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Samantha Bee Tears Into Republicans, "Puppets of the NRA," for Blocking Gun Control

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Senate failed to move forward two gun control measures aimed at expanding background checks and blocking individuals listed on terrorist watch lists from obtaining weapons. This outcome was widely expected, even after a 15-hour marathon filibuster staged by Senate Democrats urging their fellow lawmakers to act on gun control in the wake of the worst mass shooting in American history.

As Samantha Bee noted on the latest Full Frontal on Monday, Republicans including “rodent-faced soup sponge” Sen. Ted Cruz, have dismissed calls for increased gun control since the Orlando mass shooting as nothing more than a political game and political correctness staged by Democrats. Much of this, as Bee explained, is the result of the strong grip the National Rifle Association has on Republican lawmakers. Watch above as she slams the GOP, or as Bee calls the party “puppets of the NRA,” in the segment above.

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Samantha Bee Tears Into Republicans, "Puppets of the NRA," for Blocking Gun Control

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The NRA Won’t Defend Donald Trump’s Gun Comments After Orlando

Mother Jones

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High-ranking officials from the National Rifle Association are distancing themselves from Donald Trump’s latest remarks about the Orlando mass shooting, in which the presumptive Republican nominee for president said that club-goers should have been armed—a situation Trump said would have been a “beautiful sight.”

“No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms,” NRA lobbyist Chris Cox told ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “That defies common sense. It also defies the law. It’s not what we’re talking about here.”

Cox, however, stopped short of completely breaking with Trump’s stance on guns, instead insisting what the real estate magnate meant to say was that if people had arrived to the scene sooner, “fewer people would have died.”

On Friday, Trump sparked a firestorm of controversy by suggesting that armed people with guns strapped to their waists inside the Orlando nightclub could have prevented the worst mass shooting in American history.

“If some of those wonderful people had gun strapped right here—right to their waist or right to their ankle—and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes ‘boom, boom,’ you know that would have been a beautiful, beautiful sight, folks,” Trump told supporters a rally in Texas.

The comments even prompted a rejection from NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, who on Sunday said that he did not believe “you should have firearms where people are drinking.”

The NRA officially endorsed Trump for president in May.

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The NRA Won’t Defend Donald Trump’s Gun Comments After Orlando

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Rubio Slams Obama on Guns—But He Once Backed "Reasonable Restrictions" on Firearms

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slammed President Barack Obama’s new executive actions aimed at enhancing gun safety—but the GOP candidate was attacking an approach to guns that he once supported as a candidate in Florida, when he endorsed “reasonable restrictions” on firearms.

After Obama announced the series of new gun-control steps, Rubio exclaimed, “Barack Obama is obsessed with undermining the Second Amendment…Now this executive order is just one more way to make it harder for law-abiding people to buy weapons or to be able to protect their families.” And in a campaign ad, Rubio went further in assailing the president: “His plan after the attack in San Bernardino: take away our guns.”

Obama’s new measures would not take away guns; the most prominent executive action is aimed at limiting the number of gun sales that occur without background checks by requiring more gun sellers to register as dealers and vet their customers. And background checks is a policy that Rubio has supported in the past.

When Rubio first ran for the Florida state House in 2000, he told the Miami Herald that he supported “reasonable restrictions” on guns, including background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases. Ten years later, this comment was used against Rubio during his Senate primary campaign against then-Republican Charlie Crist. The Crist camp, pointing to Rubio’s 2010 statement, accused him of supporting gun limits. Rubio’s spokesman dismissed the significance of Rubio’s earlier statement, saying, “It’s basically a restatement of his support for the current law.”

During his eight years in the Florida legislature, Rubio backed much of the National Rifle Association’s agenda. He co-sponsored the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which became the subject of a nationwide debate following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. And, as a senator, Rubio recently received an A rating from the NRA. But Rubio has a few times wavered from the NRA’s hardline. In the Florida legislature, he drew the organization’s ire when he took a tepid approach to supporting a bill allowing Floridians to bring firearms to work if they leave them in their cars. (He ultimately voted for the measure). And after the Sandy Hook shooting in December 2012, he flirted with supporting measures to prevent convicted felons and the mentally ill from obtaining firearms—actions the NRA opposed. He voted against the background-check bill that ultimately came to the Senate floor the following spring.

