Killing Me Softly with His Lies

A baseball mitt, apple pie and an assault rifle. “Mom”? “Mom”? Oh, “mom” has been replaced with a weapon whose primary function is to kill people. This billboard sits by a heavily-traveled Chicago freeway in a city with an alarming and most deserved death-by-gunshot reputation. Big on gun control within city limits, city fathers claim that in nearby states free-wheeling gun sales, many without background checks, are acting as a funnel of weapons to inner-city gangs in the Windy City with retribution and conquest on their minds. And still the bodies stack up. The billboard is actually an ad for a Texas rifle parts manufacturer, Slide-Fire Solutions.

"‘Lamar [Advertising] is posting this ad on billboards across the country, but it's particularly upsetting that children in Chicago, a city that has struggled horribly with gun violence, are being exposed to such a harmful message,’ [Illinois chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a grass-roots group that advocates for what it calls ‘common-sense gun reforms’] said in a news release.

“Lamar Advertising would not post anything that was factually inaccurate, fraudulent or deceptive, according to Hal Kilshaw, vice president of governmental relations for the company. A question of taste is different…

“‘We try not to run copy that's offensive, but the standard can't mean it can't offend anyone,’ Kilshaw said. ‘(Otherwise), we wouldn't be able to run a McDonald's ad because some people think McDonald's products are unhealthy.’” Chicago Tribune, February 1^st. Can I have a Glock 9 with my fries please? “Before the billboard was put up Jan. 13, the Baton Rouge-based advertising company discussed whether to accept it, Kilshaw said. While Lamar has rejected proposals and removed offensive ads in the past, Kilshaw said, in this case the company concluded that the benefits of running the copy outweighed the risks.” The Tribune. Lots of benefits… like money to the ad agency.

We’re gun crazy in this great land, and we seem to think that the first words of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights were erased, perhaps by the National Rifle Association. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.Why don’t I see discussions of that “well regulated” part from the NRA? Why do those words get stripped out of almost every NRA campaign slogan about our “right to bear arms”? Because they don’t like that part? Because it negates most of their message? Because they cannot read?

“As a mom, I'm shocked and offended that I would be replaced in an idiom with an assault rifle” says President of the chapter of Moms Demand Action noted above. Yep, as the NRA likes to tell us, guns don’t kill people… people kill people. Yep, people with guns like the one in the billboard. Don’t even get me started on those stand-your-ground-murder-incentive laws. And you wonder why every major developed country in the world thinks we’re gun crazy and why too many international travelers believe that the United States of America is just too risky to visit. I don’t, and I think they are completely justified in those beliefs. But given American educational standards, I am not remotely surprised that the NRA-supporters cannot read complete sentences!

I’m Peter Dekom, and having a fairly unregulated trade of assault weapons in a very large section of the United States produces the death-by-gun homicide statistics that the NRA doesn’t want you to see… and prevents governments from collecting and disseminating by the laws they lobbied into existence.