New NRA star Colion Noir
Courtesy of Think Progress:
The NRA would like you to meet Colion Noir. He’s the host of their new show, Noir, which premieres May 11 on NRA Freestyle. Noir is just one of the new shows the NRA plans to launch, alongside Media Lab, in which a Veteran Navy SEAL will dissect violence in TV and movies, NRA Sharp (“for the culturally curious”), and I Am Forever, about another Veteran Navy SEAL and the teenage girl he will “guide” on “her journey toward personal protection.”
About two months ago, the NRA announced a partnership with Noir who, as an African-American millennial, isn’t the typical NRA spokesperson, thus the basis of his appeal. Since Newtown, the NRA has made a mission of winning over more non-white supporters. The NRA even hosted a “Youth Day” at which children were offered free memberships.
But the odds are not ever in the NRA’s favor: According to a Harvard University Institute of Politics poll, taken in spring of last year, 49% of millennials support stricter gun laws, compared to 15% who think they should be less strict (35% want no change in the laws). Only 18% of 18 to 25 year olds reported owning a gun.
This Colion Noir guy has an impressive following on You Tube and certainly helps provides a little ethnic camouflage for the predominantly Caucasian gun nuts. (Here is one of his videos, spouting Tea Party talking points with the best of them.)
However Noir's new role as hip NRA spokesman only helps to remind us that the NRA were not always so supportive of black folks having guns.
Take a look at this from Salon:
When the gun control debate focused around black militants taking up arms, the fulcrums were very different. Indeed, both the NRA and President Ronald Reagan spoke against armed citizens when African American men patrolled neighborhoods brandishing firearms in response to racial violence. The Panthers were not the “well-regulated militia” that the white, conservative stalwarts of Second Amendment advocacy had in mind.
Hence the hypocrisy now of the gun group appealing to African Americans — invoking the Civil Rights movement — to lobby support against gun regulation.
One has to wonder how long the NRA will be willing to promote African American participation with the NRA once a black man "stands his ground" against a white man, and then flashes his NRA membership card for the news cameras.