NRA Publishes Enemies List With 506 Names

Late last year, the National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm published a Nixonian enemies list naming organizations and individuals that “lent monetary, grassroots or some other type of direct support to anti-gun organizations” or have otherwise backed efforts to promote gun safety. The list totals 506 names, including major medical associations, law enforcement organizations, former presidents and a long list of celebrities. Here are five examples of the kinds of groups the NRA views as its enemies:

As it turns out, the sort of people tasked with saving the lives of victims of gun violence would rather that America’s trauma centers were not quite so busy. A short list of medical and nursing organizations on the NRA’s enemies list includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and the American Nurses Association, in addition to Ronald Reagan’s Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

It turns out that sort of people who devote their lives to preparing our children for adulthood don’t much like to learn that a young life has been cut short by gun violence either. The NRA’s enemies list includes the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Education Association, the National Association of School Psychologists and the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

It also turns out that people who put risk their lives to keep our streets and schools safe don’t much like being in the line of fire. The National Association of Police Organizations, the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers, and the Police Foundation are all on the NRA’s enemies list.

The NRA may not want Americans to “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” but many people of faith take the Bible’s command seriously enough to earn a place on the gun lobby’s list of enemies. They include the American Jewish Committee, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Congress of National Black Churches, the Episcopal Church’s Washington Office, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs, the United States Catholic Conference, the United Methodist Church General Board & Church Society, and the United Church of Christ Office for Church in Society.

Above anything, the NRA’s enemies list reveals its capacity to hold a grudge. It includes a long, long list of celebrities, many of which are far from Hollywood’s elite circles. It is not clear why the nation’s top gun organization feels so threatened by Art Garfunkel, for example. Or why Washington’s most heavily armed lobbyists fear a ragtag list of former talk show hosts, washed up actors and what appears to be the entirety of Frank Zappa’s progeny. Gun owners beware! Both Boyz II Men and ‘NSYNC are coming for your guns, and the NRA is very, very afraid.

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‘Olympus Has Fallen’ And America’s Enemies

First, a huge thanks to Alan Pyke, Sharmin Kent, and Betsy Phillips for filling in while I was at Sundance, with help from Zack Beauchamp and Travis Waldron. I’m incredibly grateful for their help, and I hear you gave them a great time.

It makes a certain amount of sense to me that, given the vitriol directed at President Obama, that some insecurities about presidential safety would come out in Hollywood products, the first of which, Olympus Has Fallen, has released its initial trailer:

What’s most interesting to me is not so much that the presidency is portrayed as under attack, or the psychological struggles of Gerard Butler (for that, I recommend Ralph Fiennes’ adaptation of Coriolanus, in which Butler is tremendous, as is everyone else), but who’s doing the attacking. Initially, the movie throws out images of mujahideen-like attackers wielding rocket launchers, only to transition to Washington, DC-born actor Rick Yune playing some kind of sinister and powerful if as-yet-nationally-unaffiliated foreigner who hired them. My bet was that he ends up being North Korean or from some other not-particularly-powerful Asian country that Americans don’t actually feel any geopolitical anxiety about, though, as with the North Koreans in Red Dawn, he’ll be standing in for our worries about an emergent China, or something.

I understand why pop culture wants to play with American worries about our place in the world, why a movie would show the consequences of our actions blowing back on us, why Homeland throws out the specter of symbols like Hezbollah and al Qaeda hooking up, despite the geopolitical realities that divide those groups. But it would be nice if we could deal with those anxieties in a way that reflect reality. The White House doesn’t always have to blow up for us to acknowledge that we’re worried about our place in the world.

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