Country Superstar Blames NRA for Las Vegas Shooting, Yet Claims To Be ‘2nd Amendment Guy’ By Benjamin Arie
July 27, 2018 at 4:08pm
If you’re one of the over 5 million law-abiding NRA members in America, you’re to blame for 59 dead civilians in Las Vegas.
That’s the view of one country music star, at least, but he may have alienated a huge swath of his fan base.
It’s been almost 10 months since the dramatic mass shooting took place on Oct. 1st, 2017, during which a gunman opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel on the famous Vegas strip.
Musician Eric Church was one of the performers at the Route 91 festival that was targeted, although he wasn’t there on the day of the tragedy. Still, he has a strong opinion on the incident, and he just revealed some shockingly anti-Second Amendment views to Rolling Stone Magazine.
“There are some things we can’t stop. Like the disgruntled kid who takes his dad’s shotgun and walks into a high school,” Church declared to the left-leaning magazine.
“But we could have stopped the guy in Vegas,” he insisted.
That’s possible — after all, the resort could have possibly noticed the suspicious behavior of a man hauling suitcase after suitcase of rifles and ammunition to his suite, or friends and family of the killer could have realized that something was wrong.
Instead of focusing on those realistic possibilities, however, Church bizarrely insisted that it was the NRA’s fault that the attack happened.
“I blame the lobbyists,” the country music star declared. “And the biggest in the gun world is the NRA.”
Well, yes Eric, that’s because it’s made up of millions of like-minded, lawful gun owners who have joined an organization to represent their rights.
There is zero evidence that the Vegas shooter was a member of the NRA. In fact, a high number of the country music concert-goers he targeted leaned conservative.
The country singer went even further, and made the strange and frankly anti-American claim that citizens shouldn’t be able to band together or have power over their government.
“I don’t care who you are – you shouldn’t have that kind of power over elected officials,” he claimed.
“The gun-show [loophole] would not exist if it weren’t for the NRA, so at this point in time, if I was an NRA member, I would think I had more of a problem than the solution,” he rambled on, before encouraging NRA members to leave the pro-gun organization.
There is no evidence that the shooter who carried out the Vegas attack bought his rifles at a gun show, nor used the largely mythical “gun show loophole” to do so. He purchased his guns legally through dealers, and passed every background check, having nothing but speeding tickets on his record.
“I would question myself real hard about what I wanted to be in the next three, four, five years,” said Church. Perhaps he wants to be unemployed, because it’s a safe bet that the vast majority of his country music fans are pretty pro-gun.
Church — who incredibly referred to himself as “a gun guy” — then parroted the tired liberal talking point that the founding fathers didn’t actually mean to include updated rifles when they guaranteed gun ownership in the Second Amendment.
“I don’t think our forefathers ever thought the right to bear arms was that,” he claimed.
This is a common argument from liberals, but one that has been debunked repeatedly. It is immensely clear that the intent of the founding fathers was to allow the citizenry to be similarly equipped as soldiers, to give them a fighting chance against either government tyranny or an invading force.
It’s worth pointing out that one of the worst “mass shootings” in American history was actually perpetrated by the government against an unsuspecting citizenry. The Wounded Knee Massacre resulted in 200 women and children being killed.
A quick glance at the deadly histories of other governments shows that appalling atrocities are often the result of a disarmed population which cannot defend themselves.
Furthermore, contrary to the general perception, the signers of the Constitution and its amendments had clues that more sophisticated arms would emerge in the future. The Girandoni 1779 air rifle, for example, fired a lethal .46 caliber round at a fairly fast rate, and used a high capacity magazine. This was carried during the famous Lewis and Clark expedition.
There’s also the fact that privately-owned cannon and even warships were often used during the Revolutionary War period. If anything, the public’s ability to bear arms equivalent to what the founders expected has decreased, not increased. Only a fool would assume that the highly thoughtful, careful writers of the Second Amendment had no idea that firearms would advance.
It looks like Eric Church is that fool. It’s only natural to be shocked by what happened in Las Vegas, but the answer is not to tear up the Second Amendment or point fingers at law-abiding gun owners who had nothing to do with the tragedy.