NRA Leaders Disparaged Members as Wackos, Fruitcakes, and Hillbillies

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

There is a great segment running on National Public Radio (NPR) today that focuses on an audiotape of a conference call held by bigwigs associated with the National Rifle Association (NRA) the day following the 1999  school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.  The NRA was scheduled to hold its annual convention in nearby Denver just ten days later, and the leaders of the gun group were struggling with what type of response, if any, they should make to the shooting - and the mayor of Denver had just suggested that an appropriate response would be to cancel their convention.

The tapes, which were provided to NPR investigative reporter Tim Mak by a person who was actually in on the call and had surreptitiously taped it, give remarkable insights into the thought processes of the NRA leadership as they worked to come up with a public relations strategy that would become their go-to position for the next two decades of school shootings.  Some members of the group thought it was important to openly show compassion, even to the point of perhaps setting up a million dollar victims' fund, while others felt that compassion smacked of weakness and that it would encourage a feeding frenzy from the media.

The group ultimately scaled back its convention for that year, and polished up a response of blaming everything but guns - particularly society and culture - a response the they now employ as a standard rebuttal to school shootings  -  as well as always being critical of how the press covers school shootings.

One of the more interesting aspects of the conference call, which included the NRA's forever executive director, Wayne LaPierre, was the way several of the leaders showed what sounded like open contempt for a segment of the group's membership whom they referred to as "wackos," "fruitcakes," and "hillbillies."  They did not want to set up any scenario in which the press could equate those people with the actual operations of the NRA.  

There is also an admission that certain Republican politicians were waiting on the NRA to provide them with "talking points" before they addressed the shooting publicly.

The NPR report on the secret tapes of the NRA is playing all day - and it is well worth a listen.  A nice summary is also available at the news organiztion's website:  npr.org.  Check it out!