Saturday Night Special

Pulp, April 15, 2004

This weekend, as the National Rifle Association (NRA) holds its annual convention and gun show downtown, Confluence Against Gun Violence, a coalition of Pittsburgh organizations, will be holding a sort of mini-convention of its own, with events which organizers say are designed to educate the public and NRA membership about how the NRA leadership promote hate and contribute to widespread fear and violence.

“We’re really a homegrown reaction to the NRA,” says David Meieran, a Confluence organizer. “The events have all been organized by local community groups.” These groups include the Allegheny County Million Mom March, Association of Pittsburgh Priests, Pittsburgh Branch NAACP, Pennsylvanians Against Handgun Violence/SafePennsylvania, Pittsburgh Stand for Children Organizing Group, Rosenberg Institute for Peace and Justice, and the Thomas Merton Center.

Organizers of the Confluence are careful to make a distinction between the NRA leadership and its members. “The leaders of the NRA tend to be more extreme,” says Meieran. “One of our goals is to educate NRA members of the disconnect between leaders and members.”

It’s easy to see how some people might be under the impression that the NRA leadership might be a tad extreme. Jeff Cooper, an NRA board member, was quoted in Guns and Ammo magazine saying, “the consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well supplied with ammunition.”

AT the 2002 annual meeting of the NRA, CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre called gun control advocates, “fakes, frauds, and liars,” “[a] shadowy network of extremist social guerillas,” and “a sort of Taliban, an intolerant coalition of lunatics that shelter the anti-freedom alliance so it can thrive and grow.”

On the NRA’s website there is a 19-page list of organizations, celebrities, journalists, and organizations who have endorsed anti-gun positions. This “shadowy network of extremist social guerillas” includes such radical, freedom-hating extremists as the American Association of Retired People, the National Parent Teacher Association, the National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officers, the YWCA, Tony Bennett, Bryant Gumbell, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Hallmark Greeting Cards, and the St. Louis Rams. The web site also promotes a contest to win a Charlton Heston, “Cold, Dead Hands” Winchester rifle.

“The NRA stands in the way of any attempt to limit the proliferation of handguns,” says Meieran. He points out that a gun kills one person every 18 minutes in the United States. Gun Violence is especially pervasive in Pennsylvania, which in 1999 ranked sixth in the United States in total firearm homicides, seventh in aggravated assaults involving firearms, and fourth in robberies involving firearms. One person is killed by a gun every day in Pennsylvania.

The Confluence is attempting to make connections between domestic gun violence and increased militarism abroad. On Saturday there will be two feeder marches- a violence prevention march, beginning at Freedom Corner in the Hill District, and a peace and justice march beginning at the North Shore Trail.

“There has been an increasing militarization of local communities, in terms of both the citizens and the police,” says Meieran. “We hope that the Confluence begins to set the seeds for a local gun violence prevention movement. One that does focus on peace and justice.”