To the Murderer(s) of My Friend Matt Coleman

Dear Killer(s):

My name is Mat Thomas, and Matt Coleman was my good friend. A professional environmentalist and passionate protector of the natural world, Matt Coleman worked as a conservation steward, volunteer coordinator and wildlife population surveyor for the Mendocino Land Trust during the past six years. You probably only knew Matt Coleman as the tall, bulky stranger you shot to death in a barrage of bullets on Thursday, August 11th while he was doing restoration work at Cape Vizcaino, a remote 400-acre coastal forest reserve near Westport, California owned by the Save the Redwoods League. I, on the other hand, knew Matt Coleman personally as a close friend, confidant and housemate for several years, as well as a fellow literature lover, activist, outdoor enthusiast and creative collaborator on the Magnificent Glass Pelican radio program. We met when I was a freshman at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and remained friends for more than two decades. A fortunate few knew and loved him as son, brother or life partner; still others knew and respected him as colleague, community member, role model or mentor. All of us miss him terribly. 

Unlike you, we all know what kind of man Matt Coleman was: a strong, caring, compassionate, generous, funny, intelligent, energetic, noble one who’d found meaning and purpose in working to make Earth a better planetary home for people and wildlife alike. Inspired by his heroes Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Edward Abbey, and George Washington Hayduke, Matt Coleman followed their giant footsteps into the wilderness. He was only 45 years old, and probably had several good decades of life left in him. Yet you selfishly robbed Matt Coleman of his life and stole him away from us. What we want to know now is why.  

Seriously: you owe all those who knew and cared about Matt Coleman an explanation, because you had no right to kill him, and you inflicted severe emotional, existential and spiritual trauma on us when you did. We are stricken with shock, struggling to make some semblance of sense out of his apparently pointless murder. Yet we find this far more difficult to do than we would if we knew why someone decided to brutally eradicate this unique, irreplaceable individual from existence. In the depths of our psyches, we wonder: what possible scenario could there be to morally justify murdering Matt Coleman? What non-self-serving motive could you conceivably offer in your own defense? 

And Just Who the Hell Are You?*

Are you part of an armed mercenary militia force employed by a marijuana cartel, and did Matt Coleman discover your illegally-grown pot plantation (as the most plausible hypothesis maintains)? If so, how does it feel knowing that you permanently obliterated a singular human being’s consciousness for something so crass as money, and to protect yourself/selves and your fellow felons from detection? 

Or are you some unknown enemy who nursed a grudge against Matt Coleman and decided to take your petty revenge for some perceived slight? If so, how do you feel now that the deed is done? Does your vengeance taste as sticky-sweet as you’d imagined, or has it already turned to bitter ashes in your mouth? 

Or are you just some random crazyperson who stalked a lone defenseless caretaker into the woods as an easy victim? If so, I pity your chemically-distorted dementia (which is no doubt mentally agonizing). Yet, despite your disability, I cannot forgive your mortal trespass. 

Whoever you are, did you get a thrill when you pulled the trigger? Did killing a man make you feel powerful, invincible, Godlike? Among the most troubling questions about Matt Coleman’s death for those of us who knew him is whether his last moments were filled with the terror of knowing that his life was about to end. The police have not publicly released such details as how many bullets you blasted into his torso, whether you shot him from the front or back, or any incriminating evidence they may have discovered at the crime scene or on your victim’s corpse. I assume the cops have kept this information classified to maintain the upper hand against you in their investigation. In this unfortunate situation, the best we can hope for is that our dearly departed companion died quickly, and that you, his killer(s), at least had the basic human decency not to taunt your prey or ridicule his sudden infirmity and helplessness as his precious lifeforce drained away in a pool of warm blood on the ground. 

Regardless of the exact circumstances of Matt Coleman’s murder, and whatever your reasons or reactions might have been, I cannot forgive you for killing him: not yet, anyway. Because, to even begin healing the wounds afflicting our grieving souls, you owe us—Matt Coleman’s surviving kith and kin—more than a mere explanation: you owe us justice. For our sake, as well as the sake of your own deliverance from evil, I urge you to turn yourself/selves over to the authorities now so that you can be held accountable for your abominable actions and spare yourself/selves the Hell of your own personal torment.

