A few days back, I offered a thoroughly insincere Thoughts and Prayers to the National Rifle Association over the revelations of fraud and self dealing, and their hypocritical attempts to dodge accountability via bankruptcy and relocating their incorporation location.
A major donor to the National Rifle Association is poised to challenge key aspects of the gun group’s bankruptcy filing, in an attempt to hold executives accountable for allegedly having defrauded their members of millions of dollars to support their own lavish lifestyles.
Dave Dell’Aquila, a former tech company boss who has donated more than $100,000 to the NRA, told the Guardian on Saturday he was preparing to lodge a complaint in US bankruptcy court in Dallas, Texas. If successful, it could stop top NRA executives discharging a substantial portion of the organisation’s debts.
It could also stop Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s controversial longtime chief executive, avoiding ongoing lawsuits that allege he defrauded the pro-gun group’s members to pay for luxury travel to the Bahamas and Europe and high-end Zegna suits.
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Dell’Aquila’s complaint, likely to be brought within the next few weeks, would use a provision of the bankruptcy code to prevent the NRA from sidestepping more than $60m of debt on grounds it was improperly incurred. The law stipulates that debts acquired through malfeasance can be deemed by the court to be an exception to bankruptcy arrangements.
Speaking from his home in Nashville, Tennessee, Dell’Aquila said: “We intend to invoke this provision. We are going to ask the judge to determine that our claim was incurred as a result of fraud and should be deemed non-dischargeable.”
The NRA declared bankruptcy in the Dallas court on Friday. The organization also said it would be relocating from New York, where it was founded in 1871, to Texas.
I’m hoping that LaPierre gets reduced to penury over this.
In addition to being an extremist who foments violence, he’s a crook.
That is a horrible thing to do to Texas: (And I want to give Texas back to Mexico)
Seeking an end-run around an investigation by the New York attorney general, the National Rifle Association said Friday that it was declaring bankruptcy and would reincorporate in Texas. The gun group was set up in New York after the Civil War.
The group’s effort to circumvent New York’s legal jurisdiction raised immediate questions from Letitia James, the New York attorney general and a Democrat, who is seeking to use her regulatory authority to dissolve the N.R.A. She has been conducting an investigation into corruption at the gun group since 2019.
“The N.R.A.’s claimed financial status has finally met its moral status: bankrupt,” Ms. James said in a statement Friday. “While we review this filing, we will not allow the N.R.A. to use this or any other tactic to evade accountability and my office’s oversight.”
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Typically, nonprofit groups that are chartered in New York and under investigation are prohibited from relocating their assets during an inquiry; in recent years, the attorney general’s office prevented the Trump Foundation from closing before it had reached the conclusion of an investigation into that organization.
The bankruptcy filing is likely to halt legal proceedings in the attorney general’s case while the matter is litigated in bankruptcy court.
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The N.R.A. and a subsidiary filed Chapter 11 petitions in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Dallas. It reported between $100 million and $500 million in assets and the same amount in liabilities, with aggregate non-contingent liquidated debts, excluding those owed to insiders or affiliates, of less than $2,725,625.
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The N.R.A. has weathered years of revelations about its spending and oversight practices, including hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on Mr. LaPierre’s Zegna suits and far-flung travel to places like the Bahamas, Palm Beach, Reno and Italy’s Lake Como. The group even once explored buying a $6 million mansion in a Dallas-area gated community for his use. Last August, Ms. James, whose office has jurisdiction over New York charities, sued the N.R.A., seeking its closure along with tens of millions of dollars in restitution from Mr. LaPierre and three other executives.
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The N.R.A. almost immediately filed suit in federal lawsuit against Ms. James’s office, claiming her action was politically motivated and violated the organization’s First Amendment rights. But the group conceded in recent tax filings that Mr. LaPierre and other executives had received hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of improper benefits from the group, which were reimbursed.
“The N.R.A. cannot be allowed to declare bankruptcy to try to escape potential criminal and civil accountability in New York,” said Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign, a gun control group. “The N.R.A. can run, but they can’t hide, and their days are numbered. No organization is above the law.”
So one would hope.
Remember when we made bankruptcy tougher for ordinary people in the early 2000s because getting cancer is no excuse?
Maybe we should make bankruptcies tougher for corporations, hedge funds, derivatives and charities as well.
