Harvard Professor Says NRA Is a 'Domestic Terrorist Organization'

Harvard University Professor Jonathan L. Walton called the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization” during a speech at the campus’s Memorial Church.

“We have to have the courage to call the NRA exactly what it has become — a domestic terrorist organization that places profit above the lives of the American people,” Dr. Jonathan Walton said at the Memorial Church of Harvard University.

Walton’s remarks were made available as a blog post on Harvard’s website. Walton, a Professor of Christian Morals and a minister at the Memorial Church at Harvard University, argued that America is “sick.”

“This nation is sick.  Our cultural anxiety, toxic masculinity, and racial, religious, and ethnic bigotries are eating away at the soul of this nation,” he said. “It even caused us to elect a madman to the presidency that embodies the worst aspects of our country’s cultural disease.  We have much to work through as a nation.  But until we do, we cannot allow men like Dylan Roof, Omar Mateen, and Stephen Paddock such easy access to handheld weapons of mass destruction. ”

Walton cited work from the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. Research from the school argues that gun violence is a public health crisis in the United States. “U.S. children are fourteen times more likely to die by gun violence than any other developed nation.  People die by gun at thirty times the rate of the United Kingdom. This is not normal,” Walton added.

Walton finished by condemning those who express concern about the gun violence in Chicago. “And please stop with the racialized red herring about Chicago, as if those who love to cite violence on that city’s Southside give a damn about the hell these people are catching each day,” he said. “It is time to stop the madness and excuses.  We have to have the courage to call the NRA exactly what it has become — a domestic terrorist organization that places profit above the lives of the American people.”