As a presidential candidate, Rubio has positioned himself as an ardent champion of gun rights and does not talk about the need to preserve or enhance “reasonable restrictions” on guns. His campaign website states that “new gun laws will do nothing to deter criminals from obtaining firearms.” Asked whether he still supports “reasonable restrictions,” Rubio’s campaign did not respond.

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Rubio Slams Obama on Guns—But He Once Backed "Reasonable Restrictions" on Firearms

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These Are the People Who Really Run the NRA

Mother Jones

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The National Rifle Association claims to speak for more than 5 million gun owners. But most of the shots at the organization are called by a hush-hush board of 76 directors. The majority are nominated by a top-down process and elected by a small fraction of the organization’s life members.

Since 2013, when we last looked at the NRA’s board, only five new members have joined. Two of them, Timothy Knight and Sean Maloney, played roles in the successful 2013 effort to recall two Colorado lawmakers who had voted for stronger gun laws. (A complete list of current board members is at the bottom of the page.)

by the numbers

Overall, the NRA board members are 93 percent white and 86 percent men. Most are hunters and/or shoot competitively or for sport. About a third are current or former lawmakers or government officials. About one-tenth are entertainers or athletes; nine percent own, work for, or promote gun companies. Here’s a breakdown of the current board, based on bios posted by the NRA (since deleted) and other sources:

According to the NRA’s own tax documents, all of its board members reside at the office of its general counsel. Here’s where they actually hail from:

notable members

Some noteworthy members of the current board of directors include celebrities, politicians, and a few whose family history with firearms the NRA prefers not to publicize.

Tom Selleck in Magnum P.I. Globe Photos/Zumapress

Tom Selleck
The Magnum, P.I. star, gun buff, prolific water user, and vocal gun-rights supporter was the top vote-getter in 2008’s board election. (Fellow ’80s TV heartthrob Erik Estrada sought a seat on the NRA board in 2011 but eventually withdrew his candidacy when the chips were down.)

Grover Norquist
The president of Americans for Tax Reform is a NRA Life Member and member of the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association. After Newtown, he echoed the NRA’s line: “We have got to calm down and not take tragedies like this, crimes like this, and use them for political purposes.”

J. William “Bill” Carter
Carter is a retired Border Patrol agent whose record was cited in a 1994 New York Times investigation into “the agency’s historic failure to hold managers accountable for egregious wrongdoing.” He is the son of former NRA executive vice president Harlon Carter, who helped set the organization on its current hardline course, and who, as a teenager, shot and killed a 15-year-old boy in Laredo, Texas.

Larry Craig
The former Idaho senator sponsored a 2005 law protecting gun makers from liability in connection with their products being used by criminals. He is the longest serving member of the NRA board.

Ted Nugent Amy Harris/Zumapress

Ted Nugent
At the NRA’s 2012 annual conference, the Nuge announced, “If Barack Obama becomes the next president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” prompting the Secret Service to meet with the R-word dropping, “tiger dick” eating Motor City Madman.

Gage Skidmore

Mercedes Viana Schlapp
Schlapp, a new board member, is a former Bush administration spokeswoman. She runs a Virginia public-affairs firm with her husband, Matthew, who is a former Koch Industries vice president and is the current chairman of the American Conservative Union.

H. Joaquin Jackson
Jackson is a retired 27-year veteran of the Texas Rangers. His son Don Joaquin is currently serving a 48-year prison sentence for his involvement in a double homicide. In his memoir, One Ranger, Jackson quotes his son’s partner in crime, who said that he had committed the murder because he was “drunk and the gun was available.”

Oliver North Globe Photos/Zumapress

Oliver North
“I love speaking out for the NRA in large part because it drives the left a little bit nuts,” says the Iran-Contra conspirator-turned-conservative pundit, who was once better known for invoking the Fifth Amendment rather than the Second.

Karl Malone
In 2010, the retired NBA player upset some gun fans when he penned a column for Sports Illustrated in which he opined, “The big picture is that guns won’t protect you. If someone really wanted to get you, they would…For you to say you need a gun for your protection? My goodness gracious, how are you living that you need that?”

