This weekend is the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting and it is being held in my home state of Indiana. I can neither confirm nor deny that I will show up at the meeting to browse the 15+ acres of guns, fondling each new firearm like Joe Biden at a Girl Scout convention. The President and Vice-President are speaking today and it is expected that over 80,000 people will visit Indianapolis to attend the meeting. You would think that would be exciting and a source of some pride. You would be wrong. While most Hoosiers enthusiastically welcome the President and the NRA, the warm and fuzzy feelings are not universal.
Hometown newspaper, the Indianapolis Star, decided to run this story on Wednesday, right before the NRA annual meeting kicks off.
Indianapolis mother of boy paralyzed by gun violence warns of NRA’s ‘dangerous agenda’
How terrible! Did some NRA members shoot this poor boy, turning him into a mute quadriplegic? Those monsters!
Well no. The 13 year old young boy (now 18) in question, DeAndre Knox, was at a birthday party in Indianapolis. A fight broke out that his mother claims he was not a part of. As too often happens in DeAndre’s community, the fight led to gunfire and DeAndre was struck and permanently disabled by a bullet. That is terrible and it happens far too regularly. But what does that have to do with the NRA?
Nothing. Not a damn thing.
So what is the point of the article headlined with a photo of DeAndre rolled out like a totem for the cameras? According to his mom, it is because of the “dangerous agenda” of the NRA.
Now, just days before the National Rifle Association holds its annual convention in Indianapolis, DeAndre’s mother and other gun safety advocates say the NRA is pushing a “dangerous agenda” that has little to do with Second Amendment rights.
DeAndre Knox’s mother, DeAndra Yates-Dycus, is yet another useful mouthpiece for the gun control lobby to attack legal gun owners. I would bet all the money in my wallet that stopped on the street, DeAndra wouldn’t be able to tell what the 2nd Amendment says, tell you within 50 years when it was ratified and couldn’t offer a single concrete example of how the agenda of the NRA has “little to do with Second Amendment rights”. The article quotes a different gun grabber talking about people going to the NRA annual meeting because they are “…interested in buying camping equipment”. No one is going to the annual meeting because they are shopping for camping equipment. You have to be a member of the NRA in order to attend and people like me don’t join the NRA because we want to attend meetings to browse camping gear. We join the NRA and other groups like the Gun Owners of America because we want representation in Washington to defend our 2nd Amendment rights.
Here is a little hard truth for DeAndra Yates-Dycus:
Her son was shot and is crippled for life and I feel for her but it has nothing to do with the NRA. If she and DeAndre lived in a neighborhood made up 100% of NRA members, they would have been as safe as they could be anywhere in America. DeAndre wasn’t crippled by the NRA, the NRA’s agenda or any NRA members. DeAndre was almost certainly shot by a young black man who lacked the self-control to respond to a fight at a birthday any other way than by getting a gun and randomly shooting into a house, where kids 13 years of age and probably even younger were in attendance, because he was angry.
Someone knows who shot DeAndre but he will never get justice because of the code of silence in the black community. Instead of railing against the people who actually shot DeAndre, with an illegal gun almost certainly, his mother uses him as a photo prop to push an anti-gun agenda, in the same way that Sarah Brady used to roll her crippled husband James out for photo ops. The only reason she is getting any attention right now is that the NRA is in Indianapolis. When the annual meeting ends in a couple of days, the gun grabbers will move on. Meanwhile her son will still be mute quadriplegic thanks to a bullet fired by another young black man.
The NRA isn’t her enemy. As a member of the NRA living in her state, I am also not her enemy and I pose no threat to her, her son or any other young black man that isn’t trying to harm me first.
Shame on the Indianapolis Star for such a cynical and exploitative article.