Just three days after a deadly mass shooting at a movie theater in Colorado, the National Rifle Association asked its supporters for money, saying Americans’ Second Amendment rights were at stake.
The letter dated July 23 was sent to NRA supporters, including those in Colorado, days after James Holmes allegedly murdered 12 people in the Aurora theater with semi-automatic weapons, Bloomberg reported.
The solicitation did not mention the horrific shooting, but suggested that American gun rights were under attack. Bloomberg said it obtained the letter from a former Republican U.S. lawmaker who asked not to be identified.
“The future of your Second Amendment rights will be at stake,” the letter said, according to Bloomberg. “And nothing less than the future of our country and our freedom will be at stake.”
The email came as Mayor Bloomberg and others were calling on President Obama and Mitt Romney to strengthen the country’s gun laws. The NRA remained publicly silent in the wake of the tragedy, other than a statement in which the group offered its “heartfelt condolences” to the victims of the shooting and their families.
In the four-page request for funds, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said donations would help buy ads in key swing states to defeat Obama and elect candidates who support gun rights.
He said Obama’s re-election would result in the “confiscation of our firearms” and potentially a “ban on semi-automatic weapons,” Bloomberg reported.
FEDS WERE WATCHING ALLEGED SIKH TEMPLE GUNMAN YEARS BEFORE MASSACRE: REPORT
A gun control advocacy group based in Denver, the Colorado Ceasefire Capitol Fund, told Bloomberg the solicitation was “very insensitive.”
But Colorado State Shooting Association President Tony Fabian defended the NRA and said the fundraising letter was probably in the works before the shooting.
“It looks like the timing is purely a coincidence,” he said.
The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Aurora mass shooting was followed by another on Sunday at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee. U.S. Army veteran Wade Michael Page is suspected of fatally shooting six people with a legally purchased handgun before he was killed by police.