Exorcise Your Demons

I figure there is a good chance that you, Matt Coleman’s killer(s), may read this open letter at some point. I say this because you are probably doing what most felons do: scouring the Internet for information about your crime—whether it’s to determine if the police have uncovered any damning forensic evidence, or to satiate a narcissistic hunger for media attention (anonymous as it is). Furthermore, based on what I recently learned about search engine optimization, I’ve strategically used the term “Matt Coleman” 32 times betting that Google will prominently feature this letter near the top of its browser results. 

You probably don’t want to give yourself/selves up because you’re afraid of going to prison. But you know what? You’re already in prison, whether you realize it or not. You took a human life, and somewhere deep down you know that this was wrong—religiously speaking, a mortal sin even. No matter how tough you think you are or how hardened your black heart(s) may be, guilt and shame are festering inside your guts, eating away at the calluses that have calcified around your conscience(s). You may presently be too emotionally crippled and desensitized to be fully conscious of the disgraceful state of your soul(s), but understand that you will remain trapped in cages of your own remorse until you acknowledge and pay the price for the grave damage you’ve done to others.

Has someone you loved ever died? Was that person murdered by another human being? If so, then perhaps you know the pain that we, Matt Coleman’s survivors, feel burning inside us. Maybe you’ve buried that anguish, that suffering, beneath layers of denial and self-deception, but at least some part of you knows it’s still there, controlling your life/lives, and ultimately can’t be avoided. And it’s going to drive you to kill again unless you deliberately disrupt your destructive pattern—especially if Matt Coleman was not your first murder victim. Nevertheless, whether he was or wasn’t, I’m fairly certain that he won’t be your last. 

You think you can quit killing anytime you want? I seriously doubt it. Don’t take my word for it: listen to someone who knows. In 1997, Matt Coleman turned me on to Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips’ album The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere. On the track “Anarchy,” Phillips had this to say about violence (quoting the wisdom of Ammon Hennacy, Phillips’ halfway-house manager in the 1950s after he’d returned home from the Korean war):

“You know, alcoholism will kill somebody, until they finally get the courage to sit in a circle of people like that and put their hand up in the air and say, 'Hi, my name’s Utah, I’m an alcoholic.' And then you can begin to deal with the behavior, you see, and have the people define it for you whose lives you’ve destroyed.” (Hennacy) said, “It’s the same with violence. You know, an alcoholic, they can be dry for twenty years; they’re never gonna sit in that circle and put their hand up and say, 'Well, I’m not alcoholic anymore' – no: they’re still gonna put their hand up and say, 'Hi, my name’s Utah, I’m an alcoholic.' It’s the same with violence. You gotta be able to put your hand in the air and acknowledge your capacity for violence, and then deal with the behavior, and have the people whose lives you’ve messed with define that behavior for you, you see. And it’s not gonna go away: you’re gonna be dealing with it every moment in every situation for the rest of your life.”

So you see, dear murderer(s), you’re addicted to violence, and you’re not gonna be able to stop killing on your own…especially if you continue down the cruel path that led you to murder Matt Coleman in the first place. Your humanity—the very core of one’s Self—has already been corrupted and corroded by murdering Matt Coleman and perhaps others. Do you really want to make it worse by committing even more murders?

Your only chance for salvation from your current malady, and an even more horrifying fate than you’re already burdened with, is to surrender yourself/selves to the police. Taking responsibility for your crime will definitely be difficult, but at least you will have finally broken out of your vicious cycle and begun to purify your poisoned soul(s). However, if you refuse to confront your demons by honestly answering for the murder of Matt Coleman, your inner torture will never cease, but rather magnify exponentially until it has completely consumed whatever shriveling remnants of your humanity still remain.  

Coleman Lives! 