Patricia Clark
A record-holding shooter, Clark has been on the NRA board since 1999 and is the head of the NRA’s nominating committee, which helps pick the majority of board members. She lived in Newtown, Connecticut at the time of the 2012 school massacre there.

Ronnie G. Barrett
Founder of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing and inventor of the .50 sniper rifle, which can penetrate armor from more than 4,500 feet and is legal for civilian purchase in 49 states.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush hands a pen to Marion Hammer at a 1999 gun bill signing. AP Photo/Eric Tournay

Marion Hammer
Hammer, a former NRA president, helped craft and implement Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which provided a model for similar self-defense laws in 24 other states.

David Keene
He is the former president of the NRA and the former chairman of the American Conservative Union. In 2003, his son was sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting at another driver during a road rage incident.

Carl T. Rowan Jr.
Rowan was formerly a cop, FBI agent, and vice president of the private security firm Securitas. He is the son of columnist Carl Rowan Sr., who once caught a teenager swimming in his backyard pool and wounded him with an unlicensed handgun.

R. Lee “The Gunny” Ermey Gene Blevins/Zuma Wire

R. Lee “The Gunny” Ermey
Former Marine gunnery sergeant turned actor is best known for his turn as a drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket (who is gunned down by a suicidal recruit). He’s also a spokesman for Glock.

Robert K. Brown
The former Special Forces soldier and big-game hunter is the founder and publisher of Soldier of Fortune, which was sued in the late ’80s for running want ads for mercenaries and guns for hire.

Roy Innis
The head of the Congress of Racial Equality, a civil rights organization that’s morphed as a climate-denying astroturf outfit. While representing the United States at a United Nations arms conference in 2001, Innis explained, “The Rwanda genocide would not have happened if the Tutsis had had even one or two pistols to fight back with.”

the current board

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These Are the People Who Really Run the NRA

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Watch John Oliver Explain Why Washington D.C. Should Be the 51st State

Mother Jones

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On Sunday, Last Week Tonight took on the issue of restricted voting rights for Washington D.C. residents, despite the fact they pay federal taxes and have a larger population than some entire states such as Vermont and Wyoming. Even the Dalai Lama once called the situation “quite strange.”

“The people of D.C. clearly deserve a greater voice in their own affairs and they’ve actually come tantalizingly close to getting a voting representative in Congress,” John Oliver explained. “In 2009, a bill to give D.C. a vote was introduced in the Senate, and the Senate did the most dickish thing imaginable: passing it, but with a little addition.”

That controversial addition sought to repeal all of D.C.’s gun control laws, further illustrating the uphill battle that is granting D.C. statehood.

“It was the kind of amendment NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre dreams about as he sleeps in his bullet-filled bathtub, I presume,” Oliver said.

As a result the bill was dropped.

With the help of a group of singing children, Oliver continued his call for D.C.’s statehood with an amended tune about America’s 50 states. Not convinced? The song ends with the suggestion, “Well then let’s all kick out Florida cause no one thinks they’re great.”

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Watch John Oliver Explain Why Washington D.C. Should Be the 51st State

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Cruz Campaign Accuses Paul and Rubio of Wimping Out on Gun Rights After Newtown

Mother Jones

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With the gaggle of GOP 2016 presidential contenders growing, the Republican wannabes have largely refrained from assailing one another and have instead focused their wrath on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But now Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has launched one of the first R-on-R attacks, and he has done so regarding an issue of primal importance to the Republican voting base: guns.

A few days ago, Cruz’s presidential campaign zapped out an email hitting up conservatives for donations. The solicitation showed Cruz, the tea party favorite, wearing a bright orange hunting vest, with a shotgun on his shoulder, and its message was stark: Send me money so I can support your Second Amendment rights, which “serve as the ultimate check against government tyranny.” Cruz warned that he was “under attack from the left-wing media and even Republicans who want to label me as an extremist—all for supporting a fundamental right.” And then he took a shot at the other GOP 2016 contestants: “I’m the only candidate running for President who not only believes in the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms—but has the record of fighting for it, tooth and nail.”

