Posted on 10/29/2003 9:47:39 AM PST by yonif
Los Angeles - Most blacklists are designed to intimidate. But thousands of Americans are clamouring to join one drawn up by the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Actor Dustin Hoffman was so dismayed to find his name missing from the NRA's shadowy 19-page list of United States companies, celebrities, and news organisations seen as lending support to anti-gun policies that he wrote to the powerful pro-gun lobby group begging to be included.
"As a supporter of comprehensive anti-gun safety measures, I was deeply disappointed when I discovered my name was not on the list," Hoffman wrote in a letter to the NRA that was released on Tuesday.
"I was particularly surprised by the omission given my opposition to the loophole that makes it legal for 18- to 20-year-olds to buy handguns at gun shows," he added.
Hoffman's name has now been added to the list, which reads like a Who's Who of American business, culture and religion and that ranges from the American Jewish Congress to A&M Records, ABC News and talk show queen Oprah Winfrey.
An NRA spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
The list was found deep in the official NRA website by a group of grass-roots anti-gun campaigners and publicised by them two weeks ago to garner support for two pieces of gun control legislation going through Congress.
The campaigners set up their own website (http://www.NRAblacklist.com) and urged Americans to voluntarily put their names there. A full-page ad on Tuesday in Daily Variety - the Hollywood trade magazine - urged movie and music artists to sign up.
"What the site tries to do is turn it into a badge of honour to get on the blacklist by saying 'Hey Julia Roberts is on the blacklist. Why don't you join it?' It's been incredibly successful. Since we have launched, 25 000 people have signed on to ask to be put on the blacklist," said Wendy Katz, spokesperson for the group.
The NRA initially denied compiling a blacklist as such, saying it was merely responding to members wanting to know which individuals and corporations opposed the US Constitution's Second Amendment on the right to bear arms.
But National Rifle Association executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre said of the list last week: "Our members don't want to buy their songs, don't want to go to their movies, don't want to support their careers."
Katz said the campaigners hoped to expose the NRA's influence in Washington, DC, spur opposition to a bill that would grant immunity in civil cases for gun manufacturers and dealers, and gather support for renewal of a 1994 ban on the sale of military assault weapons.
It seems to me that a "comprehensive anti-gun safety measure" would be to have lots of guns to protect one's self from anti-gunners.
If they get guns legally, they'll have to get them in back alley gun shows. All teens should be allowed to buy guns. They shouldn't even have to get parental consent.
Geeze, NRA really missed the boat on this one - I hear Hoffman is in the distorted new film Runaway Jury about suing the gun manufacturers. (BTW, John Grishom's original was about the tobacco industry but The Insider had already been made).
Well, as pro-2A folk say, "we like our targets clearly identified," so more power to "the blacklist."
WHAT!?! The Runaway Jury has been changed to suing the GUN MANUFACTURERS?? Thanks for the heads up, that's one film I can cross off my list. I almost went to that movie last weekend thinking it was about the tobacco companies like the book was.
Best Law??? We could ALL do that BEFORE the Clinton administration's unconstitutional check system was put in place, plus we didn't have to get "permission" for an inalienable right.
IIRC, this jacka$$ is a paying NRA member. Nevertheless, he deserves a place of distinction on the blacklist.
That's nice. Of course "domestic violence" now includes raising one's voice. So if you yell at your significant other and someone reports it, you lose your right to own a gun, ever. In frontier times, a man would get his guns back after being released from jail! They rightly recognized that if he committed a crime with those guns he would pay the appropriate penalty, but not every petty crime meant losing the right to self-defense.
I understand the "good intent" that persuades many conservatives to foolishly surrender liberty, but gun laws, however "well-intentioned" lead to tyranny.
Period.
The Federal government should rightly FEAR us. They should come calling, hat in hand, to ASK for tax increases. When and if we are effectively disarmed, or simply too feminized to protest anymore, they will impose total control. Our dumbed-down generation will hand over everything to their benevolent overlords. (BTW, I make the presumption you are not among those.)
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