Utah congressman under fire over NRA donation

AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File

The NRA donates money to a lot of members of Congress. This isn’t new or unusual. They donate money to a lot of candidates, too.

And, in fairness, so do the gun control groups like Brady and Giffords.

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However, it’s only one side of the debate where such a donation supposedly looks suspect.

The same day Utah Rep. Chris Stewart voted against the first gun control measure to pass Congress in decades, the congressman received a $1,000 donation from the National Rifle Association’s political action committee.

The June 24 donation was disclosed in pre-primary election financial reports requiring candidates to report contributions made 20 days before an election within 48 hours. Those filings are separate from regular campaign finance reports.

Stewart voted against another gun control measure that passed the House on June 8.

The Utahn also received a $1,000 donation from the NRA’s PAC on May 19, just 5 days before the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

While the article doesn’t make any accusations, the fact that it appeared at all pretty much screams bias.

After all, if a member of the House got a donation from a gun control group on the very same day he or she voted for gun control, there wouldn’t be a story. It’s only that Stewart got a donation from a pro-gun group that’s a problem.

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The media has presented this narrative where anyone who gets money from the NRA is bought and paid for–and this article will get dropped to claim such about Stewart–while anyone who gets money from the gun control lobby is simply a noble crusader for all that is good and just.

The double standard makes me absolutely sick.

I get that they don’t like the NRA. I don’t actually care that they don’t like the NRA. It shouldn’t matter how they feel about any given organization. They should report on actual news and leave their opinions out of it, which is the only reason this story would have been given the green light.

This is a political hack job masquerading as journalism and anyone with two eyes should be able to see that.

Look, I get that the timing doesn’t look great. However, does anyone really think it would matter? Whenever the donation came in, someone would try to paint Stewart’s vote as having been bought.

You see, it’s because the anti-gun side can’t understand how anyone could possibly disagree with them. They don’t grasp that we can actually believe gun control isn’t just unnecessary, but harmful.

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All their arguments are predicated on the idea that we all secretly believe gun control works, we just oppose it for whatever other reasons, usually corruption.

They can’t grasp the idea that Stewart may actually support the Second Amendment and that the NRA wants to make sure someone supportive stays in Congress. They can’t understand it at all.

Neither Stewart nor the NRA did anything wrong here. The newspaper can’t even present a hint of evidence that they did anything wrong, either. They just want you to think there is.

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