A few weeks ago, I visited my daughter in Grinnell, Iowa. I was fascinated to see a giant, shiny, new building near I-80, with a parking lot full of expensive pickups and SUVs. I learned that it was the headquarters of Brownells, a massive and venerable weapons retailer, one of the largest suppliers of gun accessories in the world. They sell hard-to-find gun parts and collectors’ editions of old rifles. They are also innovative leaders in the trade of human-killing machines. Right now their website proclaims that they are “Building Freedom; One AR15 at a Time!” Because, you know, nothing is more freedom than carrying a gun around town that looks like it came from the set of Apocalypse Now, and pretending you have some important mission to perform with it.
This company has long been owned by the Brownell family, whose current heir is Pete, also known as the fucking President of the NRA. Pete Brownell presents himself as a soccer-dad kind of guy. His family lives in a run-of-the-mill McMansion on a normal street of the Grinnell grid. They’ve got several kids in the local schools and apparently, Pete’s wife is a liberal, and the president of the Grinnell public school board. (She must get the vapors when she gets to hang out with Ted Nugent.)
Pete keeps a very low profile, playing the local philanthropist and small-town hero. His house is blurred out in Google Street View. He’s donated to Grinnell College, and local hospitals. (Though his donations to Grinnell have led to protests and efforts to reform the college’s gift policy, and he has cynically and condescendingly allowed his interaction with Grinnell to be used as PR in NRA publications.)
Pete’s schtick is that he is just a down-to-earth family man, raising his kids in a small, wholesome Midwest college town. A lot of my information here comes from a fascinating article about him in the Daily Mail. As you can see, he’s a handsome triathlete who could be sitting next to you at your kid’s band concert.
Pete wants to appear above the fray – described by a former Grinnell College president as “a good father, a good husband, a good community man…,’.
But the reality is very different. The Daily Mail reports this about Brownell’s second cousin, “ ‘I can’t believe it,’ Molsberry says of Brownell’s position as president of the NRA. ‘It’s an absolutely mystery to me. I can’t reconcile it. I can’t see how the guy I know can be part of what I see coming out of the NRA – their videos, their stance, their money … It disgusts me that you can actually do that.”
It is clear that this small-town nice guy is leading a double life. As NRA minions smear children who just survived a mass shooting, Pete Brownell is silent. As gun sales and donations to the NRA spike after attacks, he’s coolly counting the money in the back room, his business and the NRA both profiting from the blood of other peoples’ children. As one of the ugliest organizations in American history mocks victims and plays to the bizarre Freudian fantasies of bitter white men, Brownell “supports wildlife preservation” and sips lattes in the local coffee house.
There aren’t a lot of news articles about Pete out there, strange for the preznit of an organization that revels in the slime-light. There doesn’t even seem to be a Wikipedia entry about him, for crying out loud. But stories that have been written about him are troubling. For example, Brownell played a big role in establishing the NRA’s ties with Russia, even visiting and hanging out with Alexander Torshin in 2015. Oh, it is abundantly clear that he’s all in with the NRA’s mission and tactics!
Pete Brownell is Exhibit One of what REALLY motivates the NRA. He has gotten very, very wealthy selling assault weapons, ammo, and high-capacity magazines. This is the point of the NRA: manipulating blue-collar gun loves in order to make sure arms dealers like Pete Brownell get rich.
But it is problematic that this guy isn’t being held publicly accountable for the actions of the organization HE LEADS. He gets the prestige that comes with being a nice guy, a philanthropist, but doesn’t seem to pay any price for being the ring master of the NRA’s feces-hurling circus of freaks and clowns. We all know about assholes like LaPierre, Loesch, and Nugent. But Pete Brownell, in failing to distance himself from them and sanction their disgusting attacks on children, is as big a dick as they are. When Pete Brownell doesn’t speak out against mobs of NRA members and supporters who threaten the lives of crime victims and activists, he’s right down in the muck with them. But so far, he hasn’t gotten his nicely-tailored hunting duds dirty.
Well, I think it’s time for Pete to face the ugliness of his organization. And so I propose a new hashtag: #WheresNRAPete. We need to call out the NRA and begin pinning their ugliness on Pete Brownell. He should be forced to either own or repudiate the vileness of the NRA.
I’m not good at the Twitter, but I hope that we can begin to call this “affable” soccer dad out for the violent, ugly behavior that he sanctions and financially profits from. Pete Brownell shouldn’t be able to show his face in public without being called to task for leading an organization that values money and guns over children’s lives.