By murdering Matt Coleman, you may have decimated his body, terminated his brain functions, ceased his sentience and extinguished his essence, but there is still one vital part of him that you could not kill: his spirit, which will live on forever inside the hearts of all those who knew him. Matt’s family, friends and colleagues will therefore always remember him as a martyr to the critical cause of protecting Earth from human greed and exploitation. Inspired by his courage and resolve, others will continue Matt’s environmental protection work where he left off with renewed effort, and carry the torch of progress for him now that he has departed this world.  

Matt Coleman not only lived and died doing what he loved—he lived and died for what he loved. That is, if you are in fact a member of Mendocino’s marijuana mafia, you most likely killed him because he tried to defend the forest’s fragile ecosystem against your illicit invasion. Do you even know (or care) how badly illegal pot grows damage the environment? The toxic fertilizers and pesticides used to grow pot plants pollute the ecosystem for miles around, and the tons of trash left behind (from hoses to empty propane canisters) blight otherwise pristine landscapes. Illegal marijuana farmers deprive wildlife of the natural habitat they need to survive by cutting down trees to build shelters, fencing off large swaths of land, and diverting water sources to grow cash crops. The booby traps they set with live explosives to deter nosy visitors often kill animals, and those who squat on public lands to grow or guard crops illegally poach animals for food. 

If you are an outlaw pot farm guard, then you know that your kind do not fit the mellow hippy stereotype most people associate with marijuana cultivation. The criminal cannabis underground is instead populated by vile, abhorrent thugs who ravage lands that rightfully belong to the American people and ruthlessly execute anyone who threatens their profits. To them, killing is just a cost of doing business. In fact, just today Fort Bragg City Councilman Jere Melo was shot and killed after finding an illegal pot operation on a parcel of land he was managing. 

Though it is of limited consolation to those of us who mourn Matt Coleman, at least we know that his final moments were spent in the place that he most loved: the wild, cradled under the canopy of ancient, native trees that he dedicated himself to safeguarding. Matt Coleman was a peaceful warrior, and it is significant and symbolic that when you spilled his blood, it poured into, blended with and nourished the living soil where he fell on the environmental battlefield. We who remain can take some small comfort that, even though you took Matt Coleman’s life, you could not crush his convictions. 

I will always fondly remember my friend Matt Coleman in my own personal way. I will hear his gruff Brooklyn-accented, California-surfer-dude-inflected voice whenever I listen to The Pogues, The Clash or Bob Marley. I will think of his voracious intellect and sharp sense of humor whenever I read Gary Snyder, Ursula K. LeGuin or Zippy the Pinhead. I will see Matt’s smiling face—punctuated by his untamed lion’s mane of gray-blonde hair, grizzled beard and silver-rimmed glasses—every time I watch the sun set in radiant golden-azure glory, or the incandescent cobalt waves roll and tumble over the Pacific shoreline, or the luminous sea of distant suns impossibly floating in the infinite night sky. 

Matt, you are one with the Earth, with Creation now. Tom Waits expressed it better and more simply in his song “Take It With Me” than I could ever hope to in mere written words: “It’s got to be more than flesh and bone / All that you’ve loved is all you own.” With this parting poetic sentiment, my friend, I bid you a gloomy goodbye and wish you blissful eternity in the Heaven of your choosing. Peace out, brother.

1) In the wake of Matt Coleman’s passing, family and friends have set up two funds that you can donate to:

- Memorial Fund: An endowment has been established in Matt Coleman's memory that reflects his lifelong passions and interests. Please send donations to: The Community Foundation of Mendocino County; Matthew Coleman Fund for Environmental Education & Conservation; 290 S. State Street; Ukiah, CA 95482.

- Reward Fund: The Mendocino Land Trust founded a reward fund (now over $30,000 as of 9/23/11) in hopes of encouraging those with information about Matt Coleman’s murder to come forward. Please make checks out to "Mendocino Land Trust" and send donations to: REWARD; c/o MLT; Box 1094; Mendocino, CA 95460. Contact Jez at 707-962-0470 or janderson@mendocinolandtrust.org for more information. Receipts will be provided for all donations, and monies will be returned to donors if no reward is paid out.

