Comment by epistasis
13 hours ago
The NRA is not a very honest or good gun association, their immediate statement was quite different:
> “For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs. Unsurprisingly, these calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence, tragically resulting in injuries and fatalities.
https://x.com/NRA/status/2015224606680826205?ref_src=twsrc%5...
(they then go on to say "let's withhold judgement until there's an investigation" despite them passing quite extreme judgement, with a direct lie, and getting their judgment extremely wrong when there was lots of video showing it wrong when they posted...)
In light of their large change of attitude, the initial critiques were quite correct.
In another Minnesota case, they refused to defend a gun owner that was shot for having a gun, despite doing everything right when stopped by police.
Other gun associations besides the NRA have been more principled and less partisan.
Rep. Massie is barely a Republican, he's pretty much the only one willing to go against Trump on anything. Right now the Republican party is defined by one thing only: slavish obedience to Trump. For Republicans' sake, and the sake of the Republic, I hope that changes soon.
I don't see inconsistency between the two NRA statements. Your interpretation seems imaginative/unsupported.
Gun rights people understand that owning a gun comes with certain responsibilities. The accusation of "hypocrisy" seems to be based on a cartoon understanding of gun rights from people on the left. Find me a gun rights person who previously claimed that resisting arrest while armed is all fun and games.
https://policelawnews.substack.com/p/cbp-involved-alex-prett...
Always being able to come up with some exception [0] doesn't mean that you're not being hypocritical, it just means that you've tricked yourself into being unable to see it. For another incident that resulted in a widespread display of hypocrisy, look at the public reactions to what happened when Kenneth Walker exercised his right to night time home defense - one of the basic scenarios the NRA is always rallying around. But I'm sure you've settled on some coping excuse for that one as well.
The real thing you need to understand is that this fascist movement will always find some grounds to characterize its targets as worthy of othering. If (when) you get tripped up by it, no amount of conforming or having supported it is going to redeem you in the mind of the mob. Rather it's going to be people just like yourself condemning you.
[0] this one seemingly based on an outright shameless lie of "resisting arrest"
I have no opinion on Kenneth Walker. I'm just annoyed by what I see on social media -- people claiming hypocrisy without any supporting evidence. The flip side of your "exception" point is that you have to actually understand what the person said, and what they believe, before you claim hypocrisy... something that lefty activists in the US largely have no interest in doing.
7 replies →