The NRA Goes Low Down Under

This is another of those "I meant to write about this when the story broke a few weeks back but other news got in the way" things.  It was a news story about an undercover investigation by Al Jazeera TV, which caught officials in the gun corporation-owned NRA terrorist organization down in Australia trying to pass along a gun strategy for taking advantage of a gun massacre and using it to your advantage.  To make matters worse (and yes, that's possible), the people they're talking to are members of the far-right white supremacist group in Australia, One Nation.  And to make matters even worse still -- yes, possible - the story and undercover video broke only a week after the New Zealand gun massacre.

The foundation of the strategy is to try and shame the person who is advocating for reasonable gun laws.  As the NRA official Lars Dalseide, an NRA communication officer, tells them, they should argue, “If your policy, isn’t good enough to stand on itself, how dare you use their deaths to push that forward? How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?"

Of course there are several responses one can give in return. 

Like, "I know you say that 'Now isn't the time to talk about gun control.' and that's true -- the time to talk about gun control was before this gun massacre occurred."

Or -- "Oh, I'm sorry, did you think I was talking about gun control because of this gun massacre the other day?  Oh, no, no.  Not that at all.  I was referring to the gun massacre a year ago and wanted to wait for enough time to pass before it was okay to address it."

Or -- "The only reason I'm standing on the graves of those children is because they were shot dead and can't speak for themselves."

Or -- "I couldn't care less if my policy can stand by itself or if the only way to make people like you see that gun laws are necessary is by showing you the bodies of all the victims shot to death, as long as it will help keep other people from getting shot to death by guns, because that's the goal we should all be going for -- right??"

When this story was brought up on social media, there were two common responses from gun advocates.  The first was a sort of "Consider the source" thing that this was from Al Jazeera.  The easy reply was, "Okay, and tell me how the video they have isn't showing what it is actually showing."  And the other was how the NRA official had been tricked.  That was easily countered by, "So, was he tricked the second time, too?  And did he not mean what he was saying each time?"

You probably won't want to watch the whole video -- it's 48 minutes.  Or perhaps any of it, given how pathetic and repugnant it is.  But then this is the gun corporation-owned NRA terrorist organization, so...consider the source.
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