With the ongoing debate surrounding gun control permeating the American public sphere since the tragic Newton, Conneticut shooting in December, the National Rifle Association (NRA) recently fired back with a highly propagandistic video. The NRA found a scapegoat in Obama’s children, Sasha and Malia, because they receive armed protection in their schools while other American children are apparently shuttled off to ominous gun-free zones. Gun protection may be the new socio-economic divide.
This video is meant to make you feel furious about this disparity. Citizens are supposed to be enraged, shouting His kids are protected? Well what about our kids? As they storm the White House with signs that read Protect our Kids and maybe ironically, We Are the 99%. Is the NRA calling for a revolution? The right to bear arms is embedded in the American psyche, and its recent modifications seems to be causing vehement disagreement that may result in some sort of drastic change.
Obama has proposed a list of “sensible common sense steps” to ensure that the violence in Newton isn’t repeated. But a practical approach to a passionate issue will only be met with religious-like fervor by the other side. Threats have already been made by Steve Stockman – the Republican Representative of Texas who said recently that he would file an impeachment against Obama and thwart any further actions legislating against guns “by any means necessary.” Obama has apparently brought common sense and rationality to a fistfight. Stockman continues to say that Obama has exploited the powers granted to him in the constitution. According to him, Obama “looks down the list of all of the powers that are legally his and he’s like a kid in a candy store.”
These outbursts of emotion, courtesy of people like Stockman, fit in with the ethos of the NRA who have now taken to depicting Obama as a fascist smugly peering at America over his stack of money. This isn’t about guns anymore but rather who is in control and who is not. Guns offer the owner a sense of security and control, and it is seemingly unsettling to those who identify with the NRA when these comforts are taken away. This discomfort results in a binary us vs. them mentality that is overtly depicted in the NRA video below – as if all American citizens in the United States should band together in an act of defiant solidarity to “Stand and Fight”. But if you take away the guns and the blatant propaganda, it is more likely that you are left with people who are more personally affected by the events at Sandy Hook than they let on.
This article was written by Kelly Price and first appeared on the Urban Times.
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