Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [103]
For the record, Nazi storm troopers wore brown, not black, which is why they were called brownshirts. Jeff Cooper, a member of the NRA board of directors, may have been trying to address this misconception when he argued that ATF agents were not in fact Nazi storm troopers. They were ninjas. He explained:
It is popular at this time to compare the behavior of our uncontrolled Federal agents to that of the Nazis in the Third Reich. It may be that this is a valid comparison, but the Nazis are long ago and far away, whereas the ninja in the U.S. are right now in full-cry and apparently without fear of any sort of control. They move mainly at night. They conceal their faces. They use overwhelming firepower and they make almost no effort to identify their targets. They are scarier than the Nazis—who at least never concealed their faces.9
There are a few problems with the ninja theory, however. Being stealth assassins, ninjas generally avoid cumbersome accessories like helmets and jackboots, and they are not known to attack unidentified targets with overwhelming firepower. Moreover, historians of feudal Japan even dispute the idea that traditional ninjas wore black. This concern is somewhat academic, however, since ATF agents don’t wear black either. Their jackets are navy blue with yellow letters that say “ATF.”10
“The Slickest, Most Aggressive Anti-Gun White House in History”
While the threat from ninja storm troopers was probably beneficial to the NRA’s fundraising efforts, it did create a bit of challenge. When you build your donor base around defending the nation from jackbooted ninjas, you can’t go back to raising money for Boy Scout gun safety programs. You need a continual supply of ninjas, or at least liberal gun eradication conspiracies, to keep the money flowing. But there has been no new federal gun control legislation since Clinton’s 1994 assault weapons ban—which expired in 2004—and no high-profile ATF operations since agents stormed David Koresh’s fortress in Waco, Texas, in 1993. The risk of jackbooted ninja attacks or gun control bills under Bush’s watch was considered negligible.
Perhaps that is why the NRA produced a short graphic novel in 2006 called Freedom in Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century. co The book included cartoon pictures of all the heinous villains who sought to disarm and abuse beleaguered American gun owners, including:
• Gun-ban bankrollers depicting a liver-spotted George Soros with decidedly olive-toned skin
• Disaster apologists depicting jackbooted ninja-thugs with their knees on the neck of a prostrate old woman
• Illegal alien gangs depicting badass African Americans, Latinos, and Asians making gang signals
• One-world extremists depicting the UN and a revolver tied in a knot
• Animal rights terrorists depicting a tattooed woman with unshaven legs, an owl carrying TNT, an angry pig, and a lobster, which also looks angry. But it’s hard to tell with lobsters.
By 2008, a new threat arose to menace America’s gun owners, a threat even more menacing than illegal immigrant gangs and enraged lobsters—Barack Hussein Obama. During his election campaign, Obama promised to reenact the assault weapons ban that expired in 1994 and to close the loophole that allows gun shows to sell weapons without background checks. These proposals may not seem very menacing. That’s because they’re not very menacing. Even Wayne LaPierre knows that they’re not very menacing. That’s why the NRA invented Obama’s Ten Point Plan to “Change” the Second Amendment. According to NRA flyers, Obama planned to outlaw the use of firearms for home defense, eliminate the “Right-to-Carry,” shut down 90 percent of gun shops, and ban hunting rifle ammunition. According to another mailing, “Never in NRA’s history have we faced a presidential candidate . . . with such a deep-rooted hatred of firearm freedoms.