Is the NRA a racist organization because of board members like Ted Nugent?

From a Charlton Heston NRA speech
"But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist."
<http://mizai.tripod.com/>

Reactions to Charlton Heston's Speech to the Free Congress Foundation

Julian Bond, Board Chairman, NAACP

Charlton Heston's civil rights credentials are seriously sullied by his bigoted and homophobic remarks and his attacks on racial minorities. The endorsement by white supremacist David Duke further threatens to erode the considerable respect many Americans felt toward Heston for his years-ago commitment to human rights.

That Charlton Heston seems to have been consumed by another—an angry man contemptuous of America's diversity and scornful of the tolerance which has made our nation great.

The NAACP condemns such expressions of hatred and calls on Mr. Heston to repudiate the support of extremists and those who call for "war" against peaceful citizens.


---snip----


Gloria Steinem, feminist author

Extremists tend to soft-pedal their message in public, and instruct their constituencies in private. That's what pro-gun leader Charlton Heston did in his unreported 1997 speech to the Free Congress Foundation. He declared "cultural warfare" against "the fringe propaganda of the homosexual coalition, the feminists who preach that it's a divine duty for women to hate men, blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other Clinton's cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fundraisers but boycott gun-rights fundraisers..."

Thanks to the Violence Policy Center in Washington, which has obtained a videotape, Heston is also heard saying, "it's time to pull the plug" and "draw your sword and fight" against such groups as those cited above, despite "fear of CNN or the IRS or SAG or the ATF or NBC or even WJC." Those organizations were also compared to "Nazis" and "a Gestapo officer" punishing the God-fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle class...admittedly heterosexual, gun-owning...NRA card-carrying, average working stiff..."

His speech was also endorsed by Ku Klux Klansman David Duke.

It is up to each of us to publicize these views expressed by Heston, already the vice president of one of this country's most powerful political organizations, the National Rifle Association, and likely to become its president at a meeting scheduled to begin June 5th.
---snip-----
<http://www.vpc.org/nrainfo/statements.html>

But alienating and hating democratic gun owners or linking them to the NRA is a whole nother can of worms.

wasn't "Does the NRA Suck?" It was, "is the NRA racist?"

And the answer to that is no.

i'm a bi man and i donate money to the nra

i live as an open bi man
i own a gun for my protection
i have taken gun safety classes
i have passed background checks
i visit a gun range once a month

thankfully i have never had to use the gun outside of the gun range

ted creeps me out

he dated an underage girl in the late 70s
he needs to shut up

Meet the New NRA: It's About More Than Guns
5/8/2002


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Feature Story
by Dick Dahl

The National Rifle Association has long been an organization that fans and exploits members' fears, but the rhetoric at the organization's 131st annual meeting in Reno the last weekend of April reached new levels of provocation."People who monitor the activities of extremist right-wing groups, like Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates of Somerville, MA, say that the kinds of messages from LaPierre, Robinson, and others at the NRA convention have a familiar ring. Berlet says that he's seen the NRA moving toward a broader political agenda for several years, to the extent that he now considers it "a kind of above-ground element of the patriot movement."

<http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/features/reader/0,2061,550831,00.html>

He worked with Russ Belant on exposing the rabid rightists and old-line fascists who supported Reagan and Bush in 1980. A sample of Berlet's writing:

Fascists particularly loathed the social theories of the French Revolution and its slogan: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

*** Liberty from oppressive government intervention in the daily lives of its citizens, from illicit searches and seizures, from enforced religious values, from intimidation and arrest for dissenters; and liberty to cast a vote in a system in which the majority ruled but the minority retained certain inalienable rights.

*** Equality in the sense of civic equality, egalitarianism, the notion that while people differ, they all should stand equal in the eyes of the law.

*** Fraternity in the sense of the brotherhood of mankind. That all women and men, the old and the young, the infirm and the healthy, the rich and the poor, share a spark of humanity that must be cherished on a level above that of the law, and that binds us all together in a manner that continuously re-affirms and celebrates life.

This is what fascism as an ideology was reacting against — and its support came primarily from desperate people anxious and angry over their perception that their social and economic position was sinking and frustrated with the constant risk of chaos, uncertainty and inefficiency implicit in a modern democracy based on these principles. Fascism is the antithesis of democracy. We fought a war against it not half a century ago; millions perished as victims of fascism and champions of liberty.

— Chip Berlet, from his Introduction to Russ Bellant’s “Old NAZIs, the New Right and the Reagan Administration: The Role of Domestic Fascist Networks in the Repubican Party and Their Effect on U.S. Cold War Politics.” 1988. Political Research Associates, Cambridge, Mass.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

"I was astounded to read these courageous remarks by Charlton Heston.  I am thankful to hear a man with such high esteem say essentially the same things for which I have been reviled by the liberal media. His words should be reproduced and put into the hands of every American."
--David Duke

http://www.duke.org/writings/heston.html



You bet the NRA's racist. Just look at their enemies list--pretty much every group of decent people working for tolerance and decency is on it. Ted Nugent or Charlton Heston spouts racist gibberish in public...and there's not a murmur of complaint from NRA supporters, except toward anyone who complains about it.

And the next largest "gun rights" group, the Gun Owners of America, is headed by Larry Pratt...a guy so racist even Pat Buchanan had to bail out on his company in public.

Why is it wrong for one group to be proud of their skin color and right for others to do so? Racial pride is a thinly veiled form of racism. It is immoral regradless of the color of those who believe it.

because one group is trying to forment hatred and paranoia (the right wing white pride type groups), compared to those like the NAACP, whose rhetoric at times may be over the top, but their goals are generally to further those peoples' interests, that have historically been disefranchised.

The white pride groups, and unfortunately the NRA as well, is trying further historical paranoia of minorities.

The NRA can go to hell. While I may sympathize with some of their views at times (and certainly don't believe the party should not drive away gun owners), this kinda "blame the minority" rhetoric sickens me. Ted Nugent is a sick, racist fuck. And any organization that has Grover Norquist near the top, is not one I want to be associated with.

The NRA is not about gun rights. In the case of the NRA, "gun rights" like the segregationists "states' rights" argument of the past, is code for "white rights".

The NRA, like the Klan and other extreme right wing organizations secretly believe that "ZOG" (Zionist Occupied Government) has taken over their country and now they must "rise up in arms to take back what is divinely owed to the White Man".

So called liberals who support the NRA need to wake the fuck up and realize what and who they're supporting.

Liberals who believe in gun rights should form their own organization instead of aligning themselves with the devil.

But we won't see that happen anytime soon since Dean thinks the NRA is cool, and the Dean Dittoheads are not really known for thinking for themselves.

you have given examples of groups whos' beliefs use the the veil of racial pride to cover up their stench-ridden underbelly. But I agree with his point that, on the surface alone, it is, at the least, predjudicial to to take pride in one's group simply because of skin color or other unaffecting traits. "Black Pride" on the surface seems to me to be a scary thought; the fact that you take ownership and glory within a group that share's only the color of your skin. Now, if when saying "Black Pride", you are expressly mentioning those Afro-americans that were descendents of American slaves and who have suffered through the trials and tribulations of segregation and inequality to bring themselves up to a higher level..... then thats cool with me. Then there is a overriding merit to the phrase. But enough for me.... its 4 am and I think i am babling on here.