in Colorado for new firearms restrictions and ripped into a new, well-funded gun-control effort launched by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
It was all part of a predictable helping of red-meat rhetoric at Friday's opening of the annual National Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis that also included warnings about a potential Hillary Clinton presidential run and an erosion of American freedoms.
Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive vice president, fired up the crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium with trademark inflammatory rhetoric, heavy on anti-government themes.
He accused the Obama administration as well as the "political and media elites" of chiseling away at the rights of Americans.