A new advertisement from the National Rifle Association has drawn enormous criticism for its overt insinuation that conservative Americans need to fight their liberal brethren.
This NRA ad is far from the gun-industry advocacy group’s first controversial — and slick — commercial message, but it was fired into the national narrative last week after the NRA’s shameful silence about Philando Castile, a black man and legal gun owner who was killed by a Minnesota police officer for telling the officer he possessed a gun.
The combination of the NRA’s silence on Castile and its anger-mongering advertisement have brought a barrage of questions and criticisms that the typically PR-savvy organization appears committed to ignoring.
But Oklahoma City residents should not let them off the hook so easily, especially considering the state’s tragic history of violence and the fact that the NRA’s image has been crafted for decades by Ackerman McQueen, an OKC ad firm.
While many Oklahoma communities represent the NRA’s demographics quite well, Ackerman McQueen’s gallingly negative advertising often runs contrary to the decency that most Oklahomans demand in trying times. Remember the NRA ad that inserted then-President Barack Obama’s teenage daughters into the debate on gun control?
How in the world did that meet the Oklahoma Standard?
Eat this knuckle-sandwich of truth
Each time Ackerman McQueen produces a vile, hate-baiting NRA ad, the Sooner State’s collective human dignity takes a bullet to the chest for no reason other than enormous commercial profit.
This latest NRA ad is gross, inappropriate and a poor reflection on Oklahoma City and its gubernatorial-candidate mayor, who served as an Ackerman McQueen executive vice-president from 2009 to 2011.
“The only way we save our country and our freedom is to fight this violence of lies with the clinched fist of truth,” utters the ad’s narrator.
If the NRA wants to promote freedom and truth as a way to fight the “violence of lies,” it should ball up its fist, look in the mirror and deliver a knuckle-sandwich to its own hypocrisy. Philando Castile had 10 fingers, 10 toes and a concealed-carry permit, too.
Until the NRA starts down the road toward more responsible messaging and political positioning, Oklahoma City residents need to remember that these ads are typically crafted by a company that also dramatically shapes the narrative here in our Big League City.
Should Ackerman McQueen decide to keep producing vitriolic appeals to people’s most angry and violent tendencies, it will become even more important for our community to associate their corporate brand with the NRA’s fire breathing.
