Posted on 04/25/2014 5:31:02 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When Michael Bloomberg announced he would spend $50 million on gun control this year, he said he hoped to make the National Rifle Association “afraid.” This weekend, the Bloomberg-backed group Everytown for Gun Safety will help pay to send hundreds of anti-gun violence supporters to the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis.
Cleopatra and Nathaniel Pendleton, parents of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl shot and killed in Chicago in 2013, are part of a group of survivors traveling to Indianapolis this weekend for the NRA convention with Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety.
Ten days after Michael Bloomberg announced a $50 million investment in gun control and proclaimed the National Rifle Association should be afraid of him, the Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety group is taking the fight directly to NRA — picking up a chunk of the tab for hundreds of activists and gun violence survivors to attend the annual NRA convention in Indianapolis.
The group said that more than 100 mothers and 20 survivors of gun violence will arrive in Indianapolis on Friday. Everytown is covering the cost of the mothers’ hotels in Indianapolis, and paying the travel and lodging expenses for a group of 20 survivors to be in Indianapolis this weekend, an Everytown spokesperson told BuzzFeed.
Everytown would not disclose how much it was spending on the weekend, but said funds are from a combination of group’s money and fundraising efforts leading up to the convention.
A fundraising email from Shannon Watts, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America founder and Indianapolis resident, read: “The NRA is coming to my hometown of Indianapolis for their annual convention this weekend. And, frankly, I’m furious.”
Close to 80,000 people are expected in Indianapolis to attend the annual NRA convention, which is being billed as “nine acres of guns under one roof.”
“Everyone thinks our strength comes from money. It doesn’t,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam told USA Today Thursday. Our strength is truly in our membership. We have a savvy and loyal voting bloc, and they show up election after election after election.”
“What we don’t have is billions of dollars,” he said.
According to the latest public figures, the NRA amassed more than $250 million in revenue in 2012.
NRA President James Porter cut the ribbon inside the NRA exhibit hall at the Indiana Convention Hall to open the 2014 convention.
The Bloomberg-backed group’s presence in Indianapolis this weekend serves as a de facto kickoff to its activist efforts.
In an interview with the New York Times, Bloomberg announced his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group will join forces with activist organization Moms Demand Action to form Everytown, an organization of 1,000 mayors and 1.5 million Americans nationwide. In outlining the group’s strategy, Bloomberg said the group will focus heavily on targeting midterm election campaigns and spending against candidates who did not support a bill last year that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers.
Family and friends of victims of the shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., and at Virginia Tech are among those expected to travel to the convention.
Lucia McBath, Everytown national spokesperson and the mother of Jordan Davis, the teenager who was shot and killed in 2012 in a Jacksonville, Fla., parking lot after an argument over loud music, will also be in Indianapolis.
“[I’m here to] let people see the face of the victims,” McBath told BuzzFeed.
Everytown held a press conference outside the convention Friday and released a report citing egregious positions and tactics by the NRA that Everytown feels subvert public safety.
The report, titled, “Not Your Grandparents’ NRA,” argues that the organization, which was once a community of sportsmen and gun enthusiasts, has lost its way.
The release of the report Friday coincided with the premiere of a new ad produced by Everytown featuring gun violence survivors reading quotes from NRA president Wayne LaPierre and other NRA leaders.
Nathaniel Pendleton, father of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl who was shot and killed in a Chicago park in 2013, is featured in the ad along with his wife, Cleopatra. The Pendletons are also in Indianapolis this weekend. He said being at the convention and being featured in the ad feels “therapeutic.”
Everytown for Gun Safety released a new television ad on the first day of the NRA convention featuring gun violence survivors reading quotes from NRA leaders.
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
“NRA leadership is completely out of step with its own membership,” Watts said. “By fiercely opposing even modest steps to keep guns out of dangerous hands, the NRA’s leadership has shown that its allegiance lies with the gun industry — not with its members.”