The only Republican 2016er who’s a proven crusader for gun rights? That was quite the claim—and a dig at everyone else in the crowded field, particularly the other GOPers who are competing for tea party and conservative voters. After all, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has declared himself a champion of gun rights. He has long supported the National Association for Gun Rights—a group that hypes itself as the conservative alternative to the NRA. Rand Paul often signs email solicitations for this outfit, such as one that asserted that President Barack Obama and the United Nations were plotting to “CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL ‘unauthorized’ civilian firearms.'” (Paul was not invited to the NRA’s recent convention—because, NGAR president Dudley Brown claimed, “Paul is more pro-gun that the NRA.”) Paul has repeatedly moved to eviscerate the gun laws of Washington, DC. And prior to becoming a senator, he campaigned at a gun rights rally with armed militia members who noted that guns could be used to prevent “progressive socialists” from thwarting Second Amendment and other rights. That is, Paul has established a rather die-hard stance on guns.

Yet that did not stop Cruz from depicting himself as the only true and tested advocate for gun rights in the Republican’s 2016 gang. So what does the Paul campaign think of this Cruz attack? Paul campaign officials would not comment on the record. “We’ll pass for now,” spokesman Sergio Gor said—a suggestion that the Paul did not want to mix it up with Cruz at this point.

The same sentiment was not evident when I asked the Cruz campaign how Cruz could justify this implied assault on Rand Paul. Rick Tyler, a well-known conservative consultant working for Cruz, responded with a detailed email that essentially accused Paul and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another GOP 2016 candidate, of wimping out at a key moment for the gun rights crowd:

From April 11-18, 2013 in the shadow of Newtown, CT, when the Democrats were lined up to hammer Republicans, Paul and Rubio never came to the floor to stand up for the Second Amendment when the Toomey-Manchin gun bill which would have required background checks on all commercial gun sales was being considered. On April 17, Cruz came to the floor promoting a bill (Grassley-Cruz) he co-authored which was the conservative alternative to Toomey-Manchin and which did not expand background checks and made it easier to purchase and transport guns against state lines. It got 52 votes including 9 from Democrats but failed the cloture vote. During that time Cruz and Lee were very aggressive in defending the Second Amendment including gathering stories for the Congressional Record of Americans who used a firearm in self-defense.

With this note, the Cruz campaign, rather than retreat from a political fight over who’s best on gun rights, made its assault on Paul and Rubio explicit, asserting that both Paul and Rubio failed the gun rights movement in its hour of need.

And once again, Paul’s campaign did not engage, declining to answer questions about Tyler’s amplification of the original criticism. Rubio’s campaign also did not respond to a request for comment.

Paul has insisted in the past that after the Newtown gun massacre, he quickly took steps to prevent any gun safety bills from advancing in the wake of that tragedy. On April 10, 2013, he wrote on CNN’s website, “Along with Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, I circulated a letter promising to ‘oppose any legislation that would infringe on the American people’s constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance.'”

Following the Newtown tragedy, Paul considered Cruz an ally in the battle to beat back gun safety legislation. These days, Cruz is not returning the favor and looking to turn Paul and Rubio into targets in order to best them among a critical GOP constituency. The question is, how long will this remain a one-way fight?

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Cruz Campaign Accuses Paul and Rubio of Wimping Out on Gun Rights After Newtown

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South Carolina Law Would Make Kids Study Second Amendment for 3 Weeks Every Year

Mother Jones

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In August of last year, a 16-year-old high-schooler in Summerville, South Carolina, turned in a creative writing assignment about shooting his neighbor’s pet dinosaur. The school’s “zero tolerance” policy for guns prompted a search of the student’s belongings that turned up no weapons. Nonetheless, he was arrested and suspended for what he said was a joke, if one in questionable taste.

South Carolina state Rep. Alan Clemmons hopes to use that incident to force public schools to dedicate three weeks each year to teaching a gun-focused curriculum developed or recommended by the National Rifle Association. Traditionally, zero tolerance policies have applied to students bringing weapons to school or simulating their use with toys or hand gestures—not to academic discussion of guns. Still, in the bill Clemmons filed in the state legislature last month he states that these NRA-approved lessons are needed to combat an “intolerance for any discussion of guns or depiction of guns in writing or in assignments in public schools, which is an affront to First Amendment rights and harshly inhibits creative expression and academic freedom.”

