Wayne LaPierre has been laying low since the NRA's victory over stronger gun laws in Congress, and his subsequent victory lap of crazy in their convention in May. While this has allowed Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt to hog the headlines over at Right Wing Watch, the NRA is still keeping busy. Just more quietly, of late.
Media Matters documents the NRA's latest contradiction. In this case, the party line has flipped from throwing the mentally ill under the bus, to making up lies about gun confiscation. They have cast one such person, who lost access to guns after being involuntarily committed, as "wrongly targeted" -- as victimized by a system that, just a few months ago, Wayne LaPierre couldn't get enough of.
So, while in the wake of Newtown the NRA chose the mentally ill as their scapegoat for gun violence, as time passes we can see them walking this back to their original position -- guns for everyone, no matter the risk.
For some (recent) history, I wrote about the NRA's choice of scapegoat back in March. And since Lindsey Graham led the NRA's counter-attack to stronger gun laws, championing the NRA-approved bill targeting the mentally ill, digging into Graham's legislative history proved him to be a hypocrite.
Graham signed Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act
A bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to clarify the conditions under which certain persons may be treated as adjudicated mentally incompetent for certain purposes [including 2nd Amendment rights].
Prohibits, in any case arising out of the administration of laws and benefits by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, considering any person who is mentally incapacitated, deemed mentally incompetent, or experiencing an extended loss of consciousness from being considered adjudicated as a mental defective for purposes of the right to receive or transport firearms without the order or finding of a judge, magistrate, or other judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.
So that's what they were up to in 2009. With veterans as their cover, the gun lobby established themselves as more interested in keeping guns in the hands of people at greater risk of doing harm with them. Contrast this with Wayne LaPierre's
demonization of the mentally ill after Newtown:
We have no national database of these lunatics... We have a completely cracked mentally ill system that's got these monsters walking the streets.
The Economist then quoted the Democratic governor of Connecticut and prophet Dannel Malloy.
So what is really going on? Interviewing the Democratic governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy, he accused the NRA of a "bait-and-switch", in which the gun lobby is trying to appear constructive without allowing any gun rules to change.
That was written in mid-March. Looking back, what happened?
Precisely that.
With that in mind, let's return to the present. On June 20, the NRA's news show concocted a false story of a person "wrongly targeted" by a program in California to recover guns from felons and other people prohibited from having them. Media Matters explains:
Setting up the segment, NRA News' investigative reporter Ginny Simone said that the special would tell the story of a person who was "wrongly targeted," despite the fact that the person featured is prohibited by federal law from owning a gun. NRA News host Cam Edwards also claimed that "there are so many issues right now for the law-abiding in California because you got lawmakers going after their rights, meanwhile the criminals are getting put back out onto the streets, and it sounds like you've got a government that is in many ways just out of control."
After setting the scene with much fear and trepidation, the NRA goes right ahead and documents an instance of guns being taken from a home. Where a person had been involuntarily committed, prohibited from having guns -- yet they call this person a victim. They take the example of someone who should not have access to guns, someone Wayne LaPierre would call a "lunatic" or a "monster," and lie about them to stoke the terror of law-abiding gun owners losing their guns to government tyranny and confiscation. Again, Media Matters spells out the lies:
The special focuses on the story of Lynette and David Phillips. Earlier this year, law enforcement enforcing the APPS list visited the Phillips' home and confiscated three firearms, one of which was registered to Lynette Phillips. Phillips ended up on the APPS list because she was involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital. According to a California attorney general spokesperson, two guns registered to her husband were also taken because, "The prohibited person can't have access to a firearm."
The NRA News special acknowledges that Phillips was involuntarily committed, but makes no mention that this makes her prohibited from owning a firearm under federal law.
The claim furthered by NRA News that Phillips was "wrongly targeted" and is a "victim[] of a system" -- even though she cannot legally own a gun -- is evidence of the NRA's duplicitous stance on mental health and guns.
And in practice, of course,
the NRA worked to kill stronger gun laws, presenting in their place law that could only loosen up restrictions on guns for the dangerously mentally ill.
And when nothing happened, the NRA won -- oh, that's not quite right...I shouldn't say nothing changed. While the status quo reigned in their debate on gun violence, the NRA did slip some new laws into a continuing resolution back in March to loosen up gun laws some more and to protect corrupt gun dealers.
It'll be like this as long as the majority favoring stronger gun laws allow themselves to be drowned out by the loud minority. They'll show up here, no doubt. Even as some Senators like my own Jeff Flake, 'lower than pond scum,' and Kelly Ayotte are on the run, the loud minority will make a point to show up whenever and wherever they can. Here's another example from Buzzfeed...
Four days after supporters of Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte interrupted and heckled an anti-gun demonstrator whose daughter was killed in a shooting, her office is trying to lower the temperature of an increasingly nasty debate over gun control.
“While Senator Ayotte wasn’t there, she hopes that everyone would be civil at all events no matter what their viewpoint is,” said Ayotte spokesman Jeff Grappone in a statement to BuzzFeed.
A YouTube video from the event that spread this week shows one gun rights protester man perch himself directly next to the father and repeatedly interrupt him. People in the crowd also began changing “Ayotte! Ayotte!” while he attempted to speak.
Senator Ayotte is still running scared from her own supporters, whose support she
earned by joining the Republican filibuster against stronger gun laws. Supporters willing to disrupt a victim of gun violence, a father who lost his daughter, a man who was shot himself. Folks willing to stand next to such a man and interrupt and heckle. This is the quality of our opposition.
It's going to take time to break down the NRA and its supporters, the diehard gun enthusiasts. It's going to take some effort for the clear majority to make enough noise to drown out this minority, for us to do enough to hold the gun lobby accountable. The sort of change isn't going to come easy. I don't know that it ever has. I am not and have never been especially sanguine about our chances, either. As a liberal, however, I am used to my worthy causes not necessarily translating into easy political battles. I don't know if the apparent large majority in favor of stronger gun laws will care enough about it to back that up with some action. Time will tell.