NRA SPOKESMODEL ENCOURAGES GUN LOVERS TO BE EVEN MORE PARANOID THAN THEY ARE NOW

Gawker's Adam Weinstein directs our attention to a new NRA video starring Dom Raso, a pumped-up ex-Navy SEAL who's part of what's basically a Mod Squad of new young NRA spokesmodels.



After the obligatory corporate-metal guitar intro, Raso says this:

Propaganda: ideas or or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, or a government.

That sounds a lot like what I see every single day when I actually waste my time to keep up with what the news media is saying. I know this firsthand from seeing and hearing about media reports of what I was doing in the military that weren't even close to the truth. If you or someone you know wasn't actually on the "X," then you're getting third-party information. And we all know what happens when "he said, she said."

What I love about this is that he's not saying, "Don't believe everything the news media tells you" -- what he's saying is: 100% of all news reports are wrong. Don't believe any of them. They're all lies.

Yes, that's the kind of paranoia we want to encourage in heavily armed people, right?

And if you don't believe that's his point, here's his clarification:

What I mean by that is if you weren't actually there to witness the events, then you truly have no idea what really happened.

Let's bring up a recent example: the Navy Yard shooting. Same gun, different slay? To this day, I still talk to people that believe there was an AR used in the Navy Yard shooting, thanks to inaccurate media reports at the time of the incident. There wasn't an AR there at all. It was a shotgun, the same gun the vice president recommended we should go buy for self-defense. And I know that because I spoke with guys that were at the scene. That's accurate information.

Er ... Dom? You say you spoke with guy who were on the scene -- but I didn't. You told me not to believe anything unless I was personally "on the 'X,'" or someone I know was "on the 'X.'"

I don't know you. HOW CAN I POSSIBLY TRUST YOU??? YOU'RE PART OF THE MEDIA, TOO!!!

(Excuse me while I paint all the windows black and wrap myself in more tinfoil.)

I know, I know: I'm not supposed to think that he's part of the media. The liberal media is the media. He's on our side. He's the conduit of accurate information.

That's the way cult leaders talk: Everyone in the outside world wants to lie to you and harm you. Trust only me -- I'm the one who'll protect you. That's the way the NRA wants gunners to think.

*****

As Weinstein notes at Gawker, Raso goes on to complain (based on no evidence) that the media has stopped referring to murders as "murders" and uses the term "shootings" instead:

Here's another trick of theirs: When someone commits a murder, it used to be a murder, right? But now they race to label anything with a gun as a shooting, because they know how much more attention they're going to get with that word.

That's right -- it's now Orwellian to refer to an incident in which someone is shot as a "shooting."

I have no words.