“If anything comes up in a school setting that has to do with firearms, then it’s a suspendable offense and criminal charges could ensue,” Clemmons told WMBF News. “The second amendment should be freely debated in schools and instead the second amendment is being squelched in our schools.”

If passed, the Second Amendment Education Act would require that three consecutive weeks of each year in elementary, middle, and high school be spent studying the second amendment. As Ian Millhiser at Think Progress points out, that’s an enormous chunk of the school year, especially given that some South Carolina schools devote just two weeks to slavery and a week and a half to World War II.

The law would also require that every December 15—the day after the anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook school in Newtown—be designated “Second Amendment Awareness Day.” To celebrate the occasion, schools will be required to hold mandatory poster or essay contests at every grade level, with the theme “The Right To Bear Arms; One American Right Protecting All Others.” The South Carolina Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus will be in charge of choosing first, second, and third place winners in both contests.

Both chambers of South Carolina’s legislature are Republican-controlled, and Gov. Nikki Halley has an A+ rating from the NRA. Still, this bill may be too extreme to pass:

“Even amongst a conservative constituency in South Carolina, I think they can rate that they have more abiding problems than this,” says Dr. Dave Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University who’s long served as a political consultant to Republican candidates in South Carolina.

“Most people are more concerned with math and science, and the fact that historically, South Carolina’s rankings in education have been abysmal. Nobody, I think, would say ‘The best way to improve education is to have a three-week segment on the Second Amendment. Boy, that’ll move us up in the national rankings!'” says Woodard.

The bill includes a list of gun-related topics that must be worked into the curriculum. Several—including the individual right to bear arms—are straight out of the revisionist interpretation of the Second Amendment that the NRA and its supporters have helped popularize since the 1970s.

The curriculum would require students from first grade and up to get into the weeds of constitutional scholarship on the Second Amendment. Students will be asked to study Supreme Court cases “including the United States v. Cruikshank, the United States v. Miller, the District of Columbia v. Heller, and McDonald v. Chicago.” (The majority arguments in Heller and McDonald grew out of the push by pro-gun researchers to redefine the Second Amendment.) The bill also mandates that students learn about “the constitutionality of gun control laws,” the causes of mass shootings, and “the impact of legislative reactions to gun violence on Constitutional rights and the impact on reducing gun violence, if any.”

Clemmons identifies as a Second Amendment advocate. He has repeatedly received an A rating from the NRA, and has taken part in events with the group in his state. In 2013, he was featured on the NRA’s website after taking a trip to Connecticut to convince gun manufacturers, put off by tightening gun control legislation in the state post-Newtown, to move their operations to South Carolina.

It’s unclear if Rep. Clemmons or his cosponsors have hashed out the logistics of the NRA’s involvement in developing or approving a curriculum: Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the NRA, tells Mother Jones that the NRA has not made any recommendations on the syllabus envisioned by the bill, nor have South Carolina legislators made plans with the NRA about the group’s future role. Attempts by Mother Jones to contact Rep. Clemmons have not been answered, but we will update this story if we receive a response.

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South Carolina Law Would Make Kids Study Second Amendment for 3 Weeks Every Year

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Lawmaker Endorsed by NRA Aims to Make Schoolkids Study NRA Curriculum

Mother Jones

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In August of last year, a 16-year-old high-schooler in Summerville, South Carolina, turned in a creative writing assignment about shooting his neighbor’s pet dinosaur. The school’s “zero tolerance” policy for guns prompted a search of the student’s belongings that turned up no weapons. Nonetheless, he was arrested and suspended for what he said was a joke, if one in questionable taste.

South Carolina state Rep. Alan Clemmons hopes to use that incident to force public schools to dedicate three weeks each year to teaching a gun-focused curriculum developed or recommended by the National Rifle Association. Traditionally, zero tolerance policies have applied to students bringing weapons to school or simulating their use with toys or hand gestures—not to academic discussion of guns. Still, in the bill Clemmons filed in the state legislature last month he states that these NRA-approved lessons are needed to combat an “intolerance for any discussion of guns or depiction of guns in writing or in assignments in public schools, which is an affront to First Amendment rights and harshly inhibits creative expression and academic freedom.”

“If anything comes up in a school setting that has to do with firearms, then it’s a suspendable offense and criminal charges could ensue,” Clemmons told WMBF News. “The second amendment should be freely debated in schools and instead the second amendment is being squelched in our schools.”

