For Release: Thursday, July 25, 1996
The revelation contained in today’s Washington Post that Paul Blackman, research coordinator for the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) Institute for Legislative Action, believes that race plays a “significant” role in murder is unfortunately not surprising, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) stated today. Blackman went on to tell the Post, “Textbook epidemiology notes that despite the controversy of studying disease by race, differences in frequency and severity among racial groups may be too great to ignore.” A June 1996 VPC study, NRA Family Values: The Extremism, Racism, Sexism, Legal Woes, and Gun Industry Ties of the National Rifle Association’s Board of Directors revealed that some members of the NRA’s board have openly racist views. NRA board members highlighted in the VPC study include the following:
- Jeff Cooper authors the monthly column “Cooper’s Corner” for Guns & Ammo magazine and also writes the newsletter “Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries.” Cooper regularly refers to Japanese as “Nips,” and has suggested calling black South Africans from the Gauteng province “Orang-gautengs.” In 1994 he wrote, “Los Angeles and Ho Chi Min City have declared themselves sister cities. It makes sense�they are both Third World metropolises formerly occupied by Americans.”
- In 1990 rock musician Ted Nugent told the Detroit Free Press magazine that “apartheid isn’t that cut and dry. All men are not created equal.” In the same interview Nugent expounded on his racial views, “I use the word n—-r a lot because I hang around with a lot of n—-rs, and they use the word n—-r, and I tend to use words that communicate….”
- Wayne Stump at one time served on the advisory board of English First, a radical anti-immigration group that has been accused of racism. One English First direct-mail letter warned of an imminent time “when Hispanics, not English-speaking Americans, are in control of the country.”
Copies of NRA Family Values are available from the Violence Policy Center.
About the Violence Policy Center
The Violence Policy Center is a national educational organization working to stop gun death and injury. Follow the VPC on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
