“If you take NRA money you don’t get our vote”
A national campaign demanding that political candidates reject funding from the National Rifle Association (NRA) was launched today, days after the most recent mass shooting on a school campus in Parkland, Florida that took the lives of 17 children and adults.
Called #NoNRAMoney the campaign has one purpose: To break the stranglehold the NRA has on politicians that has shut down rational gun policy for decades.
The website www.NoNRAMoney.org features two petitions: One allowing candidates to publicly reject NRA support, the other for voters who vow to oppose any candidate who takes NRA money.
“We are putting candidates on notice: If you take a penny of NRA money you don’t get our votes. You can serve the gun lobby and the NRA or you can serve the people but you can’t do both,” said Nadine Smith, one of the organizers of the effort.
Smith is the Executive Director of Equality Florida the Florida-based group that led an international response to the massacre at Pulse NightClub in Orlando that left 49 people dead and hundreds wounded. The group raised over $9 Million and worked with victims groups to ensure all resources went to the survivors and families of those murdered.
“Once again, we listened in shock as politicians sent ‘thoughts and prayers’ and then went right back to giving the NRA anything they asked for instead of taking action to protect the country and get weapons of war out of civilian hands. The NRA believes people being slaughtered is the cost of doing business. We reject that and believe it is time to make accepting the NRA’s support a career-ending mistake for any candidate. The vast majority of American support sensible gun control laws. All you need do is listen to the voices of the children, parents, and people affected by the Parkland shooting, who are speaking directly to their local and state politicians, the Republican majority, and the White House, who offer words but no action.”
The campaign is calling on the public to reach out to elected leaders and candidate and use the hashtag #NoNRAMoney to remind them that loyalty to the gun lobby will cost them at the ballot box.
The campaign will have a presence on social media as well to give the public the tools to get candidates to make clear where they stand.
website: www.NoNRAMoney.org
Twitter: @NoNRAMoney
Instagram: @noNRAmoney
FB: NoNRAMoney
Survivors of the Parkland Shooting have been calling politicians to task for sending empty words of condolence while simultaneously blocking any legislative action that would have kept an AR-15 out of the hands of a dangerous young man.
“How are we allowed to buy guns at the age of 18 or 19? That’s something we shouldn’t be able to do,” shooting survivor Lyliah Skinner told CNN.
In an article entitled My generation won’t stand for this, Parkland shooting survivor Cameron Kasky wrote: “We can’t ignore the issues of gun control that this tragedy raises. And so, I’m asking — no, demanding — we take action now.
Why? Because at the end of the day, the students at my school felt one shared experience –our politicians abandoned us by failing to keep guns out of schools.”
It is time for us to take weapons of war off the streets, guns out of schools and gun lobby money from corrupting our political system.
