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After 2 Months of Being Dragged Through the Mud, the NRA Gets a Huge Break

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In the wake of the Feb. 14 Parkland, Florida, school shooting massacre, the anti-gun left declared all-out war against the National Rifle Association and all who supported or were financially affiliated with it.

But the effort to demonize and diminish the Second Amendment advocacy group that is essentially the oldest civil rights organization in the nation’s history has backfired on the gun grabbers, according to Fox News.

While the anti-gun left — with ample support from like-minded allies in the media — drug the NRA and NRA members through the mud over the past two months, the organization’s coffers have swelled substantially with historic levels of donations.

Indeed, it was announced that the NRA’s Political Victory Fund brought in roughly $2.4 million in donations in the month of March alone, a sum that was $1.5 million more than was brought in during the same month in 2017.

Those numbers came from Federal Election Commission filings obtained by McClatchy, which also reported that the significant sums donated to the NRA absolutely dwarfed the number of donations received by prominent gun control advocacy groups.

The $2.4 million raised by the NRA in the month of March was the largest one-month total for the organization dating back to at least June 2003, the oldest electronic records of federal financial filings that were available.

By way of comparison, the donation haul in March was about $1.6 million more than was raised in the month of February. The massive amount of donations also beat the $1.1 million and $1.5 million raised in January and February 2013 as Democrats threatened the Second Amendment in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Incredibly, approximately $1.9 million of that $2.4 million total was derived from small donations of $200 or less, meaning average American gun owners put their money on the line to help defend their natural right to keep and bear arms.

Meanwhile, gun control groups like the Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety and former Democrat Arizona Rep. Gabbie Gifford’s Political Action Committee earned only a tiny fraction in donations as the NRA did over the course of the month of March.

Do you agree that anti-gun attacks on the NRA helped fuel donations and support for the Second Amendment advocates?

Buried at the end of the McClatchy article it was revealed that Everytown raised a paltry $13,580 while Gifford’s PAC took in $129,589 in donations for the gun grabbing cause.

The March for Our Lives group which sprang up after the Parkland shooting claimed to have raised nearly $3.5 million since Feb. 18 via a GoFundMe account, but it appears much of that money was spent organizing the group’s mass protests across the country and in contributions to the families of the school shooting victims.

At the same time that the gun rights organization out-raised their anti-gun rivals, it is suspected that the incessant attacks from the left against the NRA have also had a similar effect on the group’s membership, though official numbers aren’t available.

Ricochet reported in February on the irony of the anti-gun left being responsible for a surge in new and renewed memberships with the NRA, pretty much the opposite of what they hoped to achieve with their demonization and blaming of the organization for mass murders.

That piece pointed out that many Americans — including many non-gun owners who nevertheless appreciate and respect our Constitutionally-protected rights — viewed the assault upon the NRA as an assault upon the law-abiding people who fill the organization’s ranks, prompting even more people to join them in solidarity.

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The excessive hate poured out by the left against those who stand in defense of our most cherished natural right has only served to bolster and strengthen those the left vehemently oppose.

Given the remarkable response from gun owners and gun rights supporters to the anti-gun attacks, we almost hope the gun grabbers keep talking about grabbing guns through the 2018 midterms, as it ironically is helping Second Amendment supporters instead of hurting them.

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Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. He has written about current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments.
Ben Marquis has written on current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. He reads voraciously and writes about the news of the day from a conservative-libertarian perspective. He is an advocate for a more constitutional government and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, which protects the rest of our natural rights. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the love of his life as well as four dogs and four cats.
Birthplace
Louisiana
Nationality
American
Education
The School of Life
Location
Little Rock, Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics




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