NYT Editorial Board Member Attacks NRA for Having Guns in Its Gun Museum

Op-ed paints gun owners as wannabe thrill killers inspired by John Wayne

The New York Times ran an op-ed Monday attacking the National Rifle Association's National Firearms Museum and gun owners.

Editorial board member Francis X. Clines wrote in the piece that the Fairfax, Virginia gun museum, which features firearms from every era of American history, represents the worst of America. In particular, Clines was troubled by a display detailing gun use in Hollywood movies.

"There are thousands of ingenious, gleaming rifles and handguns in displays about America's gun-rich history of colonialism, immigration, expansionism and vigilante justice," Clines wrote on page A22 of Monday's Times. "But it is the gallery devoted to Hollywood and its guns and good-guy shooters that best illustrates the power of fantasy now driving the modern gun rights debate."

Clines expressed outrage at a cardboard cutout of John Wayne displayed in the exhibit, referencing it several times in his editorial. He said the cutout, which depicts a gun-toting Wayne with a grin full of "menace," promoted fantasies about killing "bad guys" for American gun owners.

"A poster figure of John Wayne, the mega-hero of Hollywood westerns, offers a greeting here at the gun museum’s gallery door as he holds his Winchester carbine at the ready and offers an amiably crooked grin," Clines said. "The bad guys in the movies never fully understood that the menace behind Wayne's grin (‘Whoa, take ‘er easy there, Pilgrim') meant he was about to deliver blazing fantasies of triumphant gunfire that would...Read More HERE