"He told the website Eater that the attendees have insulted his wait staff with racial epithets. One person reportedly asked a Latino staff member, “Your illegals are kept in the kitchen, right?”
Another NRA fan reportedly told black employees they “don’t sound black” and asked if they were from India.
“The only reason we need our guns is because of the blacks,” another attendee reportedly declared.
But these repugnant statements are part of a pattern for the NRA and its supporters. The group has embraced racism and bigotry as part of its pro-gun advocacy.
At the convention, NRA board member Ted Nugent released a gun line branded the “American spearchucker series.” The racist term “spearchucker” is a derogatory reference to African people.
Nugent has repeatedly used racist terms and the NRA has not removed him from his position with the organization. Over and over again, Nugent has said “n*****,” and was even defended by the Trump presidential campaign, for which he was a surrogate.
He also described President Barack Obama as a “subhuman mongrel.”
The rest of the NRA isn’t much better.
NRA head Wayne LaPierre referred to areas with blacks in New York as evidence that “looters ran wild.” And he has pushed bigotry towards Latinos with wild claims about “Latin American drug gangs.”
LaPierre also attacked President Obama, noting, “Eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough.”
I think it is more accurate to say it is the activity that many people want regulated, not the person. People can always choose the activities they engage in.
I don’t know, maybe we owe the NRA an apology. I just had a look through some photos of the convention and it’s really a diverse group- they’ve got all kinds: white men, white women, white boys, white girls, old white men, old white women, it’s just diversity central down in Dallas.
To the contrary we all welcome gun control. All Ellens is doing is to let trollies that disagree self filter and take their biz elsewhere. But to my point, there is nothing hostile about it.
I guarantee you the people with the guns are the hostile ones.
Which is part of why, I, as a gun owner, have never, and will never join the NRA.
To clarify: I love to target shoot. It’s a challenge. For me, I got into it when I couldn’t take time away from school to practice enough to maintain my target archery practice (Read as “grad school left me no time to practice and maintain muscle mass to keep doing olympic style target archery”).
I don’t subscribe to the “I needs a gun to defend my household”, because while that could be a possibility, it’s probably more likely that someone’s going to drunkenly drive their car through my living room window (and I haven’t built barrier walls to prevent that statistically unlikely outcome either).
If the NRA were a reasonable organization that was really intent on preserving gun rights, they’d be doing exactly that. They’d be working hard to help enact reasonable checks and balances on gun ownership. It’s their ridiculous “all or none” approach to “defending” the most dick swinging-est aspects of the gun owning population that’s going to eventually do it in.
And… while I know many NRA members that aren’t racist shitweasels, there are also many bad apples in that barrel.
Today’s NRA exists primarily as a vehicle to funnel money from Russia into American politics. Anyone who either joins or receives money from the organization is either an ignorant dupe or an enemy of the United States.
at this and any point in their history. They’re not some grassroots group of well meaning people cynically co-opted by industry, they’re an outreach/advertising arm of the industry, cynically posing as a grassroots group to well meaning people.
They’ve been lobbyists since the early 1970s, but selling guns to people who buy guns is their reason for being.
Yeah, no… I don’t see this. Owning a firearm is protected by the Second Amendment; not being a jerk is just having manners. Sadly, having manners is not mandated by anything I’m aware of.
The NRA was founded in 1871. As a sporting association for competitive rifle shooting, with the stated goal of improving marksmanship among American soldiers. Effectively a sports league specifically for rifle shooting. The organization didn’t get, loosely, involved with regulatory issues until the 30’s at which point they generally supported gun control legislation (though there are various and not very nice reasons for that). What other advocacy they engaged in was largely limited to increasing the popularity of things like target shooting, hunting, etc. Rather a lot like Ducks Unlimited these days.
It was the 70’s take over that turned them into a right wing activist organization. And as their particular nut bar take on fire arms regulation, among other things, turned out to be very good for business ties with industry have increased over the years.
Its important to know that history because the NRA likes to point at it and claim they’re still that. And members who aren’t so comfortable with the national platform use it to excuse their membership. Its why they still have so many members, and so many members that don’t agree with their national political platform. Its why they still run rifle competitions for the Boy Scouts. Its why their firearms safety courses still help you qualify for a gun license despite many of them being a class about how to “tactically defend” your home.
But they aren’t. They’re a right wing, political group. That spends most of their funds pushing conservative policies far beyond the subject of guns.
