The NRA Explains

David Keene wants you to know: the NRA's ad attacking President Obama for accepting armed security for his family was not in fact an attack on the president's family.

“It wasn’t about his daughters. It was about elites,” Keene says in response to the criticism, noting that David Gregory and others besides the President were also depicted in the spot, “thinking that their children go to schools with security while they deride the idea of security for most people’s kids. That’s what it’s about. It’s about hypocrisy, not about the president’s daughters.”

The NRA has no intention of apologizing or pulling the ad.

“We didn’t name the president’s daughters,” Keene adds. “We didn’t criticize them. What we said is that these are people who think that their families deserve protection that yours don’t.”

Let's go to the video.

First sentence: "Are the president's kids more important than yours?"

The subject of that sentence is "the president's kids." The fact that they are unnamed does not make them any less the topic of discussion.

As for the claim that the ad involved people other than the president, David Gregory for example - that's true in only the most technical sense: at the very end of the end, Gregory appears in a video montage along with other targets of gun lobby dislike. Moreover, the same photo montage that includes Gregory also shows the group bracketed by two black-clad, face-masked men in military uniforms and headgear carrying tactical rifles, putting heavy strain on another NRA self-excuse: that the ad meant only to refer to the regular security force at Sidwell Friends school, as if the school had commandos on its payroll.

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