The National Rifle Association reacted to the terror attacks at Charlie Hebdo by releasing a commentary video that blamed France's gun laws for the attack and warned “anti-gunners” that only the Second Amendment can stop terrorists from “killing you.”
In a January 15 video, Colion Noir, an NRA News commentator and host of the NRA web series Noir, reacted to recent terror attacks in France with a message to “anti-gunners” to “stop trying to sell us on this gun control crap.”
According to Noir, people who use their right to free speech to “insidiously attack” the Second Amendment should consider “the next time a bunch of terrorists decide they don't like what you have to say, better believe the only thing stopping them from killing you won't be your words, but the sound of someone exercising their Second Amendment right.”
Like members of conservative media, the NRA commentary video also blames firearm policies in “gun control utopia” France for the attack.
In France the civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons is largely prohibited and guns cannot be carried in public except under very limited circumstances. The United States has a gun homicide rate more than 14 times higher than France and experiences far more public mass shootings.
As Noir put it, “because the way the gun laws work in France, there essentially is no Second Amendment.” Because of these firearm policies, Noir argued, those affected by the attack became “nothing more than witnesses to their own demise.”
Civilians have not used firearms to thwart terrorist attacks in the United States. In fact, according to an investigation by Mother Jones of 62 mass public shootings over the past 30 years, none of the incidents were stopped by a civilian carrying a gun. According to a news report from a Dallas-area CBS affiliate, gun owners who met to re-enact (using non-lethal ammunition) the Charlie Hebdo attack if an armed civilian would have been present discovered that “time and time again that armed civilian dies.”
Like other commentary videos from the NRA -- a project launched in 2013 to attract more women, minorities, and young people to the gun organization -- Noir's video was replete with bizarre touches.
Throughout the video, Noir was seen wearing a “Defend Paris” t-shirt illustrated with an AK-47, the same weapon used by two gunmen to kill 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Noir also peppered his commentary on the attacks with pop culture references, including mentions of WorldStarHipHop, an entertainment website known for its shocking videos, the Grand Theft Auto video game series, and jazzercising:
NOIR: It hurt my soul seeing people on rooftops with perfect vantage points, relegated to recording iPhone WorldStar videos instead of having guns to at least make an effort to stop them. No instead, these psychopaths jazzercised their way back to their car completely unopposed like they were playing Grand Theft Auto, only to go on to kill more people.
Noir also mistakenly implied that there is a First Amendment in France, saying of the terrorists, “It sickens me when I realize these guys took advantage of France's lack of a Second Amendment in order to attack their First.”
The NRA previously encouraged people to buy guns to possibly defend themselves from terrorists in an October 2014 column from NRA leader Wayne LaPierre that was illustrated with a graphic that combined an image of a suburban house with a picture of an ISIS militant.