Erica Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Hochsprung, the slain principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, is attending her second NRA convention this weekend. Last year at the convention in Houston, Lafferty says she had constructive conversations with NRA members who she says were tricked by the leaders of the organization into believing that expanded background checks meant gun owners would have to register everyone of their firearms on a federal list. “Once they learned that was not true, [the members] were like: why wouldn’t we support background checks?”
Lafferty, who works at Everytown full time as the group’s outreach coordinator, emphasizes that her presence and the presence of others is to send a message to the NRA leadership.
“[NRA leaders] have to look at me and know that my mom was murdered,” Lafferty says. “They can’t pretend that this is a non-issue when they look me in the eye.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article said that Everytown was covering the travel expenses of the mothers’ traveling to Indianapolis.
Sending hippies to a convention that, I’m sure, is full of gun tot’n individuals is crazy. But, go for it.
I guarantee you that the Chiraq homeboy who did the shooting doesn't even know what the NRA is.
I do not think I have seen any proposed infringement of the second amendment that was not described as a “modest first step”.
He probably couldn’t spell NRA.
FOr Shannon Watts: I am a member of the NRA. I don't live in "Everytown". I live in North Dakota, where, if I need a firearm, I'd better have it handy, because the police officer or Sheriff's deputy who might respond to my call may be 75 miles away. In other words, it is up to me to defend self, home family and property from the bad guys.
If the NRA is "out of step" with gun owners (their membership), then maybe it is because some of us regard them as not aggressive enough repealing the sort of onerous laws which hinder the defense of my family, self, home, and community against the criminal element, not because they go along with any of the schemes people who don't have the sand to take responsibility for their own safety cook up.
As for paid howlers like yourself, one can only assume that you show up because of the check, that if you are not enough of a hypocrite to arm yourself in spite of the laws you want everyone else to follow, that your enthusiasm for your cause would stop with your last check.
How sad that you have exploited the grief of those who have been victims to attempt to create still more by limiting the ability of those yet unaffected to defend themselves against criminals.
How diabolical to skirt the issues of the true purpose of the Second Amendment: to guarantee that the ability of The People to resist tyranny from within be uninfringed. Instead you offer security for the sacrifice of liberty, and we both know that leads to neither.
Especially when a “modest first step” wasn’t needed.
Where were Trayvon’s mommy and daddy?
must have been no money offered
Bloombergs group of dorks were down there. Nobody cared though.
” a group of survivors”
what a twisted phrase to use
Its not the NRA who killed them.
Liberals have a funny notion of accountability.
maybe nra could be like big brother and force them into a free speech zone a half a mile away and mace them if they attempted to leave.
We’ll look you in the eye and tell you you’re completely wrong.
Then we’ll tell you, “come and take them”.
My brother and I spent the entire day there today. It was amazing. No sign of protesters. Bought a nice IWB holster. Indy is a great city to visit.
We’re heading out *early* Saturday morning for Indy. And we’ll be carrying. Still, I figure the mass shooter kooks will be looking for a liberal gun free zone.
Tell me there was something better to eat for lunch than the usual convention floor cardboard.
Good...Maybe they will get a little education instead of the mind numbing stupidity the left infects their mind with...
Some maggots will do anything for a free ride. Even trample the rights of Americans. I have no respect for these freeloading Nazi bastards. No one else should respect them either. It’s me, me, me. “Where da free stuff?”
I attended the NRA convention last year. 3 or 4 protesters were outside, but if you watched the news that night the protesters were the opening story.
Please keep up the reports. Take some pictures if you can. I will be glad to put them in an article.
Read this article carefully. Notice how they use “talking point” after “talking point”, as if going over their memorized list of things to say to reporters.
I suspect their technique will be to recite their talking points to as many people as possible, while totally ignoring anything anyone says in rebuttal, or anything anyone says at all.
The use this technique on the TV talk shows, in which the guests ignore what each other say and just blather what they had practiced. It’s not a debate, it’s a recital.
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