The latest cover story in the NRA’s magazine, America’s 1st Freedom, purports to honor Dallas police officers killed in a July ambush attack, but instead uses the officers’ deaths to claim “the greatest dishonor to their memory” would be to allow “the Democratic establishment” to pass stronger gun safety laws.

The magazine cover also includes a fold-out ad promoting an NRA “banned guns raffle” where entrants have a chance to win an AK-style assault weapon similar to the one used in the Dallas attack.

On July 7, a gunman wielding an AK-74 assault weapon targeted police officers working at a peaceful protest in downtown Dallas following recent police killings of two African-American men, Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, which were captured on video. Five police officers were killed, and seven officers and civilians were wounded, before the gunman was killed by police.

The September cover story in America’s 1st Freedom, titled “Ambushing America’s Cops,” blames attacks against law enforcement on progressives, claiming that the Dallas ambush was “just the latest, and most vicious, in a long line of attacks on law enforcement -- attacks that have come to define the political left in America today.”

The article then attempts to directly connect President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder to attacks on law enforcement officers, baselessly suggesting that the shooters were inspired to act by things they said:

Even before the facts were clear, Obama used those cases [the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile] to assert that such incidents are “symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”

“When incidents like this occur,” Obama went on, “there’s a big chunk of our fellow citizenry that feels as if because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same. And that hurts.”

Just hours after Obama spoke, a madman murdered five police in Dallas, and another killer shot a policeman in Bristol, Tenn.

[...]

Even though the U.S. Justice Department ultimately cleared Police Officer Darren Wilson of any wrongdoing in the death of [Michael] Brown -- Brown, after all, had attacked Wilson and tried to steal his service weapon -- Obama’s attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, said, “It is not difficult to imagine how a single, tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg.”

It’s also not difficult to imagine how Holder’s words might have added tinder to an already explosive situation: Just days after Holder’s remarks, two Ferguson policemen were shot.

(According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a search warrant related to the Ferguson incident indicates that the suspect in that case was attempting to shoot at an individual he was having a dispute with and was not aiming at the police officers who were hit by gunfire.)

The NRA article concludes by using the Dallas police shooting to dismiss calls for stronger gun safety laws by “the Democratic establishment” in the wake of incidents of mass public violence. The article claims that it would be “disrespectful” and “the greatest dishonor” to the memory of the officers killed to advocate for more gun safety laws and suggests that the slain officers “gave their lives” to protect the NRA’s vision for gun laws in America (emphasis added):

Whether it’s terrorists who attack a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., gangsters who murder each other every day in Chicago, an ISIS-inspired jihadist who opens fire in a nightclub, or a madman enraged by racist rhetoric to ambush Dallas police, the answer, we’re told by the Democratic establishment, is to surrender yet more of our God-given freedom to protect ourselves.

In light of the supreme sacrifice those Dallas police officers made in July, the most disrespectful thing we could do -- the greatest dishonor to their memory we could make -- would be to surrender the freedoms they gave their lives to defend.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who is shown mourning on the magazine’s cover, has actually voiced concerns to legislators over Texas laws that allow assault weapons to be openly carried in public. (Open carry of assault weapons, a practice that the NRA defends, has become increasingly common in Texas and some other states in recent years.)

During the July ambush, efforts to take down the gunman were complicated by the fact that the attack took place at a protest where about 20 people were openly carrying rifles.

Brown discussed the issue during a press conference, noting that he had expressed “concerns” to legislators about Texas’ open carry law and explaining that “it's increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s slung over and shootings occur in a crowd and they begin running, and we don't know … if they're the shooter or not, or they begin, it's been the presumption that a good guy with a gun is the best way to resolve some of these things. Well, we don't know who the good guy is versus who the bad guy is if everybody starts shooting, and we've expressed that concern as well.”

Brown’s image on the cover of America’s 1st Freedom is partially obscured by an advertisement for a giveaway of a gun similar to the one used in the Dallas attack.

The cover proclaims “NRA is GIVING AWAY guns that Hillary Clinton wants to BAN!”:

When the fold-out is opened, a number of guns that have military-style features -- and therefore could be included in an assault weapons ban -- are listed.

The give-away guns include several military-style assault weapons, including one that is particularly similar to the rifle used in the Dallas attack: The CMMG Mk 47 AKM2 Mutant.

Like the Saiga AK-74 used to ambush police officers in Dallas, the CMMG firearm has features from the AK platform first popularized by the invention of the AK-47. (The CMMG weapon also has features from the AR assault weapon platform, giving it its “Mutant” moniker.) Here is the gun used in the attack:

Here is a picture of the CMMG Mk 47 from another NRA magazine’s review of the assault weapon:

The CMMG assault weapon uses 7.62x39mm ammunition while the AK-74 takes a slightly smaller 5.45x39mm cartridge.