The NRA: Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

I used to check out the National Rifle Association websites a few times a week while I had my morning coffee. After that, I wouldn’t think much about the gun-crazy organization and its smug, self-righteous leadership for the rest of the day.

Not anymore. Since I learned last spring that the nation’s most powerful lobby group (at least according to Forbes Magazine) is holding its annual convention in Pittsburgh from April 16 to 18, I’ve been busy planning an appropriate "welcome."

Why does the NRA get my hackles up this way? Well, despite the fact that much of my time is spent working on gun violence prevention, I’m not a single-issue guy. Organizations I work closely with also oppose racism, bigotry, intolerance, and injustice of all types. And the NRA leadership has made outlandish statements full of racism, bigotry, intolerance and has instituted programs which spawn injustice of many types. This is direct opposition to the peaceful, tolerant world I spend every day working to bring about. And now it’s descending on MY city!? You can bet the NRA isn't just for breakfast anymore.

I can tell you why I believe the NRA is all these things, but it’s much more effective coming from the NRA leadership’s words and actions:

Charlton Heston: In 1997, at a gathering of the Free Congress Foundation, the NRA’s then-president, declared "cultural warfare" against "the fringe propaganda of the homosexual coalition, the feminists who preach that it’s a divine duty to hate men, blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other …[and] Clinton’s cultural shock troops [who] participate in homosexual-rights fundraisers but boycott gun-rights fundraisers." And these remarks were later endorsed by white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan Grandsomethingorother David Duke. Heston also told Michael Moore that America’s problem with gun violence is the result of its "mixed ethnicity" in an interview included in Moore’s Academy Award-winning documentary, Bowling for Columbine.

Long-time NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre, the guy who really runs the NRA, said in a speech to the NRA membership last year, "The first target in homeland security shouldn't be the people of the homeland. It should be finding people who are not citizens of our homeland, who don't belong in our homeland along with aliens on work visas or green cards or student passes." Earlier, he had written, "There are many politicians willing to sacrifice the Second Amendment as the first step in the homogenization of American culture."

Jeff Cooper, NRA Board of Directors: "…no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society..."

If you want that from a more "scientific" standpoint: Paul Blackman, Head NRA Researcher: "In fact, studies of homicide victims – especially the increasing number of younger ones – suggest they are frequently criminals themselves and/or drug addicts or users. It is quite possible that their deaths, in terms of economic consequences to society, are net gains."

Board member and embittered rocker Ted Nugent: "Apartheid isn't that cut and dry. All men are not created equal..."

The NRA is not the "sporting group" that it claims to be. Rather, since the late sixties, the NRA has evolved into the leading mainstream force for white, male-dominated, heterosexual America. Not satisfied with being a politically-based front for nationalist organizations such as armed private militias, the NRA is starting its own militia. Under the guise of protecting their streets and homes, they’re starting a national ARMED neighborhood watch.  They’re so anxious to see armed conflict in the US that they’ve decided to start their own army!

The NRA leadership promotes sexism and violence against women:  In addition to Heston’s quote above, the NRA has tried to block laws that keep guns out of the hands of people under domestic restraining orders, such as Pennsylvania’s Protection From Abuse orders (PFAs).  While they failed to block a national law, they still work to block the information flow which would get the guns out and keep the guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.  They also sponsored the legal defense of a Texas man who was accused of retaining his guns while under a domestic restraining order, arguing that he had a Constitutional right to do so.  Fortunately the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals disagreed with the NRA’s extremist position and they lost.  The NRA doesn’t care about the safety of women, or anyone else!

The NRA leadership promotes hate against foreigners, and increases the level of fear of all dark-skinned peoples in the name of "homeland security."  The NRA’s plans for an armed militia (see above), are based partly around a perceived threat of terrorism.  By promoting armed watches that have the dual "mission" of "protecting" homes and "reducing" the terrorism threat, they are creating a potential tinder box in which anyone with dark skin or an accent will be in danger.
 
And of course, the NRA leadership promotes good, old-fashioned gun violence in our community:  By systematically blocking almost every single attempt to regulate guns – including and especially laws which would keep guns out of the hands of children, the mentally ill, and even known violent criminals – the NRA insures that there is a much larger market for the gun industry, and insures that the annual bloodbath of 30,000 gun deaths and another 90,000 non-fatal injuries continue to occur year after year after year.

In his keynote address to last year’s NRA convention in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida thanked the NRA membership for "electing" his brother President of the United States.  It should be noted that this year’s keynote speaker in Pittsburgh is none other than "Acting President" Dick Cheney (as Michael Moore likes to call him).  Also, NRA president Kayne Robinson said during the first Bush campaign that "If we win, we'll have a president where we work out of their office." Protesting the NRA is protesting the Bush Administration.  Stopping the NRA is stopping Bush.

And it can be done. While the NRA claims to have "elected" Bush, and while they claim that they have politicians running scared by the voters who are turning out in droves to elect pro-gun candidates, actually, the opposite is true. John Ashcroft lost his Senate seat to a dead man, largely because of his extreme stance on the gun issue in Missouri – a pro-gun state. Ed Rendell handily beat Mike Fisher for Pennsylvania governor, despite the NRA’s best efforts at electing Fisher – and we host more gun shows than any other state except Texas. In Virginia, another pro-gun state, in last year’s general election, several seats were taken by gun violence prevention proponents. And the list goes on - but the NRA never lets the facts get in the way of its propaganda.

Public opinion polls in Pennsylvania and nationwide demonstrate overwhelming support for reasonable laws to increase gun owner responsibility and to make it harder for criminals, terrorists, children and the mentally ill to buy guns. Among gun owners, support outstrips objections by a good margin. Even a majority of NRA members supports these kind of laws. But the NRA leadership goes merrily on – opposing every single proposal to regulate guns. Why? Because they have a greater agenda – one in which there’s plenty of room for guns, but not for the types of people who don’t match the NRA’s vision of America. Let’s stop them now before they make any more progress toward this goal.

- By Nathaniel Glosser
President, Rosenberg Institute for Peace & Justice
Executive Director, Pennsylvanians Against Handgun Violence/SafePennsylvania