A city council member in Brooklyn, New York, giddy with the fact that a group that supported the NRA didn’t publicly advertise a meeting in Brooklyn, celebrated his and other officials’ efforts to discourage the NRA from assembling in Brooklyn:
Brannan isn’t alone among Brooklyn officials who hate the NRA and want to keep them out of Brooklyn, according to the Brooklyn Reporter. The Reporter wrote that the Brooklyn Friends of the NRA had wanted to hold an event featuring a gun auction in Brooklyn, but two venues, Gargiulo’s in Coney Island and the Grand Prospect Hall in Park Slope, backed out after local residents and elected officials raised hell, so the group rescheduled their event at the Dyker Heights Knights of Columbus without publicizing the event.
Here are some examples of Brooklyn officials or candidates for office condemning the event once news leaked out that it was indeed going to take place:
Andrew Gounardes, one of two candidates for the Democratic nomination for State Senate: “I think this is absolutely outrageous. The NRA has absolutely no place in Brooklyn. They do not believe in common-sense gun laws. They do not believe in keeping our neighborhood safe and the fact that they have to sneak around our community just to hold a fundraiser shows how wrong they know they are and how unwelcome they are in our community.”
Ross Barkan, another Democratic candidate for State Senate in Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights: “The NRA is a disgraceful organization. After every mass shooting, the NRA proves it cares more about deadly assault weapons than human lives. It is, in every way, morally bankrupt. For the NRA to come to Brooklyn, to the place I call home, is unconscionable.”
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Justin Brannan, in a joint statement:
We are disappointed to learn in the 11th hour of an NRA fundraiser in Dyker Heights, especially after our neighbors in Coney Island and South Slope expressed their deep displeasure with having this benefit take place in their communities. The lack of notice as to its rescheduling indicates a desire to fly under the radar and avoid the scrutiny of a rightly concerned public. The NRA does not value the safety and security of our neighborhoods, putting deadly assault weapons above innocent lives; it is no friend of Brooklyn. Our protest of the NRA and their campaign of chaos continues.
NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch had a succinct rejoinder after seeing the rancor toward the event and the NRA:
