The NRA's New President Seems Like a Great Person

Newly elected National Rifle Association President Carolyn Meadows may only be a few days into her job, but she’s already leapt headfirst into the NRA’s proud tradition of saying very bad things.

In an wide-ranging interview with her hometown paper, the Marietta Daily Journal, Meadows—who was voted into the NRA’s top spot last Monday, replacing former president Oliver North amid a leadership crisis in the organization over financial mismanagement—said that the role of the powerful gun lobby group was first and foremost to support President Donald Trump.

“We’re going to work to get Donald Trump reelected, unity, and that’s primarily it, to be politically active, to bring gun-toters into the fold, to get more gun-toters to join NRA,” she told the Journal. “It’s a powerful lobby, not just for gun rights, but for rights. We believe in the Constitution. When we take our oath of office we actually swear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. That’s why I do it.”

Trump first. Guns and constitution second. Got it.

Meadows—a longtime Republican official who worked to block the construction of a monument to Martin Luther King while serving as chairwoman of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, which oversees the largest pro-Confederacy monument in the country—also attacked newly elected Georgia Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath as only having won her 2018 congressional race for being “a minority female.”

McBath first became politically active following the shooting death of her son Jordan Davis, who was killed for allegedly playing music too loudly at a Florida gas station. Shortly thereafter, McBath became a prominent gun control advocate, and said in a 2018 interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution that gun control is largely what motivated her run for Congress.

“There will be more than one person in the race, but we’ll get that seat back. But it is wrong to say like McBath said, that the reason she won was because of her anti-gun stance. That didn’t have anything to do with it,” Meadows said. “It had to do with being a minority female. And the Democrats really turned out, and that’s the problem we have with conservatives — we don’t turn out as well.”

As befits the head of the NRA, Meadows sees the need for more guns, not fewer.

“I believe in arming teachers. Absolutely. In my church, I’m armed. My pastor is a shooter, a hunter, he knows I am, people in the congregation do,” she told the Journal.

“This is not [an] NRA position,” she added. “But as far as I’m concerned, I’d love to have a sign out front: ‘We have gun-toting teachers and security.’”