If passed, the Second Amendment Education Act would require that three consecutive weeks of each year in elementary, middle, and high school be spent studying the second amendment. As Ian Millhiser at Think Progress points out, that’s an enormous chunk of the school year, especially given that some South Carolina schools devote just two weeks to slavery and a week and a half to World War II.

The law would also require that every December 15—the day after the anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook school in Newtown—be designated “Second Amendment Awareness Day.” To celebrate the occasion, schools will be required to hold mandatory poster or essay contests at every grade level, with the theme “The Right To Bear Arms; One American Right Protecting All Others.” The South Carolina Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus will be in charge of choosing first, second, and third place winners in both contests.

Both chambers of South Carolina’s legislature are Republican-controlled, and Gov. Nikki Halley has an A+ rating from the NRA. Still, this bill may be too extreme to pass:

“Even amongst a conservative constituency in South Carolina, I think they can rate that they have more abiding problems than this,” says Dr. Dave Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University who’s long served as a political consultant to Republican candidates in South Carolina.

“Most people are more concerned with math and science, and the fact that historically, South Carolina’s rankings in education have been abysmal. Nobody, I think, would say ‘The best way to improve education is to have a three-week segment on the Second Amendment. Boy, that’ll move us up in the national rankings!'” says Woodard.

The bill includes a list of gun-related topics that must be worked into the curriculum. Several—including the individual right to bear arms—are straight out of the revisionist interpretation of the Second Amendment that the NRA and its supporters have helped popularize since the 1970s.

The curriculum would require students from first grade and up to get into the weeds of constitutional scholarship on the Second Amendment. Students will be asked to study Supreme Court cases “including the United States v. Cruikshank, the United States v. Miller, the District of Columbia v. Heller, and McDonald v. Chicago.” (The majority arguments in Heller and McDonald grew out of the push by pro-gun researchers to redefine the Second Amendment.) The bill also mandates that students learn about “the constitutionality of gun control laws,” the causes of mass shootings, and “the impact of legislative reactions to gun violence on Constitutional rights and the impact on reducing gun violence, if any.”

Clemmons identifies as a Second Amendment advocate. He has repeatedly received an A rating from the NRA, and has taken part in events with the group in his state. In 2013, he was featured on the NRA’s website after taking a trip to Connecticut to convince gun manufacturers, put off by tightening gun control legislation in the state post-Newtown, to move their operations to South Carolina.

It’s unclear if Rep. Clemmons or his cosponsors have hashed out the logistics of the NRA’s involvement in developing or approving a curriculum: Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the NRA, tells Mother Jones that the NRA has not made any recommendations on the syllabus envisioned by the bill, nor have South Carolina legislators made plans with the NRA about the group’s future role. Attempts by Mother Jones to contact Rep. Clemmons have not been answered, but we will update this story if we receive a response.

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Lawmaker Endorsed by NRA Aims to Make Schoolkids Study NRA Curriculum

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In Wake of Arizona Uzi Killing, NRA Tweets About Kids Having Fun With Guns

Mother Jones

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There’s no shortage of grim gun news in the United States, including numerous killings involving children, but there was something particularly disturbing about an incident on Monday in which a 9-year-old girl accidentally shot her instructor to death with an Uzi. The tragedy unfolded at an Arizona gun range catering to tourists called Bullets and Burgers. How on earth was such a child allowed to fire such a powerful weapon on fully automatic, by a person who knows enough about firearms to have served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan? See video of the incident below via the New York Times; the clip doesn’t show the actual moment of tragedy, but it’s plenty chilling nonetheless.

Reactions to the news, as you might expect, have ranged from somber to mystified to angry. But with the story making the rounds on social media, only those latter two applied to a tweet posted on Wednesday afternoon by NRA Women, which is part of the National Rifle Association’s Women’s Programs and is sponsored by gun manufacturing giant Smith & Wesson. “7 Ways Children Can Have Fun at the Shooting Range” the tweet announced, linking to a recent story that details how kids can get bored with target practice if not properly entertained. NRA Women posted the tweet at 1:51 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday; by about 3 p.m. it had been removed, but not before I and others took a screen shot of it:

The list of options in the article included firing at animal, zombie, and even exploding targets, but surely there was a better time to promote them. Historically the NRA is known for its disciplined and effective messaging. But more recently, as it has branched out to cater to children and women and minorities, America’s top gun lobbying group seems to be misfiring, again and again.

