HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Connection: keep-alive Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 05:16:04 GMT Server: nginx Link: ; rel="https://api.w.org/" Link: ; rel=shortlink Last-Modified: Thu, 29 Mar 2018 05:16:04 GMT Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate X-Batcache: MISS X-EC2-Instance-Id: i-022e12e530473bc76 Age: 242 Vary: Cookie X-Cache: Hit from cloudfront Via: 1.1 8fffcdedc691b0191a3ea5a8f72d87d8.cloudfront.net (CloudFront) X-Amz-Cf-Id: MtVQWKqM639zsAA7hCkTt7qPFTpDZXPCUiKBeXHd5-5qHsYJKHSo7w== FACT CHECK: Was the NRA Founded to Protect Black People from the Ku Klux Klan?
Revisionist accounts of the origin of the National Rifle Association say it was formed to help freed slaves defend themselves against racist attacks after the Civil War.
CLAIM
The National Rifle Association was formed for the express purpose of driving out the Ku Klux Klan and helping freed slaves defend themselves against racist attacks.False
RATING
False [1]
ORIGIN
Since its inception as a group dedicated to providing marksmanship training in 1871, the National Rifle Association has grown into a powerful lobbying organization with a single overriding purpose: to promote and defend the Second Amendment right to bear arms.Some of the NRA’s rhetorical tactics on behalf of gun ownership have been condemned as racially divisive[2], exploiting wedge issues such as illegal immigration and urban crime to sow fear and increase membership, critics say.
In one frequently cited instance, the NRA’s executive vice president Wayne LaPierre penned an editorial[3] encouraging Americans to “buy more guns than ever” to meet a purported threat of border-crossing gang members bent on the “murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping” of law-abiding citizens. He went on to describe south Brooklyn in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy (when the borough actually underwent a lull[4] in violent crime) as a “hellish world” where “looters ran wild” and anyone who failed to get home before dark “might not get home at all.”
Some NRA supporters have countered accusations that the group has been racially insensitive by claiming the opposite is true — that the organization was, in fact, founded in order to combat racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and ensure that African Americans, particularly freed slaves, could defend
