Bloomberg-Watts Vs. LaPierre Isn’t A Fair Fight.
I went to my first NRA show in 1980. It was held
in Philadelphia (of all places) and featured an appearance by a Presidential
candidate named Ronald Reagan. I don’t recall his speech attracting much
attention, I also don’t recall that there were any vendors promoting ‘tactical’
products or any of the other crap which currently provides the gun industry
with its marketing mantra about how and why guns are needed for personal
defense.
That was then, this is now. The last time I went to the
NRA, which was the 2014 Indianapolis gathering, you would have thought we
were one step away from having to defend ourselves from an ISIS invasion
or from a complete and total disarming of the American population, or both. No
matter where you looked, there was endless signage exhorting everyone to prove
their patriotism by making sure that liberals, gun-grabbers and all sorts of
other left-wing radicals (including the African-born occupant of the White
House) would never get a chance to take away ‘our’ guns.
At some point during the Indianapolis hoopla I wandered
into the business meeting where the now-deposed head of the NRA-ILA,
Chris Cox, was giving a speech. And here was the sentence
that I remember most of all: “The 5
million members of the NRA will not allow Michael Bloomberg to lie his way, buy
his way, or bully his way into taking away our Second Amendment rights!” The
reason I remember this line was because the week prior to the show, the New
York Times carried an article
which claimed that Mayor Mike had decided to ante up $50 million to promote gun-control
programs, chiefly through investing in the growth of Moms Demand Action for
Gun Sense in America, founded by Shannon Watts.
Yesterday
the Washington Post took some time out from celebrating the doomed
Presidency of Schmuck-o Trump to
interview Shannon Watts, the headline reading: “The NRA is weaker than
they’ve ever been.” Which, if anything, is something of an understatement
given what has happened to the boys in Fairfax over the last couple of years.
America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ has gone from getting the
red-carpet treatment at the White House to shutting
down its media channel, losing Board members
and spending what little dough it has in the
bank account to defend itself from legal threats all over the place. You
think the investigation into the NRA‘s non-profit status being conducted
by the state whose Governor wrote the infamous Clinton plan to
regulate the gun industry isn’t a serious threat? Think again.
In the
olden days, the only reason the NRA was considered such a powerful force
was that the other side, the gun-control side, didn’t have any kind of financial
or organizational clout. But once Mayor Mike decided to move into the business
of growing a gun-control movement, I knew that the NRA‘s dominance in
the public discussion about guns would quickly come to an end. And I didn’t
have to be any kind of self-appointed genius to figure that one out. I simply
made a quick comparison between the achievements and experiences of Mike
Bloomberg versus Wayne LaPierre.
Mike
Bloomberg took a $10 million partnership payment from Salomon Brothers in 1981
and created an international media
company which today has locations worldwide, employs more than 20,000 and
may have annual revenues in excess of $10 billion bucks. He’s probably worth
more than $50 billion, which makes Wayne-o’s alleged financial excesses
look like chump change.
On the other hand, Wayne LaPierre has never worked in the private sector and his experience in building any kind of organization adds up to zilch. When he took over the NRA in 1991, he pushed the membership from 2.5 to 3.5 million; in the process he entirely used up the organization’s financial reserves. So much for Wayne-o’s business acumen.
If the NRA stops trying to lead the alt-right and goes back to representing the legitimate needs of hunters and sport shooters, this would be a very good thing. Going up against Shannon and Mike is something they better avoid.
