"'Everything we do here has a downside,' NRA official Kayne Robinson says on the tapes. 'Don't anybody kid yourself about this great macho thing of going down there and showing our chest and showing how damn tough we are. ... We are in deep s*** on this deal. ... And so anything we do here is going to be a matter of trying to decide the best of a whole bunch of very, very bad choices.'"
(Tim Mak. “A secret tape made after Columbine shows the NRA's evolution on school shootings.” NPR. All Things Considered. November 9, 2021.)
Soon after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, senior leaders of the National Rifle Association huddled on a conference call to consider canceling their annual convention, scheduled just days later and a few miles away. Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre is on the line, as is longtime NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer and advertising strategist Angus McQueen, among others. The dilemma they face is apparent in their conversations.
The NRA strategists on the call sounded shaken and panicked as they pondered their next step into what would become an era of routine and horrific mass school shootings.
“You know, the other problem is holding a member meeting without an exhibit hall. The people you are most likely to get in that member meeting without an exhibit hall are the nuts,” said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s current CEO.
"At that same period where they're going to be burying these children, we're going to be having media ... trying to run through the exhibit hall, looking at kids fondling firearms, which is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible juxtaposition," says NRA lobbyist Jim Baker on the conference call.
On the call, NRA official Jim Land says, however, if the NRA “tucks tail and runs,” they're accepting responsibility for what happened.
To which, PR consultant Tony Makris replies. "On the other side, if you don't appear to be deferential in honoring the dead, you end up being a tremendous s***head who wouldn't tuck tail and run, you know? So it's a double-edged sword."
(Tim Mak. “A secret tape made after Columbine shows the NRA's evolution on school shootings.” NPR. All Things Considered. November 9, 2021.)
The tapes of the NRA discussions were recorded secretly by a participant and shared on the condition that the participant's name not be divulged. National Public Radio has taken steps to verify the tapes' authenticity, including by confirming the identities of those speaking on the tapes with two sources and comparing the voices on the calls with publicly available audio.
NPR reports …
“In addition to mapping out their national strategy, NRA leaders can also be heard describing the organization's more activist members in surprisingly harsh terms, deriding them as 'hillbillies' and 'fruitcakes' who might go off script after Columbine and embarrass them.
“And they dismiss conservative politicians and gun industry representatives as largely inconsequential players, saying they will do whatever the NRA proposes. Members of Congress, one participant says, have asked the NRA to 'secretly provide them with talking points' …
“In those private moments, the NRA considered a strikingly more sympathetic posture toward mass shootings than the uncompromising stance it has taken publicly in the decades since, even considering a $1 million fund to care for the victims.”
(Tim Mak. “A secret tape made after Columbine shows the NRA's evolution on school shootings.” NPR. All Things Considered. November 9, 2021.)
Read NPR's entire article by clicking here: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1049054141/a-secret-tape-made-after-columbine-shows-the-nras-evolution-on-school-shootings.
NPR has obtained more than 2 1/2 hours of recordings of those private meetings after the Columbine shooting, which offer unique insight into the NRA's deliberations in the wake of this crisis — and how it has struggled to develop what has become its standard response to school shootings ever since.
The strategists ultimately decided that canceling their convention would deny them a platform to respond to criticism and also that a cancellation would be an opportunity for attacks by the national media. The NRA ultimately decided to hold its convention in Denver after the shootings, albeit vastly scaled down in size. It was met by thousands of protesters.
NPR further reports …
“And inside, then-NRA President Charlton Heston delivered the defiant message that its leaders had planned out in their private calls – a message very similar to the group's position on mass shootings today: The national media is not to be trusted, and any conversation about guns and the NRA after mass shootings is an untoward politicization of the issue.
"''Why us? Because their story needs a villain. They want us to play the heavy in their drama of packaged grief, to provide riveting programming to run between commercials for cars and cat food,' Heston said at the time to applause. 'The dirty secret of this day and age is that political gain and media ratings all too often bloom on fresh graves.'
“Over the next two decades, this unapologetic message would come to define the NRA's tone in the wake of mass shootings at American schools.
“After 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech in 2007: 'This is a time for people to grieve, to mourn, and to heal. This is not a time for political discussions or public policy debates.'
