It is sadly fitting that the
NRA is holding its convention in Indianapolis. We have a city government that
pretends to worry about the preponderance of weapons. But, in fact, we are a city of
gun shows and gun stores, a horrifying number of murders, and home to a state
legislature that is getting dangerously wackier by the session when it comes to
gun laws.
I am sickened that our city’s
convention and visitors’ bureau bid for the NRA convention. I am also repulsed
that 70,000 gun nuts (c’mon, if they’re so invested in the NRA and its agenda
that they attend its national convention, they deserve that name) are in our
city. Most of us don’t want them here, but our voices are drowned out by the
politicians who are strongly supported by the NRA.
Talk often centers on keeping
guns out of the hands of young, irresponsible blacks (a good idea), but nothing
is said about keeping them out of the hands of NRA members (also, a good idea).
They are, after all, the ones who control the legislators who won’t stand up
for requiring background checks, making semi-automatic weapons illegal, or
reversing the alarming trend to allow guns to be almost anywhere.
The Indianapolis media gets hysterical
about guns only when one is used by a young black to kill a young white (a very recent occurrence). While
our hearts go out to the victim’s family for this senseless killing, if the
races had been reversed, instead of the feeding frenzy we witnessed, we’d have
a two-column-inch story in the back of the paper.
And, founding yet another anti-gun
group, as Shannon Watts did, is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
If you are finally angry enough to get involved, you should have put your time, money, and
energy to work for an existing organization. (Even your collaboration with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't erasing the fact that you should have avoided the founding of your own group.) Then immediately seek, as many of us are
doing, to get all of the gun-control groups to merge to become one, large opponent of the NRA. That
will begin to change the political climate and give us a safer America.
