Bloomberg Businessweek magazine unveiled its latest cover on Thursday, which displays big letters reading, “STOP THE NRA” with a small scribbling of “picking on” in between, echoing their billionaire owner’s personal feeling about the National Rifle Association.
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The featured article coinciding with the cover, penned by Bloomberg Businessweek assistant managing editor and senior writer Paul Barrett, describes how Hillary Clinton’s strategy of taking on the NRA is misguided, but proposes different ways to:
“curb gun violence.”
In the article, Barrett refers to the National Rifle Association as “a conspiracy-minded extremist group that thrives when under attack.”
Barrett then praises other countries for their gun-confiscation programs, such as Great Britain and Australia:
“Good for the Brits and Aussies. Their dramatic responses probably did cut down on firearm mayhem. But that’s irrelevant to the U.S. As long as the Supreme Court interprets the Second Amendment as protecting an individual’s right to own a gun, we’re not banning pistols or confiscating semiautomatic rifles.”
Michael Bloomberg — Image Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The author concedes that confiscation is an unlikely prospect “at least not anytime soon.”
“We are a nation with 300 million firearms in private hands; for practical and constitutional reasons, there’s no prospect of mass confiscation. The guns aren’t going away, at least not anytime soon.”
Michael Bloomberg, the purveyor of the magazine, is virulently anti-gun. He heads the special interest organization “Everytown for Gun Safety,” which advocates for strict gun control measures.
Despite Barrett’s various ideas on how to solve the downward-trending problem of gun violence, he acknowledges one strategy that he believes will not work:
“One thing’s certain: Mudslinging with the NRA is not the answer.”
By no means is the NRA a small interest group, boasting over five million dues-paying members.
That’s more members than anti-gun groups Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and the Brady Campaign combined, five times over.
In addition, the NRA’s budget is enormous. According to a 2012 analysis, the NRA’s supporters chip enough money to trounce efforts by anti-gun groups by hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Further, the NRA holds strong approval ratings. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Americans view the NRA with stronger favorability than any of the presidential candidates and second only to Planned Parenthood, another controversial entity.
So while Bloomberg’s own publication features an anti-NRA cover, and the featured article insists the NRA is not an organization with which to be trifled, the NRA remains highly favorable among the American people.
Disclosure: The author of this article is a member of the National Rifle Association.