Michigan banned the open carry of guns inside its Capitol building on Monday, following mob violence last week at the US Capitol and last year’s storming of the Michigan statehouse.
The Michigan ban came as reports detailed FBI warnings about possible violence at state capitols and in Washington in the run-up to the 20 January inauguration of Joe Biden.
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Security officials are preparing for a large crowd in Washington for the inauguration, and state officials are preparing for protests.
On Monday, ABC News reported a similar FBI bulletin warning of armed protests “at all 50 state capitols” and in Washington, but neither the date of that bulletin nor the evidentiary basis for its advice was given.
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Security around the Capitol has been stepped up.
Armed men stormed the Michigan capitol in April, protesting social restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19. It later emerged that a group had plotted to kidnap and perhaps kill the governor, the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer.
April ……… May ……… June ……… 9 Months?
It too them 9 Fucking Months to realize that it’s a bad thing for the legislature to be threatened by mooks carrying assault rifles?
Seriously?
I get that Republicans controlled both state houses, but I would figure that they would have a have enough of a self preservation instinct to act sooner.
Given the level of corruption of this organization, the option of the dissolving it should be seriously considered by authorities:
After years of denying allegations of lax financial oversight, the National Rifle Association has made a stunning declaration in a new tax filing: Current and former executives used the nonprofit group’s money for personal benefit and enrichment.
The NRA said in the filing that it continues to review the alleged abuse of funds, as the tax-exempt organization curtails services and runs up multimillion-dollar legal bills. The assertion of impropriety comes four months after the attorney general of New York state filed a lawsuit accusing NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and other top executives of using NRA funds for decades to provide inflated salaries and expense accounts.
The tax return, which The Washington Post obtained from the organization, says the NRA “became aware during 2019 of a significant diversion of its assets.” The 2019 filing states that LaPierre and five former executives received “excess benefits,” a term the IRS uses to describe executives’ enriching themselves at the expense of a nonprofit entity.
The disclosures in the tax return suggest that the organization is standing by its 71-year-old chief executive while continuing to pursue former executives of the group. The filing says that LaPierre “corrected” his financial lapses with a repayment and contends that former executives “improperly” used NRA funds or charged the nonprofit for expenses that were “not appropriate.”
“Corrected”, my ass. The organization is a complete scam, and it needs to be shut down.
The theory is that open carry of weapons at a polling place is a clear attempt to intimidate, which it is.
Needless to say, the ammosexual crowd are squealing like the pigs that they are:
Michigan is prohibiting the open carry of guns within 100 feet of polling places amid fears of voter intimidation during the pivotal Nov. 3 election, prompting criticism from the National Rifle Associationand the possibility of a lawsuit from Second Amendment advocates.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent guidance to local election officials on Friday — 18 days before Election Day — to clarify that the open carry of firearms on Election Day in polling places, clerk’s offices and absent voter counting boards is banned.
“The presence of firearms at the polling place, clerk’s office(s), or absent voter counting board may cause disruption, fear or intimidation for voters, election workers and others present,” the new guidance says.
Open carry these days is primarily an attempt to intimidate people that the ammosexual crowd disagree with. It has been for decades.
The intent is to terrorize their opponents, and they should be treated as such.
It appears that he did not learn the lesson of Al Capone:
The Internal Revenue Service is investigating longtime National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre for possible criminal tax fraud related to his personal taxes, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. LaPierre was paid $2.2 million by the NRA in 2018, the most recent year available, the nonprofit group’s public filings show. His total reported pay from 2014 to 2018 was $11.2 million.
In August, he was charged in a civil suit by New York Attorney GeneralLetitia James with taking millions of dollars of allegedly undisclosed compensation from the NRA and its vendors, in the form of free yacht trips, private jet flights for his family, exotic safaris and other benefits.
Asked at a news conference announcing the lawsuit whether she believed Mr. LaPierre had evaded personal taxes, Ms. James declined to comment but said she was referring the matter to the IRS.
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The IRS’s criminal investigation is being reported for the first time by The Wall Street Journal.
If the IRS believes a taxpayer has underreported income, the agency often pursues the matter through a civil audit, claiming the taxpayer owes back taxes and penalties. To show criminal behavior, tax specialists said, the IRS would have to demonstrate that a taxpayer willfully underreported income, typically over multiple years.
