Responding to sandy hook: part five

NOTE:  the essay ripens and while I am battling another bout with a flu bug here is the latest installment.

So it will fall to the poets and organizers – the faith communities and those not bound by the constraints of politics – to advance the cause of the beloved community.  And I discern that this will include challenging the vicious propaganda manufactured by the NRA and its allies while offering clear and compelling alternatives in a quiet, faithful and often poetically playful way.  One of my mentors in both ministry and social justice, Dr. King, put it best:  “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”  It is to this truth is to this that I now turn my attention:  specifically calling into question the current activity and moral legitimacy of the NRA and its allies.

Challenging the Influence of the National Rifle Association

In January 2013, after participating in the White House sponsored task force concerning new safeguards to increase the safety of America’s children in the context of rampant gun violence, the NRA issued a challenge to their supporters in Congress.  Not only did they denigrate the effectiveness of gun control but they diverted public attention from the danger of assault weapons.  By pointing at various straw men – including Hollywood, violent video games and our mental health system – the NRA hoped to distract public attention one more time.  And by utilizing time-tested, political double-speak and buzz words to demonize their opponents, the NRA announced that they were going to go on the offensive against the Obama administration.

The National Rifle Association of America is made up of over 4 million moms and dads, daughters and sons, who are involved in the national conversation about how to prevent a tragedy like Newtown from ever happening again…  we will not allow law-abiding gun owners (and hard working tax payers) to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen. Instead, we will now take our commitment and meaningful contributions to members of congress of both parties who are interested in having an honest conversation about what works — and what does not.  (NRA home page @ http://home.nra.org/#)

Let me be blunt:  I believe that individually and personally the leadership of the NRA is as heart-broken about the massacre at Sandy Hook as anyone.  I am certain, too that this management cadre is as profoundly interested in stemming the culture of violence in the United States that has now reached epidemic proportions as the President. 

At the same time, to use the words of an old political insider from the Watergate scandal, in matters of public trust, “follow the money.”  And when you follow the money, the reality of the NRA shows an organization that is far less a simple association of small town individuals and hunters and much more a national lobbyist working on behalf of gun manufacturers.  In 1990, the NRA created a new “corporate sponsor” program designed, according to their own Vice-President Wayne LaPierre, to be “an opportunity for corporations to partner with the NRA … (in a way that is) geared toward your company’s corporate interests.” (Violence Policy Center, www.vpc.org/ press/1104blood.htm)  In 2005

As a result of this policy change, the gun industry was now able to directly support the NRA with financial gifts.  Of the 24 corporate sponsors, 22 are gun makers including: Arsenal, Inc.; Benelli; Beretta USA Corporation; Browning; DPMS Panther Arms; FNH USA; Glock, Inc.; H&R 1871, LLC; Marlin Firearms; Remington Arms Co., Inc.; SIGARMS, Inc.; Smith & Wesson Corp-oration; Springfield Armory; and, Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc. And of those 22 gun manufacturers, 12 specialize in assault weapons and/or the production of high-capacity ammunition maga-zines. (Peter Drier, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/nra-gun-manufacturers_b_2468565.html and Friends of the NRA   http://www.friendsofnra.org/ National.aspx?cid=2&sid=0)

According to Forbes Magazine, “the gun industry – led by Ruger – has benefited tremendously from the NRA.  According to IRS fillings, from 2004 to 2010, the NRA’s revenue from fundraising — including gifts from gun makers who benefit from its political activism — grew twice as fast as its income from members’ dues.” (Peter Cohan, Forbes, www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/ 2012/07/23/the-nra-industrial-complex/ )

Over 50 firearms-related companies have given at least $14.8 million to NRA according to its list for a donor program that began in 2005. That was the year NRA lobbyists helped get a federal law passed that limits liability claims against gun makers.  Former NRA President Sandy Froman wrote that (this act) “saved the American gun industry from bankruptcy,” according to Bloomberg.

So while it was once true that the NRA was driven and funded by sports enthusiasts and individual hunters and outdoors-people, today less than half the organization’s funding come from program fees or membership dues.

“The bulk of the group's money now comes in the form of contributions, grants, royalty income and advertising, much of it originating from gun industry sources.” Specifically:

Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala's, Sturm Ruger & Co, and Smith & Wesson.  And the NRA also made $20.9 million — about 10 percent of its revenue — from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990. (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-nra-has-sold-out-to-the-gun-industry-to-become-their-top-crisis-pr-firm-2012-12#ixzz2Hz5YPBuT)

Walter Hickey of The Business Insider has noted that this turning away from an authentically member-driven organization to a corporate lobbyist has had two important consequences:

·        First, the gun industry has created a highly effective marketing mechanism through their NRA sponsorships that nourishes a direct link with consumers.  There are immediate economic benefits to having a built-in link with those most interested in your products – and weapons manufacturers have reaped record profits. 

