“A” Rating from NRA – The New Scarlet Letter

Posted on | December 13, 2018 | 2 Comments

Mike Magee

“The NRA’s A-rating used to be a badge of honor. On Election Day, it was a scarlet letter.” Those were the words of Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense. And she had facts to back it up. More than 1000 candidates in the 2018 Mid-Term elections ran and won on gun safety.

Gun safety advocates signed up more than 100,000 new voters. In 43 races that featured a head-to-head challenge with an NRA “A” rater, only 10 candidates with the now dreaded scarlet “A” letter prevailed.

If three strikes mean you are out, the NRA is remarkably close to being retired. Strike 1: They challenged physicians for the loyalty of patients, admonishing doctors who support gun safety to “stay in their lane.” Strike 2: The NRA, with this weeks guilty plea by Russian spy, Maria Butina, stands convicted of laundering Russian money into the hands of Trump and Republican candidates across the land in the 2016 elections. Strike 3: In the wake of childhood massacres from Sandy Hook to Parkland, parents across America and their kids have struck an electoral blow into the heart of the NRA “A” rating.

Facts don’t lie according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. At their annual conference in Orlando this month, they reviewed the tight link between childhood gun deaths and NRA dominated state legislatures.

Using 2017 statistics, authors correlated a state’s Brady score (a numeric reflection of the strictness of gun control laws) with CDC reports of avoidable gun deaths in children.

2,715 children died of gun shots in 2017 – 62% were homicides and 31% were suicides.

After adjusting for other factors like poverty, employment, and addiction, they isolated lax gun laws as a determining factor in the deaths.

States with the weakest protections had 5 child deaths per 100,000, compared to the best states who had half as many deaths.

In the 27 states that have laws forcing parents to secure access to firearms in their homes, there were only .63 deaths per 100,000 compared to the states without these laws that had 2.57 per 100,000.

In the 12 states with universal background checks for sale of guns, 3.8 children per 100,000 were killed, versus 5.7 per 100,000 in states without such protections. When background checks were extended in 5 states to the sale of ammunition, the death rates dropped further to 2.3 children per 100,000.

Doctors, nurses and health professionals across the land increasingly recognize that a largely armed American culture with a penchant toward violence is fundamentally unhealthy. They also are leaning toward universal health coverage and robust health planning (including the varied social determinants of health) as an expression of solidarity and the assurance of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all Americans.

Women across America are today’s political story, and they’ll tell you straight-up, the NRA is “so yesterday.”

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Comments

2 Responses to ““A” Rating from NRA – The New Scarlet Letter”

Art Ulene
December 13th, 2018 @ 7:49 pm

Hey, hey…. NRA. How many kids have you killed today?

Mike, it’s time to start that campaign. I’ll be out in the streets with you chanting that message.
Mike Magee
December 14th, 2018 @ 8:29 am

Thanks, Art. As Dr. Gro Brundtland, former director-general of the World Health Organization, wrote in the World Health Report 2000, “The objective of good health is twofold – goodness and fairness.” The NRA represents the polar opposite of both of these pillars of decency.