Opinion | Shame on the NRA
Gracie Fleischman, Opinions Editor
Gun lovers gathered from far and wide to celebrate the Second Amendment at the National Rifle Association’s 147th annual three-day convention last week in Dallas, Texas.
The convention comes a month after an FBI report said that 2017 had more active shooter events than any year since data collection began in 2000. On the last day of the NRA conference, Newsweek reported that 74 people in Chicago have died from gun violence in the past week. Two teens were shot, one killed and one injured, in Baltimore Saturday, May 5, and four more were shot on May 6.
Meanwhile, at the NRA convention, guns, knives and weapons of any kind were prohibited in the arena before and during President Donald Trump’s attendance. And NRA members were surprisingly fine with it – they saw it as a reasonable security precaution for the president, according to The New York Times
Under certain parts of U.S. law – Title 18 code sections 3056 and 1752 – the Secret Service has the authority to ban firearms from places visited by those under Secret Service protection, even in open-carry states. This seems like a relatively mild measure of gun control, and it’s odd that people who so fervently protect the Second Amendment would accept terms that take away what they consider a God-given right. It is ironic that, in order to protect men like Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, NRA members will lower their weapons, bend their strong opinions and obscure code sections of U.S. law.
It sickens me that more than 75,000 people flocked to Dallas for a convention that celebrates firearms, while so many others are murdered every day by the weapons they are so committed to protecting. Again and again, these tragedies occur, but the NRA continues to oppose basic gun control measures. On the NRA’s website, a press release implores its members to contact their lawmakers and ask them to “oppose all gun control schemes.”
Does the NRA not care about the 13,759 Americans who have died or have been injured because of gun violence so far in 2018? What about the 1,076 children and teens (ages 0-17) who have died?
That NRA’s press release addresses the growing calls for reasonable gun control in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, shooting. It claimed that people like me – who support gun control – are simply “exploiting tragedy to advance (my) political agenda” and that I’m “attempting to capitalize on this tragedy” to gain this control.
I’ll leave the capitalizing and exploiting up to the NRA, a money-making organization that profits from gun deaths. Eight lawmakers have been on the receiving end of at least $1 million in campaign contributions from the NRA over the courses of their careers. In the 2018 election cycle so far, gun rights groups, including the NRA, have outspent the competition more than 40 to 1.
Gun-control advocates and I simply ask for innocent lives to be protected more than cold metal weapons. To claim otherwise is a lie and a tactic used by the NRA to justify its actions.
Shame on the NRA. The more it insists on protecting firearms over the lives of innocent Americans, the more history will frown upon it in the future.