2) If you have any information potentially pertaining to Matt Coleman’s murder, please call the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office at 707-467-9159 or 707-463-4086. Callers can choose to remain anonymous. 

3) Visit my Facebook page for updates on the police investigation.

* Police killed Aaron Bassler, suspect in the murders of both Matt Coleman and Councilman Melo, on Saturday, October 1st.

Related AnimalRightings:

- James McCaffry: 1954-2011

- Witness to Suicide at Powell and Market

- Leaked NRA Pamphlet Targets “Animal Rights Terrorists”

Leaked NRA Pamphlet Targets “Animal Rights Terrorists”

"You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!"
- Former NRA President and Oscar-winning actor Charlton Heston

On December 22nd, a blog called Wonkette.com posted a leaked 27-page fundraising booklet that they said had been produced by the National Rifle Association (NRA). It was such a bizarre piece of propaganda that many thought it a hoax. However, the pamphlet soon proved to be the genuine article—a highly polished draft of “Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century”—mysteriously “stolen” from an NRA office.

This NRA pamphlet casts the world’s fate in highly alarmist tones, warning of an imminent and violent clash between a conspiracy of “evil” forces on one side and God-fearing, law-abiding gun owners on the other. The dreaded result: forced disarmament of the entire country, and thus total and irrevocable loss of Freedom, Democracy and Civilization. The NRA’s terrifying demons include shadowy Democrats and their Zionist financiers, mushy-headed “One World Extremists” who want to surrender America to the United Nations, subversive celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell and Katie Couric, the liberal media as a giant devil head coming through the TV screen, and even “Illegal Alien Gangs” of menacing minorities making cryptic hand signs. And, of course, there are also “The Animal Rights Terrorists,” among which are PETA, HSUS and the Fund for Animals.

“The Animal Rights Terrorists”

One can first infer the crimes of the “animal rights terrorists” from the amazing illustration* on page 18, which provides a fascinatingly rich level of visual detail and a priceless glimpse into the minds of NRA leaders. The image is fertile with secret symbols, hidden meanings and subliminal messages.

In the foreground strides a hairy-legged, Birkenstock-wearing hippie gal carrying a flaming torch and a can of gasoline. She sports a tattoo on her arm that has been described in the blogosphere as “a kitty-cat Satan” or “a kitler, a cat that looks like Hitler.” She is cut off at the neck (implying that these underground agitators are able to hide their faces and identities), and her male co-conspirator wields a baseball bat and a snarling black dog on a leash.

In this strange, distorted interpretation of Orwell’s Animal Farm, activists have apparently succeeded in training all the other animals—cattle, pigs, chickens, owls and an incredible land lobster—to fight for their own liberation without needing to be physically controlled. The beasts’ facial expressions are of anger, outrage and resolve: they know what they are doing, their crimes premeditated. The owl is so gung-ho that she’s carrying a clutch of dynamite in her talons, and, significantly, the pig actually seems to be flying. (If the NRA opposes evolution, this might be the reason.)

Even though the picture is pure fantasy, I think it is an accurate rendering of the NRA’s deepest fears: that the future holds wild packs of pissed-off animals roaming the post-McDonald’s® wasteland seeking vengeance against their bipedal oppressors. Obviously, once animals are freed, they will murder and enslave humans in retribution: an apocalyptic twist on  the old adage that if we didn’t hunt, eat, experiment on and otherwise torture and kill animals, they’d die of starvation and (I guess) inability or unwillingness to breed.

In the context of this booklet, this picture is clearly meant to scare readers by painting a dark portrait of animal rights activists as “terrorists”: they are, after all, carrying explosives and other implements of destruction (to presumably blow up a vivisection lab, factory farm and Red Lobster® franchise, in that order). Yet looking past the violent overtones, this is a somewhat inspirational and iconic image that uniquely captures (however inadvertently) something of the movement’s essence: that is, the animals are fighting, as equals alongside humans, for their rights. If only this reflected reality, we could end humanity’s enslavement of other species within a generation.

“Freedom’s Enemies”

The text mirrors the distorted conception of animal rights activists depicted in the illustration by lumping all animal rights organizations—from the most mainstream to the most radical—into one category, seamlessly morphing from Constitutionally-protected activism to the most hard-core “terrorist” activities in a single sentence:

“(Animal rights groups) run commercials, print propaganda, stage rallies, infiltrate schools with animal rights material, blow up medical labs, burn down buildings, destroy hunters’ property and poison hunters’ dogs—with enough left over to hire top-dollar lawyers if they get caught.”

The drawing of a Molotov cocktail, some pipe bombs, and an envelope with a razor blade inside sitting in a pool of blood is supposed to be straight out of PETA’s toolbox:

“PETA is linked to a growing network of embedded cells of dangerous people willing to achieve their ends through violence... Many don’t know that PETA wants much more than to take a fishing pole from every child’s hand, take away their pet cats and dogs, ban milk from their breakfast, and shut down all their circuses, zoos and aquariums. PETA wants much more than to take Seeing Eye dogs away from the blind, and take bomb-sniffing dogs away from our airports. PETA wants to stop all medical advancements that use animal research in any way… (Research scientists) receive hate mail, letters loaded with razor blades and rat poison, death threats and bomb threats.”

It seems that America’s precious children are in grave danger of growing up in a world where they might question whether it is ethical to hunt, own or eat animals. Even the great tradition of imprisoning animals and forcing them to perform for our amusement is at stake. The great news for the animal rights movement is that, according to the NRA, we are winning: collectively, animal protection groups comprise a “frightening force” that has already been incredibly effective in achieving our nefarious aims:

“Medical research on the verge of breakthrough screeches to a halt. Our most promising labs are shut down…The antihuman, pro-animal frontal assault is broad and pervasive, spanning from political initiatives to indoctrination of schoolchildren to hunter harassment.”

The “Animal Rights Terrorists” section concludes with a plea “that patriots of financial position pledge to stand with freedom’s fighters forevermore.” Which is the whole point of this booklet, actually. In an introduction called “The Coming Confrontation” on page 3, the NRA’s Executive Vice President and Executive Director claims:

“(The) NRA is the only guaranteed investment for Second Amendment survival, as well as for all the business benefits that come with it. Only the NRA energizes the powerful pro-freedom voting bloc, resulting in election outcomes good for both American gun rights and for American business. Candidates who support the Second Amendment also support you. They're typically pro-business people who fight for free-market issues, from tort and estate tax reform to immigration policy and the global war on terror.... The Second Amendment needs freedom-loving financiers on her side, or she will be drowned in the tsunami of cash flowing from freedom's enemies."

The Real Terrorists

Conspicuously absent from the NRA’s rogues’ gallery of supervillains is al-Qaeda, the global ultraterrorist organization that destroyed the World Trade Center with hijacked airliners, killing thousands of people. You’d think they might have at least merited a chapter called “The Suicide Bombers” or “Allah’s Demonic Army” or something. Interestingly, 9/11 is mentioned only once throughout “Freedom In Peril,” and only in passing.

It’s surprising that the NRA doesn’t take these terrorists seriously. Branding peaceful, nonviolent, law-abiding, and civil-disobedient animal rights protesters as “terrorists” only serves to minimize the real dangers the public faces from actual terrorists, as well as from pro-NRA militias that stockpile weapons but go unchecked by the FBI. Instead, as the booklet points out, the FBI itself has identified “animal rights terrorists” as the number one domestic threat to the U.S., even though animal activists have not caused a single person’s death.

The NRA wholly supports the Bush Administration’s War on Terror in that, like those who framed and passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), they define animal rights activists across the board as “terrorists” because we endanger the profits of corporations that exploit animals. “It’s inevitable that terrorists will infest America for generations to come,” they say, as though we are termites and the NRA is the exterminator. It is definitely ironic that a group whose main mission is to promote the use of deadly weapons calls people working to stop violence “terrorists”—and sad that their sensationalistic attacks have so often succeeded.

