The Gun Group: N.R.A. Opens an All-Out Drive for Bush and Its Views By JAMES DAO, NYTimes
When the National Rifle Association opens its annual meeting here on Friday, it will do more than celebrate hunting, weaponry and the Second Amendment. It will also kick off a vigorous campaign to whip up support among its nearly four million members for President Bush’s re-election.
Before tens of thousands of gun owners at the Pittsburgh Convention Center, the association’s leadership plans to label Mr. Bush’s likely Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as a liberal threat to gun ownership. It is a message they will repeat again and again until Election Day, using the Internet, mailings, television advertising and their formidable nationwide network of gun clubs.
”What you see in John Kerry,” Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president said in an interview this week, ”is a politician that spent his life voting against the Second Amendment. What I see is the same thing I saw in Michael Dukakis and Al Gore. It’s an elitist arrogance.”
[I’d call it ”elitist arrogance” to believe you know exactly what the founders (and Jesus) think. mjh]
It is no accident, N.R.A. officials said, that this year’s convention is being held in Pittsburgh. Two-thirds of the attendees are expected to come from within a 100-mile radius that spans three battleground states: Pennsylvania, which voted for Mr. Gore in 2000, and Ohio and West Virginia, which voted for Mr. Bush.
”These are states where the N.R.A. can make a difference,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Keystone Poll at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.
At the convention, the association also plans to unveil plans for an N.R.A. news company that would produce programs for the Internet, radio and possibly television, Mr. LaPierre said. A daily Internet news talk show featuring a conservative host will begin broadcasting online on Friday. The association hopes to announce acquisition of a radio station within two months, he said. …
The president has said he would sign legislation renewing the 1994 law that bans 19 types of semiautomatic weapons. That almost certainly will not happen this year because of opposition to the legislation in the Republican-controlled House. Many conservatives consider the bill a deep infringement of their rights under the Second Amendment, which they contend gives individual Americans the right to own firearms.
”Gun owners who know the issues know that Bush is all talk,” said Angel Shamaya, executive director of KeepAndBearArms.com, which is encouraging gun owners to vote for anyone but Mr. Bush. ”He’s turned out to be a phony in so many ways, I’m embarrassed I voted for him in 2000.”
The Bush campaign has begun trying to mend fences with gun groups by meeting with members and appointing liaisons to the groups in almost every state. A 27,000 member Sportsmen for Bush group has reactivated. And the president met with leaders of the N.R.A. and an array of hunting and fishing groups at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., last week.
But the White House’s biggest move has been to dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney, a popular figure among gun owners, to the convention, where he will deliver the keynote speech on Saturday …
Clearly, the Bush administration values the rifle association’s help. At last year’s N.R.A. convention in Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, told members, ”If it were not for your active involvement, it is safe to say that my brother would not have been elected president.” …
For its part, the rifle association will try to paint Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who says he has been a lifelong hunter, as a Kennedy-style liberal who supports strong gun restrictions — a “gun grabber,” in the group’s lingo. …
Mr. Kerry intend[s] to present himself as “a lifelong hunter and gun owner” who believes in protecting the Second Amendment but also supports “common sense” laws restricting military-style assault weapons and requiring gun-safety locks.
If you want to own a gun, you can have a gun. If you want to own 100 guns, you can have 100 guns. The awful liberals don’t really care. But, if you want an assault rifle, bazooka, grenade-launcher, flame-thrower, if your entire life revolves around lead and steel, if you believe you are free and it’s because you own a gun, you may need to have your head examined. mjh