It couldn’t be determined how far along the investigation is, and such probes can end with no charges filed.
The August lawsuit by Ms. James’s office added new allegations, including that Mr. LaPierre and his relatives flew at least eight times in recent years to the Bahamas on private jets that cost the NRA more than $500,000.
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Criminal tax cases involving executives of large nonprofits are rare. In the 1990s, the late William Aramony, then-CEO of United Way, was forced out and indicted on criminal charges that included tax fraud for siphoning money from the charity for lavish expenses. He served six years in prison.
LaPierre ending up behind bars, I’m like this story treatment.
When I heard that news, I reacted like Meg Ryan at the deli:
The chief executive of the National Rifle Association and several top lieutenants engaged in a decades-long pattern of fraud to raid the coffers of the powerful gun rights group for personal gain, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the New York attorney general, draining $64 million from the nonprofit in just three years. In her lawsuit, Attorney General Letitia James called for the dissolution of the NRA and the removal of CEO Wayne LaPierre from the leadership post he has held for the past 39 years, saying he and others used the group’s funds to finance a luxury lifestyle. She also asked a New York court to force LaPierre and three key deputies to repay NRA members for the ill-gotten money and inflated salaries that her investigation found they took. ………
The attorney general requested that the court bar the four men — LaPierre, general counsel John Frazer, former treasurer Woody Phillips and former chief of staff Joshua Powell — from ever serving in a leadership position for a New York charity in the future.
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Her investigation, which began in February 2019, found “a culture of self-dealing, mismanagement, and negligent oversight at the NRA that was illegal, oppressive, and fraudulent,” according to a statement by the attorney general’s office.
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Meanwhile, D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine announced Thursday that his office filed a separate lawsuit against the NRA Foundation, which is based in Washington. Racine accused the organization of being a puppet of the NRA, despite legal requirements that it independently pursue charitable purposes. Instead, Racine said his office found, the foundation repeatedly lent the NRA money to address its rising deficits.
James said at a news conference Thursday that she is seeking to dissolve the NRA because of the brazenness of the group’s violations of law.
“The corruption was so broad, and because they have basically destroyed all the assets of the NRA,” she said. “Enough was enough. . . . No one is above the law, not even the NRA.”
Her office cited as a precedent its previous action against the Trump Foundation, which led Trump to shut down the charity in 2018 amid allegations he used it for his personal benefit.
The irony here is delicious.
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The lawsuit also claims LaPierre failed to report large sums of personal income to the IRS. James’s office said it found that the NRA chief funneled personal expenses through an outside public relations firm, allowing him to avoid reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal income.
James said Thursday that she was referring those findings to the IRS. She also said that if her office uncovers criminal activity, it will be referred to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
In response, the NRA said Thursday that it was filing its own federal lawsuit against James, alleging that the attorney general has violated the group’s free-speech rights and has been unfairly targeting the gun rights lobby since she began campaigning for the office.
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“Thoughts and prayers today to the NRA, which is losing money and political power so quickly that by the end of this case, there might not be anything left to dissolve,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action.
(emphasis mine)
This irony is even more delicious.
Experts in tax law said the deep investigation into the NRA’s finances showed the potential for state officials to vigorously enforce nonprofit rules.
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The Washington Post and other news organizations subsequently revealed how the NRA directed funds to board members and how LaPierre racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel.
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A central fraud embedded in NRA finances, James’s suit claims, was a secret agreement to pass questionable expenses through its Oklahoma-based advertising agency, Ackerman McQueen.
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A very large portion of those hidden expenses were for personal trips and expenses for LaPierre, the New York suit contends. In a deposition in a separate lawsuit last year, LaPierre acknowledged he did not report any of the NRA-paid expenses as personal income to the IRS and claimed they were business expenses.
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The partnership between the NRA and the public relations firm began to crack after James, then a candidate for New York attorney general, announced in summer 2018 that she planned to launch an investigation into the NRA if she won. LaPierre hired a new law firm, led by then-Ackerman McQueen chief executive Angus McQueen’s estranged son-in-law. That attorney, Bill Brewer, urged that the NRA to audit Ackerman McQueen’s bills in preparation for James’s probe.
I’m hoping that Wayne LaPierre ends up destitute and in prison.
