MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Accuses NRA of Possibly Faking Its Membership Stats in Scathing Rant
Just before the start of his MSNBC program this morning, Ali Velshi took to Twitter to inform his audience that he planned to honor those who lost their lives in the Florida school shooting, and also discuss the NRA.
I will pay tribute to those killed in Parkland, FL at 11aET, and then share my thoughts on the NRA at 11:55aET @MSNBC @VelshiRuhle
— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) February 16, 2018
At the end of the hour, Velshi delivered his promised monologue, and used it to push a theory that the NRA is likely inflating its membership stats by counting gun owners who don’t pay dues to the organization.
Starting off by stating that if he had a loved one who had died from a mass shooting he wouldn’t care for “thoughts and prayers,” Velshi went in on the NRA while adding that only in America is “gun control something that is frowned upon or thought of as infringement.”
“Virtually nowhere in the world can you buy, sell, trade and carry guns in a manner that America’s gun lobby, the NRA, would have us do,” Velshi exclaimed. “No one else in the world seems to be able to make sense ever why America can’t confront intellectually or politically a constitutional amendment that reasonable people understand to have been uniquely relevant in times gone by.”
Pointing out that he’s a gun owner, the MSNBC host then questioned the NRA’s claim of five million members by saying he annually receives a membership card though he’s never asked or paid for one.
“I strongly suspect that I am counted in the secret records of the NRA as a member,” he declared. “I’m not. They don’t represent me and I suspect they don’t represent and aren’t paid for by a lot of members.”
Velshi continued, “The NRA is the gun industry’s lobby. It doesn’t represent gun owners. It represents gun makers and exists to protect their profits.”
After comparing the NRA to other large industry lobbies, Velshi noted that he thinks the association is “ingenious” because it is doing the “bidding of gun makers under the cover of being a broad-based organization and it uses the money to promote a way of thinking that pits ordinary responsible gun owners against the vast majority of Americans who believe in gun control.”
Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]
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