Anti-Gunners' Hate Machine in High Gear

Last week, NRA held its annual convention in St. Louis, Mo.  More than a dozen of the nation's most prominent political leaders spoke at our Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum, including Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich.  As if on cue, our opponents hit the internet with a degree of venom that surprised even those of us who have tracked their most outlandish comments over the years.

While 73,740 NRA members--an all-time record--gathered in St. Louis, the Brady Campaign's chairwoman, Sarah Brady, was busy on the Twitter social media service, attacking Republicans, NRA, and the self-defense laws NRA has worked for over the last quarter-century.

It's been a while, but we remember when Mrs. Brady used to portray her group's agenda as non-partisan, often reminding people that her husband served in the Reagan administration. And not long ago, the Brady Campaign continued the charade when it gave Democrat President Obama an "F" on gun control.

Apparently, the time for such pretenses has passed.  Now, while her allies falsely characterize the truly non-partisan NRA in partisan terms, Brady describes herself as a "proud liberal" and "Democrat."  And in a seemingly endless series of tweets and re-tweets, Mrs. Brady urges her followers to vote for Obama, rejoices in outdated polls that showed Obama ahead of potential Republican challengers, and attacks prominent Republicans and the party itself with shocking crassness and vulgarity.

As examples, Brady agrees that because Gov. Romney is anti-abortion and pro-gun, he is "pro-death," and she agrees with Brady Campaign president Dan Gross' statement that "Mitt Romney . . . is going too far.  He is proudly aligning himself with a lobby that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans every year, a lobby that uses a mentality of fear and paranoia, tinged with just the right amount of racism, to promote its sole agenda of selling more guns, with no concern for who buys those or how they are used. . . . I could not think of anything less 'American' than appearing at the convention of a lobby that is responsible for killing so many of our citizens."



Even worse--and those who object to impolite language should skip the rest of this paragraph--Brady refers to Virginia's Republican governor Bob McDonnell, who recently signed a law repealing the state's one-handgun-a-month limit, with an adjective meant to indicate a private part of the female anatomy, while referring to former Vice President Dick Cheney in terms of the corresponding part of the male anatomy.  And apparently as envious of Sarah Palin's attractiveness as she is angry about the former governor's 100 percent support for the Second Amendment, Mrs. Brady thinks Palin is a "preening a--hole."





Gov. McDonnell, Brady adds, has "cooties." And with obvious reference to Cheney's recent heart transplant, Brady says "Dick Cheney just can't get a good heart no matter how many times he tries." As for former Sen. Rick Santorum buying an NRA life membership for his young daughter, who has recently had serious medical troubles, Brady says it is "disgusting and pathetic."

We discovered that Mrs. Brady hates more than just guns. She says, disapprovingly, that Republicans believe global warming is a hoax, drive SUVs and pickup trucks, think God should be in the classroom, are pro-life, oppose the Obama health care law and--well, the list goes on.

But most of Mrs. Brady's ire is directed at the NRA. She calls us a "hate group" and rants about people who "fear of a future where white, N. European folks are no longer in power." She says NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre is "a horse's rear end" and agrees that NRA members are "misguided f---ers" and "fascist pigs" who "make it more easy for U.S. citizens to kill one another." Politicians who support NRA-backed self-defense laws, she believes, should be "arrested."

Mrs. Brady isn't alone in spewing this hatred. Also on Twitter, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence says the NRA is "morally bankrupt," a "thug org[anization]," a "white supremacist organization," and a "radical org[anization] fighting a White Culture War." This is much the same nonsense the group's leader, Josh Horwitz, often promotes in his Huffington Post articles.

We suppose we might take comfort in all this; you know you are winning when your opponents' attacks become more desperate. Still, it's sad to think that grown adults could be so bitter about life that they have to resort to blind hate just to get through the day. Though we oppose these people politically, we can all hope and pray that they find a better way of viewing the world and their place in it.

Hat-tip to Pagunblog.com.