NRA Declares War On Washington Post, Because After All, Obama's Gone

New NRA/GOP mascot

The NRA sure does love it some culture-war rhetoric these days, since with the threat of Barack Obama coming to take your guns away has diminished some (he still could do it, though), they need to find other avenues of outrage to keep people afraid and buying more guns. A few weeks back, they had that charming thing with Dana Loesch urging everyone to be afraid of all the violent liberals who have sapped and impurified our precious bodily fluids, which stopped just short of calling on viewers to go shoot some protesters or reporters or teachers. And now, in what may be their most oddly focused attack ad yet, the NRA has declared war on the Washington Post,  because that newspaper is one huge threat to America and freedom, and if you see a Washington Post coming at you late at night, you should be ready to shoot it.

It's not just that WaPo is full of liberal lies, which of course it is, but WaPo also angered the NRA with a mean media analysis piece about the NRA's new trend of releasing rightwing political ads that are barely about guns at all. That article looked at a follow-up ad to the Loesch one, in which NRA commenter Dom Raso laid into Democrats, the media, and political protesters for destabilizing the USA with all their leftism and "organized anarchy," which is a lovely oxymoron. In the video, which suggests that Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, and John Lewis are encouraging antifa protesters to burn cities every other day or so, Raso says "I'm disgusted that we as Americans are accepting to live with these conditions, not because of ISIS, but because of a bunch of entitled crybabies who can't get over the fact that the American people elected Donald Trump." WaPo pointed out that the ad wasn't especially about guns, but about stuff that scares rightwingers:

This is the second recent NRA video that has centered on political discussions on public safety among civil arrest, with less clear connections to Second Amendment rights.

Worse, the Post also ran an article about the American right's increasing admiration for Russia. It discussed a friendly meeting between NRA leaders and Russian government officials, as well as connections between former NRA president David Keene and a Russian senator.

Well by golly, the NRA isn't going to stand for such fake news anymore, although the ad released Monday is remarkably unspecific about where the two WaPo pieces it singles out were not factual.

In fact, one of the claims in the video, featuring NRA talk show host Grant Stinchfield, is just plain wrong -- Stinchfield says the "fake news outlet even went so far as to make made the blatantly false claim that the NRA had illegal ties to Russia." Except there's not a single claim in the article that NRA members' interactions with Russia were illegal. The article does suggest, however, that warm invitations to the NRA to join with a Russian pro-gun group are probably sponsored by the government, not the work of private citizens who'd just love to have open carry in Russia, an idea that might not sit well with Vladimir Putin.

Also, Stinchfield is really angry that the Post would dare dictate to the NRA what its videos should be about, because what about freedom, huh? Why does the Washington Post hate freedom, and truth so much? He knows why: Because guns are freedom, and "For years, The Washington Post has tarnished gun owners in an effort to take away our Second Amendment freedoms." Therefore, it only stands to reason that in critiquing the NRA's weird shift from guns to more general far-right worries,

The Washington Post isn't mad about the lack of guns, it's upset about the abundance of truth: the truth about their role in the organized anarchy of the violent left by spreading lies about those who disagree with their radical agenda, while refusing to cover the extremist beliefs and tactics of people like Carmen Perez, Deray McKesson, and liberal politicians like Al Franken and Chuck Schumer, who refuse to condemn them.

That's quite a logic bomb there! The Post never reports on Carmen Perez (who, honestly, we had to google to learn was one of the organizers of the Women's March, and therefore a genuine George Soros-funded extremist) and Deray McKesson (Black Lives Matter, ergo an extremist and possible ISIS member). Actually, The Post has covered both, although not with the flop-sweat tone of panic you'd find at Breitbart or Gateway Pundit, which of course proves how biased WaPo is. Also, that's quite an enemies list: A Latina, a black, and two Jews? Hmmm. Pure coincidence, we bet.

Anyway, Stinchfield wants viewers to know the NRA will not let the Washington Post dictate the content of its videos, and it stands ready to fight against any number of psychotic straw men, too:

Listen to me, Washington Post. In fact, I'm telling every leftist media propaganda machine defending the violent left to hear what I'm about to say:

We talk about more than guns because every freedom is connected. If one is threatened, they all are threatened. And the organized anarchy that you and your politicians and your activists are pushing is destroying our country [...] It's why we will never stop fighting the violent left on the battlefield of truth. So here's a suggestion for The Washington Post:  Don't worry about how many guns are in our videos, worry about how many facts are in your articles.

Please review the video at this time and count the number of factual inaccuracies Stinchfield has identified. His one specific claim, that the Post accused the NRA of being illegally in bed with Russians, does not actually appear in the article he complains about. Stinchfield closes with a terrific comparison, suggesting that maybe the real target of restrictions should be the First Amendment, not the Second:

If gun owners abused our Second Amendment the way you abuse your paper and the First Amendment, our rights would have been taken away long ago. You people do more to damage our country with a keyboard than every NRA member combined has ever done with a firearm. Your paper’s new slogan may read “Democracy dies in darkness,” but it should say “journalism dies at the Washington Post."

So that was a pretty good, if fact-free, rant, and now we know gun-humpers will be copy-pasting that final line into comments for the next few months, hooray.

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[ WaPo / Business Insider / WaPo / NRA on YouTube]