·        Second, these same manufacturers have also been shielded from direct blame in the wake for such acts of mass violence as Virginia State, Aurora, CO, Tucson, AZ or Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.  In a word, the NRA has been able to run effective interference so that the CEOs of these corporations are not directly held accountable for the massacres let alone forced to personally testify before Congress.

It's possible that without the NRA, people would be protesting outside of Glock, SIG Sauer and Freedom Group — the makers of the guns used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — and dragging the CEOs in front of cameras and Congress. That is certainly what happened to tobacco executives when their products continued killing people. Notoriously, tobacco executives even attempted to form their own version of the NRA in 1993, seeing the inherent benefit to the industry that such an effort would have. Philip Morris bankrolled the National Smokers Alliance, a group that never quite had the groundswell of support the industry wanted. Notably, the tide has shifted slightly in the wake of Sandy Hook, with Cerberus Capital Management's decision to sell Freedom Group, the company that makes the Bushmaster rifle.

(http://www.businessinsider.com/the-nra-has-sold-out-to-the-gun-industry-to-become-their top-crisis-pr-firm-2012-12)

What a far cry from the original intent when the National Rifle Association was created in 1871. Two Civil War veterans, Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate, in the aftermath of their experiences in combat realized that poor marksmanship was partially to blame for the war’s bloody duration.  Their solution was to “promote, teach and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis." (http://www.nrahq.org/history.asp) In time, the NRA opened shooting ranges throughout the country to advance careful marksmanship and gun safety.  After WWII, they expanded their educational efforts to include hunters in 1949 and later still law enforcement in 1956.

Since its inception, the NRA had consistently supported common sense gun legislation as well as education.  In 1934 they endorsed and help secure passage of the National Firearms Act that prohibited the sale and distribution of sawed-off shot guns and machine guns.  It was under-stood that this legislation was essential for helping law enforcement officers fight organized crime.  Likewise, in the 1968 after the assassinations Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., a law was passed to make the guns used in these – and the assassination of President John Kennedy in 1963 – harder to acquire.  “When he testified before Congress on the legislation, NRA President Harold W. Glassen said that "200 million guns did not strike down Senator Kennedy; only one did." And the NRA endorsed the law.” (http://www.nationaljournal.com /congress-legacy/the-evolution-of-the-nra-s-defense-of-guns-20121221)

This public spirited commitment was altered, however, by a dramatic leadership change in the 1977.  In what some have called a corporate coup, the NRA’s emphasis shifted from that of gun education and safety, to a hyper-conservative political agenda that not only resonated with the Republican Party’s so-called “southern strategy” but enflamed rural America’s fears over alleged violations of the Second Amendment.  

Given the rising support for increased gun control in the United States during 1970s – fundamentally a backlash against rising urban crime rates and Saturday Night Specials – the old guard NRA leadership chose to leave the world of Washington politics, relocate to Colorado Springs, CO and deepen their mission to hunting and sports activity.  Their primary interest in weapons was recreational including marksmanship, hunting and safety training.  Jonah Sugarmann writes in his history of the NRA that the old guards’ “concerns of over gun control were limited to its effects on traditional sporting activities. (http://www.vpc.org/ nrainfo/chapter2.html)

This enraged an emerging group of gun-rights hardliners who thought guns weren't primarily about hunting; they were for self-defense against criminals. Led by Harlon Carter, the hardliners secretly organized against the NRA's moderate leadership at the annual meeting of the membership in Cincinnati. Manipulating the rules of order, the hardliners staged a coup from the floor.

When the sun rose the next day, the entire leadership of the NRA had been replaced by strong advocates of the right to bear arms. Rather than move to Colorado Springs, the new NRA built a larger headquarters in the Washington, D.C., area and made its central mission to fight against gun control. The hardliners' answer to gun violence wasn't more gun control. It was more guns. If only more law-abiding people were armed and prepared to fight back, then criminals wouldn't be able to so easily victimize Americans (In this) the new NRA became an important member of the New Right coalition that lifted Ronald Reagan to the presidency. (http://www.sfgate.com /opinion/article/NRA-took-hard-right-after-leadership-coup-3741640.php)

Harlon Carter’s 1977 “Revolt at Cincinnati” began the transformation of the NRA from a once mainstream organization committed to the common good to a polarizing political network that continues to advocate a paranoid vision of government.