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In Wake of Arizona Uzi Killing, NRA Tweets About Kids Having Fun With Guns

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Did the NRA Know About Robert Dowlut’s Reversed Murder Conviction?

Mother Jones

For all its bluster, the National Rifle Association also knows how to maintain a disciplined silence in the face of uncomfortable questions. Most notably, it went to ground in the wake of the Newtown school shooting in December 2012, resurfacing after a few days with bland talking points, followed by Wayne LaPierre’s assertion that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that in the week since I published an investigation into the complicated past of the NRA’s top lawyer, the gun lobby has not responded.

The subject of my article, NRA general counsel Robert J. Dowlut, is a low-profile yet influential legal expert who has spent more than 35 years pushing for an aggressively broad interpretation of the Second Amendment. In 1964, he was sentenced to life in prison for shooting his girlfriend’s mother in South Bend, Indiana. Several years later, the conviction was reversed due to bad police work and Dowlut eventually walked free.

Before I reported on Dowlut’s background, I contacted him 10 times by phone, email, and registered mail, explaining what I was writing about and inviting him to share his side of the story. When I did not hear from him, I asked the NRA and its public affairs head, Andrew Arulanandam, for comment multiple times. I also sent registered letters directly to NRA leaders including executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, president Jim Porter, and lobbying head Chris Cox. None responded.

If Dowlut or the NRA do decide to talk, here are the four questions I’d most like them to answer:

1. Did Dowlut ever disclose his past to his colleagues or the NRA? So far, none of Dowlut’s colleagues and friends have come forward to talk about what they did or didn’t know. David Hardy, a prominent gun-rights writer who’s known Dowlut “longer than I can remember” told me he had “no idea” about Dowlut’s previous conviction and reversal. Other gun-rights groups and bloggers have also been conspicuously silent since the story ran.

2. How did Dowlut’s experience influence his career? Dowlut’s writings strongly suggest that his legal odyssey played a role in shaping his philosophy. In a 1983 article, he disapprovingly cited Supreme Court Justice Byron White’s dissent in Miranda v. Arizona, a case very similar to his own. White had predicted that protecting criminal suspects’ rights “will return a killer, a rapist or other criminal to the streets.” Did Dowlut’s position—that gun rights are another essential defense against official overreach—stem from his time as the accused? Did this stance put Dowlut at odds with the NRA’s tough-on-crime talking points? (Consider that the NRA’s president from 1992 to 1994 was Robert Corbin, the prosecutor who made a point of retrying Ernesto Miranda after the landmark 1966 Supreme Court decision bearing his name. Corbin also served as the vice chairman of the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund; Dowlut is the fund’s longtime secretary.)

3. Did Dowlut ever disclose his past to the bar? Several readers have asked if Dowlut disclosed his experience as a criminal defendant while applying for admission to the bar. (He was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1980 and is also a member of the Virginia Bar.) I don’t know: bar applications are confidential and it’s not clear what was asked on the Character and Fitness sections of the DC and Virginia Bar applications four decades ago. Currently, the DC Bar asks applicants to disclose all previous arrests, charges, and convictions, even for matters that have been dismissed or expunged. The Virginia Bar asks applicants to disclose any involvement in criminal proceedings (including juvenile cases and traffic offenses). Assuming that Dowlut faced similar questions when he became a lawyer, how did he respond?

4. What really happened 51 years ago in South Bend? The South Bend police still consider the murder of Anna Marie Yocum on the night of April 15, 1963 to be an open case. Most of the main characters involved in Dowlut’s murder trial are dead; the victim’s daughter is alive, but refused to speak with me. The court records I obtained, while voluminous, offer competing narratives that leave a trail of nagging questions: The police interviewed several other potential suspects—what were they asked, and why were they released? If Dowlut had no knowledge of the crime, how was he able to lead detectives to a buried gun allegedly linked to it? Whom did the gun belong to? And finally, what does Dowlut think actually happened on that night?

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Did the NRA Know About Robert Dowlut’s Reversed Murder Conviction?

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