"After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School: 'The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.'
“And after the 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., the NRA's spokesperson said bluntly, 'Many in legacy media love mass shootings.'"
(Tim Mak. “A secret tape made after Columbine shows the NRA's evolution on school shootings.” NPR. All Things Considered. November 9, 2021.)
The tapes reveal that the NRA wasn’t always so rigid in its hardcore views, but it was certainly concerned that its membership would be … although labeling members as “hillbillies” and “fruitcakes” is certainly demeaning and indicative of the NRA's knowledge of its evil influence. Immediately after the slaughter in Columbine, the group was most concerned about saving face, not about measures to prevent further school massacres.
Now, after Trump was elected with the NRA’s help, the Supreme Court includes three justices appointed by him – at least two of whom seemed eager in arguments to demolish most of the remaining state restrictions on carrying concealed weapons, in New York and six other states.
The passions of gun owners – and the fear they have instilled in a majority of public officials – remain dominant forces in American politics despite the greed and incompetence of their leaders.
Last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the NRA, charging that the organization is "fraught with fraud and abuse." Bloomberg reports the NRA’s legal troubles deepened in 2019 when news reports indicated that senior executives had used the nonprofit’s assets to fund lavish personal lifestyles. Some of the money has been repaid to the group, which says it has improved its internal controls.
As allegations spilled out in public, revenue from members, the largest source of income, plunged by a third to $113 million in 2019, from $170 million a year earlier, Internal Revenue Service filings show.
Whatever is in the future for the NRA, the group now is among the most powerful special interest lobby groups in the U.S., with a substantial budget to influence members of Congress on gun policy. National Public Radio's secret tapes reveal dishonorable intentions and give the public crucial insights on the strategies of a lobby that spends about $250 million per year, far more than all the country's gun control advocacy groups put together.
Back in 2000, Charlton Heston concocted a scenario in which a President Gore would dispatch fictitious agents to confiscate his guns. Holding up an antique flintlock rifle, Heston delivered his signature line:
“So, as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: 'From my cold, dead hands!'"
– Charlton Heston, May 20, 2000 (Heston repeated the phrase at the end of each NRA convention over which he presided.)
What else was Heston referring to in his “cold, dead hands”? Much more I believe. I submit the following analysis for your consideration:
“By the time Heston was elevated to the presidency of the NRA in 1998, his gun politics – and his broader cultural politics – had evolved. Convinced that American values were being threatened from all directions, he would transform the largely ceremonial NRA office into a soapbox for attacking feminists and gay-rights activists, identity politics, and political correctness; his crusade on behalf of an individualist interpretation of the Second Amendment became part and parcel of a defense of what he saw as the legacy and values of the 'dead white guys' who had created the nation.”
(Shmoop Editorial Team. "Charlton Heston and the NRA." Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 12 Nov. 2021.)
II. Epilogue
Lock the libraries, science labs, cafeterias,
patrol the parking lot and sidewalks.
On April 20th, raise the flag high over vacant landscapes.
Let it blow inside un-built houses and the dreams
the automatics have pounded into silence —
deafening, eternal, uncompromised silence.
Still, hear the shouts and pleas of the dead as they continue
to shake the living, the hollowed-out living, the living not living,
but sleeping in the large cemeteries of apathy:
Do something, do something, do something! Anything to
kill your nothing, your noting, your nodding off.
Take up arms against complacency.
If your ears are pounding, they should be.
If your eyes are opening, do not avert your gaze.
III. Eulogies
For the dead
Let me go back from the traveled road
Away from the crowds pushing,
To a quieter hill where the woods are still,
Serene ’neath a clean, blue sky.
For the living
Let me go forward on the traveled road
To feel stone and dirt beneath my feet
To honor the dreams of the dead:
Whispers from angels ’neath a clean blue sky.
From “Silenced: A poem for the victims of the 1999 Columbine school shooting” by Marjorie Skelly (2019). In memory of the Columbine High School shooting, April 20, 1999, in Littleton, Colorado. The four lines under “For the dead” are from an anonymous poem that was read at the funeral of shooting victim Corey Tyler DePooter.
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