NRA Calls Slavery Apologist Newsletter ‘Astute’ and ‘Timely’

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:18 pm

Though it does not come as a surprise, it turns out the NRA is quite fond of slavery. On Wednesday, their magazine, America’s 1st Freedom, sang paeans of praise to “the late Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper (USMC).” Media Matters’ Timothy Johnson reminds us that Cooper was a “former NRA board member and NRA Executive Council member.” He was also racist as they come.

Supposedly an ode to “The Modern Technique†of pistol craft, the article, which was authored by Guns & Gear Editor Frank Winn, who says Cooper was known for his “well-known erudition.†Winn called him “a formidable historian and philosopher of broad, eclectic taste,†whose writings were both “astute” and “timely.”

Because nothing is more “astute” and “timely” than slavery.

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Perhaps Cooper was a true artist in the handling of the pistol. This is entirely beside the point, because no mention of him should ignore his racism. Winn recommends at the close of his piece that,

For further reading, we highly recommend Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries, available here, and his many books here. Written over a long period ending in 2006 (when the colonel passed away at 86), they are insightful, wide-ranging and quite frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Even 10 or more years later, many of his observations remain astute and timely, particularly in advance of the 2016 presidential election.

As Johnson relates,

Cooper often used racial slurs in his newsletter, including calling people of Middle Eastern descent “ragheads,†black children “pickaninnies†and “goblins,†Japanese people “nips,†Vietnamese people “gooks,†American Indians “pesky redskins†and “Injuns,†and black South Africans “kaffirs†— a term equivalent to the slur “n*gger†in the United States.

If these offend you, remember that as Clint Eastwood claimed, these sorts of words were not “racism” in his day and you’re just being a big pussy and you “just f*cking get over it.†You know, because white folks.

Cooper said abolishing slavery was “a mistake†and wrote,

We reflect, in this period of racist agitation, that slavery has been the normal condition of mankind for most of history. What do you do with the losers? You either kill them outright or put them to work. If you pen them up you have to feed them, and you have enough trouble feeding yourself. Despite this a large number of semi−literate types in the States seem to think of slavery as a unique invention of the southern states of the US over a period of a few generations.

No, we think nothing of the sort. It’s just that the South’s slavery is a stain on our nation. The race-based slavery of European states is their shame to deal with.

Funny how these racist slavery apologists they feel they can dish out this cr*p and they’re somehow not “pussies” themselves when they whine about it. If there are two bigger crybabies than Donald Trump and “Chair Talker” Clint Eastwood, I am at a loss to say who they are.

Cooper is dead, and good riddance, but his legacy of hate lives on in people like Trump and Eastwood – and in the NRA. The NRA, like Trump, is capable of sinking to any new low and in a race to the bottom it is difficult to say who will get their first.

In the end, this attempt by the NRA to glorify the indefensible is just another example of the “post racial” myth pushed by all the racists out there who want to blame the victims for their own bigotry.



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