Posted By: soooo
It Ain't About the Elephant - 04/28/21 01:13 PM
but rather the anti-gun media's spin.
NEW from THE TRACE: The secret footage of NRA chief Wayne LaPierre’s botched elephant hunt. In 2013, the gun group CEO and his wife, Susan, traveled to Botswana, where they hoped to show NRA members that they had the grit to hunt African bush elephants. The trip was filmed by a crew from an NRA-sponsored television series. But the program never aired, according to sources and records, because of concerns that it could turn into a PR fiasco. The Trace’s Mike Spies obtained a copy of the video, which shows LaPierre struggling to kill the elephant, shooting it several times in the wrong place before another person delivers the fatal shot. Published exclusively by The Trace and The New Yorker, the video, paired with new revelations on LaPierre’s extravagant spending, contradicts the NRA executive’s carefully cultivated image as an authentic champion of American self-reliance who has railed against out-of-touch “elites” for decades. As the gun group weathers an existential crisis of its own making, which began with revelations of rampant self-dealing first reported in 2019, and extends to an ongoing legal fight with the New York attorney general and a bankruptcy trial, the investigation offers a glimpse of the stage-managed, insular, and privileged life of the NRA’s top official. You can read the story — and see the embedded video — here.
Conservationists decry shooting of elephant later added to endangered list. "Savannah elephants were just declared endangered by international experts, and these intelligent beings certainly shouldn’t be used as paper targets by an inept marksman," the international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity told USA Today, echoing the reaction from similar groups.