If these ammosexual lunatics had been black, they already would have been shot to death by police:
Confronted with armed protesters at the state capitol and a lawsuit threat from GOP lawmakers over her executive orders, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) was unmoved, deciding to extend Michigan’s state-of-emergency declaration against the legislature’s wishes and without its approval.
Whitmer’s executive actions on Thursday, which extend various business closures and the emergency declaration to May 28, capped a remarkable day at the Michigan State Capitol, complete with gun-toting protesters and impassioned speeches on the House floor by Republican lawmakers trying to curtail Whitmer’s power.
Outside the House chamber, the protesters crammed into the hallway and stairwell, periodically chanting, “Lock her up!” and “Let us in!” Their chanting could be heard faintly from the House floor — and ultimately, the Republicans gave the protesters what they wanted: a refusal to extend Whitmer’s emergency declaration. In Michigan, legislative approval is required to extend emergency declarations beyond 28 days; Whitmer’s expired Thursday night, with no such approval to renew.
But at the end of the night, that didn’t stop Whitmer from issuing a new set of executive orders anyway, citing even broader emergency powers.
They were brandishing their guns in an attempt to intimidate. This is assault with a deadly weapon, and they should have been arrested.
Someone finally did a comprehensive catalogue of the sparse research on gun safety, so now, despite the best efforts of the NRA and Congressional Republicans to shut down testing, we have the the beginnings of a knowledge base on fun safety:
Gun control discussions often get mired in competing academic claims regarding the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of various policy options.
With so many disparate findings swirling about, it can be difficult to determine where the balance of evidence lies. But a report from Rand Corp., a nonprofit think tank, has distilled reams of gun policy research published since 1995 to tease out the scholarly consensus.
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Not all academic studies are created equal. Many simply show correlations between various phenomena — links between assault weapon bans and mass shootings, for instance, or between suicide rates and gun purchasing habits. Such research can be useful when higher-quality data isn’t available.
But policymaking requires higher-caliber evidence, from studies that go beyond simple correlations to demonstrate a causal effect. Distinguishing those studies from less-powerful ones was one of the chief objectives of the Rand report.
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They narrowed down thousands of studies to those that met high standards for causal evidence — just 123 of them since 1995. Taken together, this research yielded a number of conclusions.
First, there was a clear consensus (indicated by three or more high-quality studies in agreement) that stand-your-ground laws, which allow people to use guns to defend themselves in public even if retreating is an option, result in higher overall rates of gun homicide. The higher rates aren’t simply from “bad guys” getting shot; the research shows the additional deaths created by stand-your-ground laws far surpass the documented cases of defensive gun use in the United States.
There was also a broad consensus that child access prevention laws, which set requirements for how guns must be stored at home, are effective in reducing self-inflicted gun injuries among children and adults.
No other policy realm showed the clear scholarly consensus as did stand-your-ground and child access prevention, although there were a number of cases in which the research yielded more moderate evidence of a policy’s effect, by way of two or more high-quality studies in agreement.
This could be a basis for common sense gun laws, which is why the NRA has strenuously opposed any funding for studies for decades.
Officials said they are investigating why Anthony Ferrill — a 51-year-old electrician with a wife, grandchildren and a Doberman he adored — walked into his workplace and began shooting Wednesday afternoon, leaving five dead before killing himself. On Thursday, a chilly wind blew through the deserted Molson Coors complex with its soaring red “Miller” beer sign, its employees sent home and the work halted on the factory floor. Residents across this Midwestern city grieved and gathered at a community prayer vigil. Relatives of the victims began making plans to bury the dead. The five victims — utility workers, machinists and electricians — came from across southern Wisconsin to work at the iconic brewery, Molson Coors chief executive Gavin Hattersley said at an afternoon news conference. They were identified as Jesus Valle Jr., 33; Gennady Levshetz, 51; Trevor Wetselaar, 33; Dana Walk, 57; and Dale Hudson, 50.
Democrats who won control of Virginia’s legislature on the promise of sweeping gun control lost a battle over assault-style weapons on Monday, handing Gov. Ralph Northam a big defeat and giving a rare win to Second Amendment activists in a newly blue Capitol.
