NRANews welcomes Mr. Colion Noir to the NRA team:
On Friday, March 1, NRANews announced the addition of Mr. Colion Noir to the team.”I am unapologetically a Gun Enthusiast,” Noir says on his Google+ page. “I love shooting, I love guns, and all things gun related.”Noir burst on the internet scene thirteen months ago with a video on his Every Day Carry (EDC) inventory. A wallet, an iPod, car keys, and a GLOCK 36. Over time, they morphed into an engaging collection of commentaries on gun related issues of the day.”I think at the end of the day, when we start thinking about the policies and the things we want to implement in this society to make us safer, we need to look at the hard core facts, not manipulating people’s emotions,” says Noir in one of his YouTube videos. “That gets us no where. Especially when the things that you’re trying to implement aren’t going to do anything but make it worse for the law abiding citizens of this country.”
Not surprisingly, this is not sitting well with anti-gun forces, who seem somewhat baffled at how to deal with it.
Hinterland Gazette wants Democrats to fight back with claims that the NRA, by having Noir talk about civil rights, is racially insensitive:
I am pretty sure civil rights leaders like Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, as well as Rep. John Lewis and many others will find this racial undertone offensive.
Natasha Leonard at Salon.com calls it The NRA’s flip flop on African Americans because the NRA didn’t support having the Black Panthers armed:
When the gun control debate focused around black militants taking up arms, the fulcrums were very different. Indeed, both the NRA and President Ronald Reagan spoke against armed citizens when African American men patrolled neighborhoods brandishing firearms in response to racial violence. The Panthers were not the “well-regulated militia” that the white, conservative stalwarts of Second Amendment advocacy had in mind.Hence the hypocrisy now of the gun group appealing to African Americans — invoking the Civil Rights movement — to lobby support against gun regulation.
The only thing Noir and the Black Panthers have in common is skin color, which appears to be Leonard’s analysis focal point.
The Root is apoplectic, calling the video Scary and Awkward. BET is equally outraged, picking up on the Black Panther issue as well, Commentary: The NRA’s Love Affair of Guns Goes Black:
So desperate is the NRA for gun ownership to permeate all of American society that they have retained Internet star and gun advocate Colion Noir to be featured in a video to appeal to his fellow Black Americans to reject any consideration of gun control.
Jess Levin, National Press Secretary for Media Matters for America, released this statement to theGrio.com:
Colion Noir’s video is yet another attempt by the NRA and their allies to connect the debate over gun safety to the civil rights movement. Ted Nugent compared gun owners to Rosa Parks, former NRA president Marion Hammer likened a proposal banning assault weapons to racial discrimination, and now Noir is bringing up the government that “hosed us down with water, attacked us with dogs” in a video decrying stronger gun laws. The NRA may have hired someone new to deliver the message but I’m guessing it still won’t sit well with civil rights leaders, who have previously called these comparisons “offensive.”
Looks like the NRA has upset all the right people for the right reasons. Brilliant move, so far.
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