The National Rifle Association is celebrating its 146th anniversary, so the wealthiest gun prohibition lobbying group – Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety – is asking for contributions, apparently because Bloomy’s billions aren’t enough in their attempt to buy elections and ultimately turn the Second Amendment into a government-regulated privilege.
Far too often, newspapers allude to Everytown and other extremist gun control groups as “gun safety organizations,” which careful examination of their operations reveals they are not. They don’t teach firearms safety courses, nor do they provide insurance to gun owners, nor do they have anything remotely to do with hunter education.
The NRA, on the other hand, has been widely known as “the Red Cross of gun safety” for generations. It was the NRA, not some deep pockets elitists, that launched the nation’s first Hunter Safety course in New York State back in 1949.
It has been the NRA, not Everytown or the Brady Center or the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, which has provided training to tens of thousands of law enforcement professionals and millions of legally-armed private citizens.
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It is the NRA, not gun control crowd, that has developed a network of volunteer firearms instructors across the country.
And, shame on the organization, it has been the NRA that has worked relentlessly on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures around the country to defend, rather than erode, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
So what does Everytown suggest? “Chip in what you can now to support our fight against their extremist agenda.”
According to an online history, the NRA was founded on Nov. 16, 1871. It has grown to 5 million members and there are millions more people who consider themselves members.
Everytown’s beg continues to perpetuate the myth that the NRA has a “guns everywhere” agenda, which is nonsense. The Bloomberg group asserts that NRA “pushes for dangerous policies that make it easier for guns to fall into the hands of convicted felons, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill,” which is ludicrous.
It was the NRA and other gun rights groups that championed the “Three Strikes” and “Hard Time for Armed Crime” initiatives in Washington State that became models for similar laws across the map. Anti-gunners didn’t care for either measure because they focused on putting criminals behind bars and leaving honest citizens alone.
Everytown contends that “the organization that promoted sportsmanship and hunting no longer exists.” Question: Which organization, Everytown or NRA, publishes a magazine called The American Hunter?
At least the NRA can celebrate a birthday. Everytown is something of a test tube baby, a combination of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The Moms group is an Astroturf organization and the Mayors group had so many members who were prosecuted for criminal behavior that it became an embarrassment. So Bloomberg dug $50 million out of his petty cash and launched Everytown to give both groups a facelift.
While the NRA’s mission is to protect a civil right, the goal of gun control groups is to regulate that civil right out of existence.
People can decide which effort has the interests of the public in mind.