A Virginia Senate committee killed a bill that would have banned the sale of assault-style weapons and possession of high-capacity magazines. It had been a top priority for Northam (D), a former Army doctor who served in Operation Desert Storm and often remarks that he has “seen firsthand what weapons of war do to human beings.”
The bill was part of a package of eight gun-control measures Northam advanced after a shooter killed 12 people at a Virginia Beach municipal building on May 31. Republicans’ refusal to act on those bills last summer, in a special session they gaveled out in 90 minutes, became a rallying cry for Democrats in November elections. They flipped the state House and Senate blue for the first time in a generation.
The House has passed all eight of Northam’s bills, but a handful of Democrats in the less liberal Senate have quashed three of them amid fears that the newly empowered party might overplay its hand. The same tension has been playing out on other fronts, with the Senate taking a more cautious approach on issues such as the minimum wage, collective bargaining and state budgeting.
While the general public supports what could be called the Democratic Party agenda, they do not believe that when push comes to shove, they will muster the intestinal fortitude to actually get their policies implemented.
At the Kentucky state house, you cannot enter with a stick or an umbrella, because they might be used to carry protest signs, bu you can carry guns in.
So, if you are going to protest in the state house, I would suggest that you attach your sign to a replica of a long-pattern Brown Bess musket:
Armed gun owners rallied in Kentucky entering the state’s capitol building in Frankfort on Friday.
The gathering was organized by the group We Are KY Gun Owners. They were spurred into action when Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam pushed for new gun control measures that led to threats of violence, culminating with Northam declaring a state of emergency earlier this month.
Astonishingly, according to theLouisville Courier-Journal, visitors to the capitol building are banned from entering with umbrellas or sticks that are used for protest signs because they can be “used as weapons,” but guns and rifles are permitted.
Joe Gerth of the Courier-Journal tweeted a video showing security officers instructing armed rally-goers to go around the metal detectors while entering the capitol building.
Weirdest thing about guns in the Kentucky Capitol: if you have one, you’re told to walk around the metal detector. Others must pass through and get wanded. pic.twitter.com/Oqxl9hvl0I
A Circuit Court judge upheld Gov. Ralph Northam’s temporary ban on firearms in Capitol Square ahead of Monday’s gun rights rally, which is expected to draw thousands of armed activists from across the country.
From Friday night until Tuesday, weapons of any kind will be prohibited on the grounds of the Capitol under a state of emergency. Northam (D) said the precaution was necessary because of “credible intelligence” that militias and gun rights advocates are threatening violence at the rally.
“This is the right decision,” Northam said in a statement about Richmond Chief Judge Joi Jeter Taylor’s ruling Thursday afternoon. “These threats are real — as evidenced by reports of neo-Nazis arrested this morning after discussing plans to head to Richmond with firearms.”
Gun rights groups filed an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday evening.
Awww, they’ll have to leave their manhood at home, the poor babies.
Thank God that the NRA is here to protect us from common sense gun laws:
Authorities said the shooting at Saugus High School that left two students dead and three wounded occurred over a 16-second period in which a classmate pulled out a gun in the quad area and opened fire.
The gunfire broke out at 7:30 a.m., when students at the school were scheduled to be in their first-period classes, said Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
Paramedics rushed onto the campus, treating the wounded, and law enforcement officers searched nearby neighborhoods for a 16-year-old boy they thought had fled after the shooting. Authorities later said the suspect, identified by neighbors and sheriff’s officials as Nathaniel Berhow, was found on campus with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Officials said he was taken to a hospital and is in grave condition. Authorities said a message referencing the shooting, thought to have been posted before the attack, appeared on an Instagram account believed to be linked to the suspect. But Instagram said late Thursday, as first reported by BuzzFeed News, that the account didn’t belong to the teenager. A company representative said via email that the account has since been disabled “for violating our policies.”
Sheriff’s Capt. Kent Wegener said the teen was standing in the quad when he pulled a .45-caliber handgun from his backpack and opened fire on other students before turning the gun on himself. It was the suspect’s 16th birthday, authorities said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott defended new gun laws that ease restrictions on gun owners in that state Sunday, hours after the laws went into effect and hours after a gunman shot at least 21 people, killing seven, in and around Odessa, Texas.
The new laws loosen restrictions on gun ownership and use in schools, foster homes, apartment buildings, and houses of worship. Proponents of the laws argue that they will offer people the opportunity to defend themselves from threats, while critics say expanding gun access makes people less safe.
