It has now been one week since the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history occurred at a country music concert in Las Vegas, and the Left continues to label the Fairfax, Virginia-based National Rifle Association a “terrorist organization,” despite the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that any of the most recent mass shooters were members of the group.
The Vegas shooter, whose name I will not mention here to keep from giving him the notoriety he despicably desired, compiled a semi-automatic weapons arsenal, along with explosive material and devices to make his semi-automatic weapons fire almost as fast as fully automatic weapons. While officials are usually able to determine a motive within hours of a mass shooting occurring, police have not pinned down what exactly drove the Vegas shooter to kill more than 50 innocent people.
Nevertheless, the lack of a known motive hasn’t stopped many on the Left from labeling the NRA a “terrorist” organization. Liberals, from Keith Olbermann to a Harvard University professor to various social media trolls, have made it their new mission to smear the pro-Second Amendment gun group.
The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee urged the Obama State Department in 2016 to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
“It is time to stop the madness and excuses. We have to have the courage to call the NRA exactly what it has become — a domestic terrorist organization that places profit above the lives of the American people,” Professor Jonathan Walton said during a recent church service at Harvard Memorial Church.
Walton went on to say that the NRA and its “congressional accomplices” want to have more vigils.
The Harvard professor isn’t the only one on the Left making such far-fetched assertions, though. Keith Olbermann, host of the GQ web series “The Resistance,” also labeled the pro-Second Amendment group as terrorists in a recent episode.
“Warmest condolences and sympathies will not suffice, we need leadership in this country which will prevent — whatever their motive — the terrorists in this country from buying guns in this country and killing crowds of people in this country,” Olbermann said.
“The second amendment has now been transformed into an excuse for why mad men of whatever heritage or political purpose cannot be stopped from carrying at least 10 long rifles into a hotel in Las Vegas and setting up a snipers nest and killing people and why a group that enables such massacres, the National Rifle Association is not branded for what it is — a terrorist organization,” Olbermann added, according to TheWrap’s Jon Levine.
Your guess is as good as mine as to why some on the Left are so quick to label the as a “terrorist” group while remaining tight-lipped about their fellow liberals holding individuals like Linda Sarsour and actual terrorist groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, in such high regard.
Former President Barack Obama honored Sarsour, a Muslim woman, as a “Champion of Change.”
According to the Obama White House website archives, Sarsour “shatters stereotypes of Muslim women while also treasuring her religious and ethnic heritage.” This is the same woman who in July used the term “jihad” when referring to opposition to President Donald Trump and his administration.
“I hope, that when we stand up to those who oppress our communities, that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad, that we are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or the other side of the world, but here in these United States of America, where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reining in the White House,” Sarsour said at the Annual Islamic Society of North America convention on July 6, Fox News reported.
Sarsour was also a guest at this year’s NATSECDEF conference at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., a gathering of experts from the fields of law, community activism, religion, national security, and journalism, according to GWU.
And in 2014, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) held up more than $650 million in U.S. military aid to Egypt. The Washington Free Beacon reported at the time linked the Democratic senator’s decision to withhold the assistance to the Egyptian government’s ousting of the former Muslim Brotherhood regime.
Former Pentagon spokesman Adm. John Kirby said in April 2014 that the military aid held up by Leahy in the Senate would “help the Egyptian government counter extremists who threaten U.S., Egyptian, and Israeli security.” The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee urged the Obama State Department in 2016 to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
The push came after governments in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia labeled members of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, the Washington Post reported.
These are just some of the examples where the Left has supported, whether directly or indirectly, actual terror organizations. But instead of calling out their fellow liberals for these actions, Walton, Olbermann and others choose to ignore their faults while simultaneously characterizing NRA members as terrorists.
To be clear, the NRA indicated in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre that it is open to further regulation of so-called “bump stocks,” which the Vegas shooter used to effectively turn semi-automatic weapons into automatic guns. Where the NRA hasn’t shown any willingness to budge is on the regulation of firearms themselves, calling lawmakers’ attempt to regulate them a “slippery slope.”
Indeed, America’s Founders wrote in the Second Amendment to the Constitution that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be “infringed.” So it’s understandable why the NRA would be open to further regulating bump stocks. After all, these devices are not themselves “arms.”
At the same time, the NRA fights to protect the rights of responsible gun owners, ensuring that the Founders’ intent for the Second Amendment, that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, is never compromised. This is not a “terrorist” ideal. Rather, it is fundamentally American.
Jon Street is a journalist for The Republican Standard.
