Making Friends and Influencing People

"I've got a five-year-old son who went to preschool on the Sandy Hook Elementary School campus. And this was a really hard week for me on a lot of levels. These calls were the very last thing I needed."
Newtown resident, Christopher Wenis

AP Photo/Jessica Hill

Now, there's an object lesson in responsible sensitivity on the part of a gun-lobby enterprise. Oh not just any gun lobby; this is the influential National Rifle Association, battling the sensibilities of the non-gun-owning and responsible-gun-owning American public alike, in wishing to have some measure of societal/governmental control over the casual spread of assault weapons within the country.They simply will not have it, if the NRA has anything to say about it.

Christopher Wenis still has his son, and he still has nightmares about the danger his child had been exposed to; had he been a year older, he might have been among the 20 first-graders to be shot to death along with the six educators in December of 2012 by a deranged, armed killer. None of the parents of those children whose lives were so horribly extinguished on that fateful day, nor the families of the adults who joined them in death require reminders of the atrocity.

Living with the nightmare absence of their beloved children, none of the people involved, nor the other shocked and grieving residents of the town in Connecticut that made American history and global news through the horror of the event, might have imagined that a mocking reminder of their loss would visit them through automated telephone calls and postcards, courtesy of the National Rifle Association.

In their massive and costly public relations campaign to "support gun owners' rights", the zeal of circulating the good word as deeply and as widely as possible to awaken the American spirit of sanctimonious 2nd Amendment rights has led to the distribution of the calls and printed material directly within the wounded heart of the affected community.

There are many Americans who might add that they too were profoundly affected, their hearts too ache for the loss of those children and their educators. Adding to their voices would be the heartsick tragedies of all the mass shootings that took place prior to the Newtown massacre, and the many that have struck since, demonstrating the mass psychosis that exists within a society conflicted between the 'rights' of gun owners and the existential rights of all others hoping to be able to live out a normal lifespan.

While the NRA, through the distribution of its voice and print messages urging recipients to inform their state legislators that they are expected to oppose gun control proposals, debated in Connecticut along with other states, including New York and California, many of those on the receiving end of those messages feel rather less than grateful for the sentiments expressed.

"It's ridiculous and insensitive. I can't believe an organization would be so focused on the rights of gun owners with no consideration for the losses this town suffered", Newtown resident Dan O'Donnell said, disbelievingly.

Believe it.