In May 2018, the National Rifle Association sent a $70,000 check to an obscure Delaware entity called WBB Investments LLC, which had been incorporated a week earlier. The check, a copy of which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal, raises new questions about the NRA’s attempts to explain a tangled transaction involving its then-outside advertising agency and an abortive plan to purchase a $6 million Dallas mansion for NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. The advertising agency, Ackerman McQueen, recently turned over documents to the proposed house purchase to the New York attorney general’s office, which is probing Mr. LaPierre’s dealings with the agency as part of a broad investigation of the NRA. When the Journal broke the story last week, the NRA initially said the plan to buy the mansion was hatched by Angus McQueen, the ad agency’s late co-CEO, as a kind of safe house for Mr. LaPierre. The NRA chief had concerns about his security in the wake of the February 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. The NRA said the house was to be purchased by a company owned by senior Ackerman executives, and Mr. LaPierre shut down the transaction after discovering that the ad company intended to use NRA funds for the deal. “Not a cent of NRA money was ultimately spent,” the NRA said.
An NRA check for $70,000 to an obscure Delaware entity called WBB Investments is the most-direct evidence to have emerged of the flow of money in the aborted mansion deal.
Ackerman, for its part, says Mr. LaPierre had wanted the mansion, which it said was to be paid for by the NRA. According to Ackerman’s version of events, Mr. LaPierre had asked Ackerman to help facilitate the deal, and an Ackerman lawyer set up WBB Investments to buy the house so the LaPierre connection wouldn’t become public. Mr. LaPierre and his wife, Susan, twice visited the house—a 10,000-square-foot residence in a gated golf community—and were preparing to put down $70,000 in earnest money to make an offer, according to people familiar with this version of the transaction. Enter the check, dated May 25, 2018, and drawn on an NRA account at Wells Fargo . It is the most-direct evidence of the flow of money in the aborted deal to have emerged. “If there’s a check from the NRA to an LLC, that doesn’t seem consistent with a story that Ackerman was going to pay for it,” said Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington lawyer who specializes in nonprofit law. “Even if it’s just earnest money, the money is on the line and the check shows NRA money, not Ackerman funds.”
Indeed.
The NRA was laundering money for Wayne LaPierre’s personal benefit.
Emmett Till’s mother was right. After the horrific murder of her 14-year-old son in Mississippi in 1955, she decided on an open-casket funeral. “There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way,” she said. “And I wanted the world to see.” The graphic images of her son’s mutilated body, printed in The Chicago Defender and Jet magazine, contained vastly more raw power than any verbal description could possibly have had.
We sometimes say that “words fail us,” and it’s true. Nothing we can say can pack the emotional punch of what we can see with our own eyes. For those of us who support a level of gun control in the United States equivalent to that in other advanced countries, it ought to be clear by now that facts and logic are not enough to change public policy on the issue. We need ugly pictures. Not the pictures of the sweet faces of the children of Newtown, Conn., before they were slaughtered, but the awful sights that so shocked the first responders.
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I think that gun control has now become as emotionally charged and intractable as civil rights and the Vietnam War once were. The American College of Physicians was joined in 2015 by nearly 60 other organizations, including the American Public Health Association and the American Bar Association, in a call to address gun violence as a public-health threat. Last month, in Annals of Internal Medicine, the physicians’ group issued a position paper with recommendations for reducing firearms-related injuries and deaths. The National Rifle Association responded with a tweet that read, “Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control.”
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News organizations, law-enforcement agencies and medical professionals are unlikely to publish the images of the bloody, mangled bodies that gun violence produces. But husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, can do what Emmett Till’s mother did. They can insist that we see the result of our weak, ineffective and poorly enforced gun policies. They can find ways to publish the pictures in all their gory detail.
Some might say this would disrespect the dead. I can think of no more respectful way to treat the dead than to allow the loved ones of those who have been slain to show what actually happened to them. If we think these images are too awful to see, then we should change the circumstances that create them.
Mamie Till-Mobley died in 2003 at the age of 81 and was buried near her son. Her monument reads, “Her pain united a nation.” May the pain felt today by the loved ones of the victims of gun violence do the same.
This is a big sacrifice to be asked of grieving parents, but it needs to be done.
