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media demonstrated where to shoot police; NRA fought to protect the 
rights of police and honest citizens."
    All of the exaggerations and misstatements on the part of HCI have 
led many to look with not a little apprehension at the remarks quoted 
earlier by Nelson Shields. It is the idea of many that HCI is not for 
gun-control, but rather for gun-elimination.  Adding to the climate 
of apprehension is the seeming stranglehold on the media HCI and other 
anti-gun groups have. Magazines such as Time print biased and sometimes 
untrue articles on the gun issue a couple times each month, regardless 
if there have been any notable incidents involving guns prior to 
publication. People of both pro-gun and neutral positions wrote in to 
Time magazine after a particularly misrepresentative article entitled 
"Death by Gun" appeared in a July 1989 issue. The letters complained 
of the biased nature of the article, pointing out that over half of 
the 346 gun deaths discussed were suicides which would have simply 
found other means of self-destruction if guns were absent. Others 
berated the silliness of counting a heart attack victim as a 
gun-related death--the man had been shot at, though not hit, and 
summarily died of a heart attack. Gun owners in particular took 
offense at the inclusion of police and civilian justified homicides 
in the article. In response, Time wrote,
"The July 17 cover story is the most recent in a growing number of 
attempts on the part of TIME editors to keep the gun availability 
issue resolutely in view.  Such an editorial closing of ranks 
represents the exception rather than the rule in the history of the 
magazine ... But the time for opinions on the dangers of gun 
availability is long since gone ... . As we see it--and as we 
indicated in the report--our responsibility now is to confront 
indifference about the escalating violence and the unwillingness to
do something about it."
          Time, in addition to articles like this, gives much 
"advertising" to HCI and its cause. Frequent articles espousing the 
merits of gun-control and HCI in Time and other sympathetic media 
amounts to free media exposure (except in cases of actual news 
reporting) NRA and other similar organizations' ads are 
systematically rejected however. The Firearms Education Institute 
(FEI) has estimated HCI's free media exposure at $650 million as 
compared to the NRA's paid advertisements at $15 million. The 
representative also hastened to add that pretended news articles 
carry more weight than actual paid advertisements.
  Articles such as the following from the December 1990 issue of
Glamour magazine are particularly helpful to HCI's cause:
          The following is from Glamour's "Ten Women of the Year"
    SARAH BRADY: FOR WORKING TO REDUCE THE HANDGUN EPIDEMIC IN THE U.S.
    In 1984, three years after her husband, White House aide James A. 
Brady, was shot in an assassination attempt on President Ronald 
Reagan's life, Sarah Brady found her five-year-old son Scott playing 
in a friend's car with a gun that turned out to be a loaded .22. It 
was the last straw for Brady, who launched an all-out fight for 
tougher gun control laws. She had worked for two congressmen before 
her marriage, so she knew her way around Washington and, as chairperson 
of the lobbying group Handgun Control, Inc., she made herself--and 
her husband, who is disabled and confined to a wheelchair--a highly 
visible opponent of the powerful National Rifle Association . She 
fought the "invincible" NRA state by state and proved it's NOT 
invincible. This year, Brady's lobbying paid off: In a 27-9 vote, the 
House Judiciary Committee approved legislation to require a seven-day 
waiting period to buy a handgun. "This margin of victory," says Brady, 
"illustrates that Congress is serious about reducing gun violence and 
keeping handguns out of the wrong hands."
     --   "Women of the Year 1990", Glamour magazine, December 1990, page 96.
It is through the media that HCI champions its success in large part, 
but there is another aspect. NRA representative Pat O'Malley attributes 
much of their success to direct mail. HCI mailings come within one day 
(sometimes as much as two) of social security checks. Periodically, 
mass mailings based on political party membership (Democrat) are also 
sent. Most of HCI's mass mailing lists come from left-wing and 
liberal publication's subscriber lists. If an individual receives 
periodicals such as Newsweek, Time, People, Life, The Washington Post, 
etc., than he/she is likely to at some point receive a mailing from HCI. 
The one this researcher received came in a envelope with, "Now is your 
chance to tell the NRA to go to HELL!" scribbled on the outside. Inside 
was a list of the National Committee with celebrities proliferated 
throughout, and four pages of heavy-handed propaganda, stamp signed by 
Nelson Shields, and no Board of Directors list. The mailing was packed 
full of slurs against the NRA, painting the organization to be a 
militant group which has had the nation by the throat since the NRA's 
existence. In closing the letter, Shields, in language that can only 
be described as begging, implores the reader to join HCI at once, "
for another one of us will be murdered by a handgun in the next 
60 minutes."
  It is through this type of mailing that potential supporters receive 
postcards like the one this tesearcher received in the membership 
packet. It features a photo on the bottom half of the card of a .38 
.  [ Continued In Next Message... ]
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 * SRP 2.00 #2737 * If you can read this, I've escaped from your Twit List.
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