The NRA’s response to the Philando Castile shooting is inexcusably weak. We need to make sure the NRA’s deafening silence on this shooting is rejected by those of us members who want and need the organization to stand up for our rights against the police. Especially against the police. Who do they think is on the front lines of infringing on these rights? It’s often the police, and when they do so, they should be rebuked by our nation’s oldest civil rights organization – that is, if they want to keep the title.
This man, who was behaving non-violently, obeying police orders, and legally carrying a gun should not have been killed by police. When he was, and when it was revealed that he did nothing wrong and was gunned down by a person unfit to be a crossing guard much less a police officer, the NRA should have said something and done something. Something, to deserve being the considered guardian of our Second Amendment rights.
Mr. Castile’s case can be understood nearly completely by watching two videos. The first was filmed and broadcast in the very moments after Castile was shot – by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who narrated the events with remarkable calm as he died next to her, and her four-year-old daughter. Ms. Reynolds livestreamed it to Facebook. That video depicts Mr. Castile’s last words – pleading his innocence saying “I wasn’t reaching for it.” The second video is from a police dash-cam and shows the shooting as it happened. Jeronimo Yanez, the now former police officer who killed Castile, is shown going from 0-100 failing many basic police procedures while gunning down a compliant motorist.
It can be frustrating to reserve judgment until the facts are in, but it is a sound practice. Surely many Black Lives Matter supporters are now (privately) embarrassed that Michael Brown turned out to be a future menace to society, and that the black witnesses who saw him assault the police were too afraid to speak the truth. The NRA needn’t be the first to comment when a gun owner is killed by authorities. When the videos are out, however, when the evidence has been presented, and when you can see this cop kill a man for no reason with your own eyes, well then you need to scream about it from the rooftops.
We have barely heard a whimper. It was worse than that. Weeks after the videos were released, all NRA spokesperson, Dana Loesch, could muster was that “[t]here are a lot of variables in this particular case and there were a lot of things that I wish would have been done differently.” She then went on with a brief plug for the NRA’s new civil liability insurance policies for gun carriers. Fellow NRA members are no doubt well aware of the organization’s branded financial and insurance products as we are inundated with marketing materials for them. The NRA makes sure of that. Why aren’t they making sure cops don’t kill us for exercising our rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment?
