The National Basketball Association has teamed up with Everytown for Gun Safety and will lend its name and its athletes for a PR campaign against the Second Amendment.
In a move with little precedent in professional sports, the N.B.A. is putting the weight of its multibillion-dollar brand and the prestige of its star athletes behind a series of television commercials calling for an end to gun violence.
The first ads, timed to reach millions of basketball fans during a series of marquee games on Christmas Day, focus on shooting victims and contain no policy recommendations. The words “gun control” are never mentioned.
Yeah, we know. It’s never about “gun control” and always about “sensible gun legislation.”
If you’re watching TV on Christmas Day, be on alert.
Players who appear in the first 30-second ad, which will run five times on Friday, speak in personal terms about the effects of gun violence on their lives. Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors describes hearing of a 3-year-old’s shooting: “My daughter Riley’s that age,” he says. Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers recalls the advice he heeded as a child: “My parents used to say, ‘A bullet doesn’t have a name on it.’”
The NBA admitted it held little debate about joining forces with the controversial gun-control group.
“We know far too many people who have been caught up in gun violence in this country,” said Kathleen Behrens, the league’s president of social responsibility and player programs. “And we can do something about it.”
And there will be consequences for their decision. Like Hollywood smart-asses who think they are policy experts on all things, the NBA has fans that don’t agree with their anti-gun support and don’t care to see the sport needlessly politicized.
While many of its teams are based in cities dominated by Democrats, a number of other teams — and millions of N.B.A. fans — hail from places where Mr. Bloomberg and his approach to guns are viewed with deep suspicion. Mrs. Behrens said the league had not shown the ads to team owners, but added, “We’re not worried about any political implications.”
You should be worried. The left’s playbook requires that everything, no matter how trivial, be politicized. However, people aren’t interested in having their leisure time perverted by political activism.
The NBA/Everytown partnership was brokered by Spike Lee, who is, of course, a member of the gun-control group’s creative council.
“But because of the N.R.A., politicians and the gun manufacturers, we’re dying under that tyranny,” Lee said. Reciting a statistic from Everytown, he added: “Ninety Americans are dying every day because of the N.R.A., gun manufacturers, and politicians willing to run you under the table.”
People are dying because some criminal dirt bag chose to use a firearm to kill someone.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown, said that people need to understand the damage caused by gun violence.
“This,” Mr. Feinblatt said of the N.B.A. ads, “is clearly about educating the public.”
But what if the public is educated and doesn’t agree with your solutions? Perhaps the public doesn’t think the Everytown plan will “solve” the gun-violence problem. Everytown’s agenda isn’t about stopping gun violence, it’s about chipping away at the Second Amendment until they can get rid of it. The ads are merely an attempt to “educate” people so they are more amenable to restricting the Second Amendment. That is all.
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