“The U.N… (has) already been successful in orchestrating gun bans in once-free countries like England, Australia, Canada and South Africa,” the pamphlet says. So, in the NRA's alternate-reality universe anyway, South Africa was free under Apartheid, which preceded the gun ban in the country, just because everyone could get guns (well, white people, at least). The NRA is especially fond of spreading the myth that banning guns will provoke more violent crimes. Yet guns kill more than 30,000 people a year in the U.S., and Americans are three times as likely as Canadians to be fatally shot. A new Harvard study shows that higher homicide rates occur in states with more gun owners. But it doesn’t matter to the NRA. Danger and death are simply the price Americans must pay for living in a still-free country where the Second Amendment reigns supreme.

Our country faces real threats: global warming, wars (in Afghanistan, Iraq and possibly Iran), corporate hegemony, income inequality, the national debt, a crumbling education system, institutionalized racism and sexism, the Standard American Diet, etc., etc. Instead of recognizing these problems, the NRA creates boogie monsters to distract attention from issues that actually matter. Their hateful invective against all those who challenge their belief system seems like some symptom of collective mental illness.

Cold Dead Hands

Despite the costs, the ideologues at the NRA cling to their fundamentalist interpretation of the Second Amendment: that it means no gun control at all—period. In contrast, most Americans believe that, alongside the “right” to bear arms, we have a more primary right to be safe from violence, and greater gun control would make us safer. Governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens from danger, and most Americans favor limits on gun ownership and use. In a 2004 Gallup poll, 54% of respondents wanted gun laws to be stricter, compared to only 11% who said they should be less strict.

The pamphlet says: “In the minds of those who framed our Constitution, the right to armed self-protection in times of pandemonium was so obvious and innate that it didn’t warrant mention.” In other words, the less the Constitution has to say about something, the more essential it must be to our way of life. Yeah—that makes sense.

It continues: “That’s why the Second Amendment is brief in language but broad in scope, serving as umbrella protection for lawful use of arms in almost any circumstance.” In NRA-speak, that means gun owners have the right to shoot people whenever they personally determine it's justified. One may wonder: what are the limits of these circumstances? Do they include shooting those who challenge strict adherence to a radical interpretation of the Second Amendment?

Such questions are moot to the NRA because they are militantly inflexible about their “right” to own and use guns without restrictions. They are also trying to preserve a way of life that kills people and animals while placeing corporate interests above society's. Part of their intent is to redefine freedom so that it means the freedom to make money from the blood of innocent animals and to make a financial killing selling guns. Firearms are a global multibillion-dollar a year enterprise, one of the biggest moneymaking operations on the planet. The NRA’s connection to the international arms industry gives them a huge financial stake in stopping gun control efforts in the U.S. and abroad.

The political system runs too much these days on money and backroom business deals rather than ethics or trying to improve the state of the world. Increasingly, the pursuit of our “national interest” is becoming the unquestioned protection of corporate profits against any criticism. The NRA and other fanatical pro-business groups will continue to fight for their “right” to go on harming people, animals and the environment, even though in doing so they are violating the rights of billions.

Happiness is a Warm Gun

As one of the world’s most powerful lobbying organizations, the four-million-member NRA has so far been able to block almost all legislative efforts to regulate guns. They literally see themselves as the “guardians” not only of the Second Amendment but of freedom itself. In fact, they believe that without unfettered access to guns, Americans would swiftly lose all of our other freedoms.

Yet in the narrative of “Freedom In Peril,” the NRA (oddly enough) consistently portrays gun owners as helpless victims. All the “good” people in the pictures are fighting a losing battle, under siege by insurmountable forces. The NRA argues that guns will protect our freedom when the time comes. But in this booklet that time has actually come, and guns are shown to be completely useless.

Think about it: What good is granny’s handgun supposed to do against seven commandos with automatic weapons (page 13)? (Incidentally, this illustration is allegedly based on an actual event that took place in post-Katrina New Orleans.) How is a shotgun going to enable that dad perched on his rooftop (page 14) to protect his family from the roving hordes coming up the street filled with overturned cars and burned-out houses? And on the final page, next to the Epilogue, the father seems to have just given up: he’s not even holding a gun, just waiting with his wife and son to be engulfed by the encroaching tidal wave that has crested their driveway.

