NRA breaks silence post-Vegas: Trump’s critics should "perish in the political flames"

But now the extremist gun group has roared back to life with an utterly chilling ad calling for retribution against any and all critics of Donald Trump.

The ad ends with a call to arms to gun owners, and declares that Trump’s detractors will “perish in the political flames of their own fires.”

Fronted by NRA spokesperson and serial liar Dana Loesch, the web video is a bizarre montage of imagery designed to quicken the pulse of NRA supporters who back Trump.

It insists that Trump is not to be questioned or challenged, and describes Americans exercising their First Amendment right to call Trump out as “saboteurs” who want to “drive their daggers through the heart of our future.”

“We are witnesses to the most ruthless attack on a president & the people who voted for him…in American history.” –@DLoesch #NRA pic.twitter.com/rcPAKMVJI0

— NRATV (@NRATV) October 20, 2017

LOESCH: We are witnesses to the most ruthless attack on a president, and the people who voted for him, and the free system that allowed it to happen in American history. From the highest levels of government, to their media, universities and billionaires, their hateful defiance of his legitimacy is an insult to each of us.

But the ultimate insult is that they think we’re so stupid that we’ll let them get away with it. These saboteurs, slashing away with their leaks and sneers, their phony accusations and gagging sanctimony, drive their daggers through the heart of our future, poisoning our belief that honest custody of our institutions will ever again be possible, so they can then build their utopia from the ashes of what they burned down.

No, their fate will be failure and they will perish in the political flames of their own fires. We are the National Rifle Association of America. And we are Freedom’s Safest Place.

Loesch’s whining that we are “witnesses to the most ruthless attack on a president … in American history” would be a surprise to Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinely, and John F. Kennedy — who were all killed while in office.

Trump has been subject to well-deserved scrutiny and skepticism, most of which he has brought on himself by being a racist and liar. The NRA is simply angry that Trump is being held accountable for his behavior.

Which fits perfectly with the NRA’s message.

The NRA does not want to be held accountable for enabling gun violence as it pumps out violent messages and lies, obstructs research into gun violence, and throws millions of dollars at Congress to continue enabling a plague of violent crime from coast to coast.

Whenever there has been a mass shooting in the last few years — Sandy Hook, Aurora, the Pulse night club in Orlando, and dozens of others — the NRA intentionally goes silent. The organization knows that when a shooting and its victims are fresh in the minds of the public, its message of unfettered gun access and the ensuing violence that entails is rejected by the vast majority of Americans.

The NRA uses this quiet period to play the long game, hoping that measures to help advance gun safety and protect people from violence will simply fade away from public discussion and pass into memory.

When it comes back from its shameful silence, it produces videos like these, or pushes out magazines designed to appeal to supporters’ fears of an imminent ISIS invasion prevented by their handguns.

The NRA needs fear to work, but it cannot deal in rational or sane thinking. It needs hyperbole and deception to thrive, which means it needs figures like Donald Trump around.

Making bizarre videos in his defense is part of the NRA’s DNA, and is also a pathetic survival strategy to avoid any sense of culpability in gun crimes and the violence they cause.

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