The anti-gun Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a Michael Bloomberg-supported lobbying group that was ranked as the top “astroturf” organization in America, says it will “be in Atlanta” promising a demonstration against the National Rifle Association and President Donald Trump’s appearance.
The NRA gathers in Atlanta next week for its annual members’ meeting and convention. President Trump will be joining them. He spoke last year as a candidate and received the NRA’s earliest-ever endorsement. He returns as president, no doubt grateful for the support.
The Moms group, along with Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, hit the top of the “astroturf” (aka “fake grassroots”) list assembled by award-winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson.
In a story published by the Washington Times, Moms’ founder Shannon Watts vowed that “volunteers will be in Atlanta, just as we have been showing up at town halls and in statehouses across the country to stand up for the safety of our families and communities.
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“We will not be silenced,” she stated.
They may be overwhelmed, however, as they have been over the past few years that demonstrators have appeared, either across the street from various convention centers hosting the NRA event, or in nearby locations.
Almost invariably, these anti-rights demonstrators have put some distance between themselves and the NRA.
A lesson may have been learned in Minneapolis back in 1994, when a group of protesters showed up right outside the convention center. They suddenly found themselves confronted by more than a hundred NRA women who poured out of the front entrance. For a few minutes it was pretty noisy!
It has been more than three decades since a sitting president has addressed an NRA annual convention. That was Ronald Reagan back in 1983.
Trump is traveling to Atlanta to be among people who helped put him in the White House. He reportedly is skipping the White House press dinner, possibly because the media tried to keep him out.
Many in the gun rights community say the president has kept his word to find a solid appointment to the Supreme Court, and if he continues to name good judges to the lower federal courts, the playing field will level out.
As for Watts and her group, nobody at NRA wants to silence them. The rationale seems to be to let them speak, thus removing any public doubt about who is on the correct side of a prickly constitutional debate.
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