At my second week interning at the Legislative Gazette, I was asked to cover the first annual Sportsman Awareness Day event held by the Assembly Minority Leader Kolb. Hunters, outdoor enthusiasts, vendors and gun rights advocates came out in droves on January 12th to talk to their assembly people and hear the keynote speaker, Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre. After speeches by the head of Remington, SCOPE and other gun rights leaders and business men, Wayne LaPierre addressed a crowd of hundreds who crowded around the podium, filled the staircase of “The Well” and peered over the third floor banister on the Legislative Office Building.
This event really opened my eyes to a lot of things. As Wayne LaPierre spoke to the hundreds of people in the crowd, a surreal type of realization washed over me. LaPierre, with his enigmatic, fire and brimstone theatrics, probably didn’t care about anyone in that room. He was definitely an eloquent and intelligent speaker, no doubt. But most people in that room simply didn’t wanted to be taxed unfairly for hunting. Most of those parents crowded side by side in that room wanted to take their children out on the weekend and hunt, fish or camp; the same activities their parents did with them. And as LaPierre spoke, I got the feeling that he was out of touch with what the people in that room truly wanted. He showed clips of himself arguing vehemently with CNN anchors and calling them liars. He showed commercials he sponsored accusing politicians of using gun control laws as scapegoats for tougher prison sentences. And, most ridiculous to me, he showed a clip from the 2009 Sandra Bullock movie Blind Side in which she confronts an African-American man who threatens her son by explaining she has a “Saturday Night Special” in her purse and that it “shoots every day of the week too.”
At this point I looked around and saw the crowd grinning and shaking their heads. The absurdity suddenly struck me like Charlton Heston himself had shot it right into my solar plexus. They were buying it, hook, line and sinker. And these were not stereotypical “dumb hicks.” I spoke and listened too many of these people during the course of this event. I don’t hunt, and have grown up in city environments most of my life, so I’ve never been a fan of guns. Many of these people saw guns in a very different context than people from the city. They were from western parts of New York where hunting, trapping and outdoor activities were as much a part of their lives as riding the subway is to urbanites. But as LaPierre stood on his soapbox, preaching about how guns were a right ordained by God himself, I got the distinct feeling that whatever his intentions up there were, (see: ego, fame, power, misguided altruism or mid-morning indigestion) he cared little about the individual plight of those who applauded him at the end of his blockbuster movie speech. He was co-opting their needs and passions to serve him. Were the people in that room innocent of being duped? Not exactly, but the whole experience left a particularly crazy taste in my mouth of indignation and gun powder.
In conclusion, this event hasn’t soured me to the political process as a whole, but made me be more keenly aware to watch out for those politicians and leaders who care more about winning arguments and righteous causes then those they are meant to serve. It made me more open minded towards peoples causes but more weary of those who claim to represent them. And perhaps most importantly, it made me re-examine anyone who uses Sandra Bullock movies to prove broad political objectives. She might be able to convince me she’s a cop posing as a beauty pageant contestant, but her legitimacy as a gun rights advocate leaves a lot to be desired.
