Last time I wrote about the NRA and Dallas, it was to lament the city’s tourism office getting in bed with the gun-rights-at-all-costs advocacy group. That’s a story that still needs to spread more. Now, however, the city has done…
Why is my city in a hotel bed with the NRA?
Imagine what would happen if the ninth-largest city in America worked out a deal with Planned Parenthood to host a weeklong convention in city-owned facilities and gave them a $927,000 discount. Conservatives and anti-abortion churches would lose their ever-loving minds….
NRA members say they’re stocking up on ammo before presidential election
Weeks before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, three-fourths of a sample of members attending the National Rifle Association annual meeting said they would be stocking up on ammunition ahead of this fall’s presidential election. The vast majority of NRA…
The NRA is a (mostly) changed organization, but the American public must not look away
In 2018, I did something most people wouldn’t dare do. While making a play about guns in America, I took a group of high school students to the NRA annual meeting in our hometown of Dallas. What we saw and…
What do George Floyd and Kyle Rittenhouse have to do with armed civilian combat? Evidently, quite a lot
After two days at the 2024 National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Dallas this weekend, I was ready to call the gun advocacy organization a changed institution. At first, the imagery, rhetoric and workshop topics seemed less misogynistic than those…
We know the truth, and it is not setting us free
At the annual gathering of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship last week, I heard at least one speaker repeat the words of John 8:32: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” In fact, as I recall,…
If ‘guns don’t kill people, people do,’ how should we respond?
You probably have heard the simplistic explanation, often delivered proudly as if it is the very first time someone has thought to say it: “Guns don’t kill people, people do!” This retort is most often given after another senseless murder…
In Wisconsin, the NRA won
While its business operations lie in bankrupt shambles, the National Rifle Association won the day in a Wisconsin courtroom this week. The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges related to the murder of two men and injury of a…
Why I’m leaving my church: A theology of death
I’m a gun owner and a recreational sportsman. I used to believe in the NRA hype about “good guys with guns” being the heroes America needs and being crucial as protectors of the innocent. Over the past several years, my…