Guest post by Michael Strickland
If you’re a person in the USA, you probably get ads in the mail all the time from gun and outdoor stores advertising firearms, especially during November and December, or whenever Obama says anything about more gun laws. Sometimes these ads come in the Wednesday flyer pile in the newspaper, as was the case this week when a Cabela’s ad featuring an AR 15 was circulated in the Oregonian ads.
Most people either chuck the ad or save it and head to whatever gun shop it is. Unless you’re Willamette Week author Coby Hutzler or reader Doug Menely, then you get all butthurt and write an article in Oregon’s second largest paper complaining about it, talking about how the ad is insensitive, and you even seek comments from Cabela’s and the advertising firm (which I’m sure are still laughing about).
From the Willamette Week article:
Alert WW reader Doug Menely spotted the ad in his home edition of the (Oregonian) newspaper.
“I personally found this ad totally insensitive to what happened in Roseburg, Southern California and every place that has had mass shootings,” Menely writes. “This weapon that is displayed is clearly not a hunting rifle.”
Whether the M&P15 is a hunting rifle is a matter of some debate. But the gun was used by killers in two recent mass shootings.
The ad arrives less than a month after the Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino, where a married couple, allegedly dedicated to radical Islamic beliefs, used an M&P15 and other weapons to kill 14 people and wound 21 others.
This isn’t the first time Cabela’s has come under criticism from PC left. You may recall earlier in the year that they were targeted by Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action after the Charleston shooting, claiming that the national chain sells guns to people who don’t pass background checks, and trying to blame the store for the shooter getting his gun, even though he had purchased it at a different shop and the FBI fumbled his background check.
You can visit the Cabela’s website at www.cabelas.com .