Obviously, guns cannot protect people from what the NRA seems to believe is coming. Actually, the spread of firearms will only bring about chaos that much quicker. Instead of focusing on causative solutions and preventive measures against society’s collapse, their answer is that everyone should have guns: then we’ll all be safe! The pamphlet warns, “If we do not heed the lesson of Katrina—that survival in disaster is ultimately the responsibility of the individual—the next tragedy will almost certainly include further devastation of American freedoms.”

This directly denies that the government has any responsibility to help its citizens during disasters. It also clearly states the NRA’s core philosophy: that it is every man for himself in this world, especially in times of crisis, so you’d better be packing serious heat if you expect to survive. The NRA embodies the “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” mentality that came into vogue with the post-9/11 posturing of Bush & Co. If you support gun control, then you’re not with the NRA; therefore, by this simplistic and flawed logic, you must be against them and therefore a “terrorist.”

Now What?

The NRA has held a stony silence on the story behind “Freedom In Peril.”** Some commentators speculate that it was intended as a mailer to the group’s rank-and-file, but it seems more likely that it was designed as a special fundraising tool to target wealthy donors. The book's epilogue concludes that “victory can no longer be borne solely by the masses,” which means they’re fishing for more than just $25 yearly donations. If they are scaring people without just cause merely as a cynical ploy for money, then they are insulting their constituency, whether it’s Joe Sixpack or Billy Bob Billionaire. What is scarier is the thought that this isn’t all about money, and that the heads of this powerful organization actually believe we’re on the verge of an all-out social collapse or apocalypse — and that guns, of all things, are the solution.

I hold out hope that this pamphlet doesn’t represent the viewpoint of the majority of NRA members, and that most will be offended by it. Some may revoke their memberships, perhaps realizing the need for a less extreme pro-gun organization that sees the logic in regulations. A blogger and gun owner named Buffalo wrote: “My respect for the NRA decreased to almost nil when I read the pamphlet… This piece of crap tarnishes their image and should shame them.”

For all the talk about firearms, the key issue “Freedom In Peril” raises for the movement is not necessarily the question of gun control, but rather the ubiquitous spread of the perception that animal rights advocates are—by definition—terrorists. We need to counter this stereotype, but in order to do that we must thoroughly understand how our opponents think. “Freedom In Peril” is therefore something of a gift to the animal rights community because it so blatantly lays out how some of the most extreme extremists perceive us. I think it bears very close study.

What would be really amazing is if the animal rights movement could produce something as visually compelling as “Freedom In Peril.” If there are any great artists out there who are interested in collaborating on something like this, please contact me at mathomas@gmail.com.


* It must be noted that the graphic-novelesque design and artwork for this booklet by Arizona-based draftsman Chris Gall are of the highest quality almost throughout, but this is one of my favorite drawings. Given his plethora of high-powered clients and awards, I am curious whether Gall believes the NRA’s ideology or is just prostituting his formidable talent.

** I did a search for “Freedom In Peril” on the NRA website thinking I would find something that tells their side of the story, but instead got a “0 document(s) retrieved” message. So the NRA is basically pretending this brochure doesn’t even exist, and hoping that this will all blow over soon if they just lay low for awhile. Clearly they are embarrassed about being so exposed. (It must be noted that I conducted the same search on the PETA and HSUS websites and came up with zero results, as well.)

Links:

Here are some of the articles and blogs I read in researching this story:

NRA Pamphlet: “Freedom in Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century”

NRA's Graphic Attack on Its Enemies Leaked Onto Internet

NRA already taking shots at the incoming Democratic Congress

NRA Sounds Alarms on Gun Control

The Infidel Sage

Streich(er) One

YOUR NEW REALITY: Weapons Of Mass Information

Wonkette: NRA's Secret Graphic Novel Revealed!

Boing Boing

NRA comic called a hoax, but accusations later withdrawn

NRA Sounds Alarm of Not-So-Imminent Threat

Matthew High

NRA's Purloined Pamphlet Seeks Support of Big Business

AnonymousLefty

Gun Guys