By SJ Otto
I have never liked the NRA (National Riffle Association).
That is not because I am against guns, owning them or even carrying them. But
The NRA is an organization that clearly favors Republicans and believes that
gun rights are more important than anything. If a person is mentally ill, the NRA
protects them. There are no gun laws that the NRA approves of. At some point in
time, they may support the rights of kindergarten children to carry guns.
Also, the NRA wields a lot of power. No Republican dares to
oppose any position of the NRA. Some Democrats have challenged the NRA and they
have found their careers challenged by this very powerful organization.
So is it any surprise that Ilhan Omar got slammed for blaming NRA for Virginia shooting that left 12 people dead?[1] The NRA may not be directly responsible for
these killings, but they have clearly influence this event and many others over
the last several years. There are a lot of young people who are not just goingto let the Republicans and the NRA do nothing about all the school shootings.
Their time is coming. Young people today are going
to demand changes at some point in time.
I remember when I sat on the Citizen Participation
Organization, of Wichita
for City Commission, back in the 1980s. It was an elected position for
placement on an advisory board. That organization was later dissolved and
replaced with a boar that was chosen from the City Commission rather that
elected. The name was changed to the Citizen Advisory Board.
The point I’m making is that we were responding to a city
ordinance that restricted gun sales in the city of Wichita . The building was packed with
concerned citizens who opposed the ordinance. It was that night that I realized
how intimidating such a group could be for an elected official.
So I now realize what Representative Ilhan Omar was up
against when she criticized the NRA.
Fox News[2] posted an article, “Ilhan Omar slammed for blaming NRA for Virginia shooting that
left 12 people dead.”
As with many conservative organizations, the Fox News
article portrayed Omar as a simpleton who got all of her information wrong:
“National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Dana Loesch ripped
Rep. Ilhan Omar after she blamed I the gun rights group
for the deaths inside a Virginia Beach municipal building on Friday.
The embattled Minnesota Democrat took a swipe at the NRA just
hours after a disgruntled city employee went on a shooting spree that left 12
people dead and four more injured……
“I am outraged and heartbroken,” she wrote in
a tweet. “How much longer will we ignore the pain of our communities? We need
to immediately confront the power of the NRA and end the epidemic of gun
violence in this country.”
Of course I agree with her. Only conservative Republicans
would disagree with this. As we can imagine, other conservative news sites
attacked Omar for blaming
the NRA. In an article called “Here Comes The Blame Game: Ilhan Omar Wants
To 'Confront The NRA' Over Virginia Beach Shooting,” for the site called Townhall,
Beth Baumann said:|
“Sounds like Omar missed the memo: the gunman purchased his legally. He went through a background check, the very
same background check anti-gunners are continually saying
don't take place. The gunman had nothing in
his background, as far as we know, to indicate that he would carry out this
kind of attack. Not only that but suppressors (or "silencers" as gun
control advocates like to call them) are already regulated. People have to pay
a $200 fee, file an application, go through a background check, wait nine
months to a year and then maybe they'll
get approved for one. They want a ban on "high-capacity" magazines
but that didn't stop other mass shootings from taking place in gun control
heavy states, like California .”
These authors all act as if Omar is a complete idiot who
knows nothing about the things she says. And yet Omar says what a lot of us are
saying: “That the NRA has stopped any changes in gun laws—good or bad.” The NRA
has consistently prevented ANY kinds of gun laws that might have changed or influenced
this event (or others like it). Since this last year alone there have been an
estimated 149
killed in mass shootings such as the Virginia
shooting that left 12 people dead. Omar is right to blame the NRA, for at least
some of this. Many of us all feel the same way she does. So the conservatives
may claim that Omar was “slammed by the NRA,” but many of us realize that the
NRA has unfairly slammed a politician who had every reason to blame them for
the latest shooting.
Many of us back Omar for what she has said: which we feel is
the truth.
[2]Fox News, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-slammed-nra-virginia-shooting
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