Detroit CBS Runs April Fools Joke Against NRA on April 2; Not Marked As Joke

While the NRA does sometimes come across as less a civil rights organization for the Second Amendment and more a lobbyist for actions to actively help gun makers and users, it struck me as strange that a Detroit CBS news website ran on April 2, not marked as a joke, what was originally pretty clearly an April Fools Joke from Green Car Reports:

According to a new position paper recently released, the NRA intends to pursue a mandate requiring electric cars to offer a mobile source for recharging energy-pulse rifles owned by U.S. citizens.

"As Bushmaster semi-automatic rifles become more and more common in properly armed U.S. households," said NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre, "we see electric cars as a wonderful and portable source of new-generation ammunition."….

He suggested that the NRA will throw its considerable political clout behind similar legislation for the U.S.–though, he noted, the energy-flow rates would have to be far higher to permit rapid recharging of even today's energy-pulse weaponry.

"What could be more important to the safety, security, and Second Amendment rights of normal American citizens," LaPierre asked at a Washington, DC, news conference this morning, "than mandating that carmakers must offer the ability to use the stored electric energy owned by our citizens to protect their families from attacks by the government, trespassers, aliens, the mentally ill, zoning boards, and the other criminal elements that are besieging this once-great nation?"

The laff value of it is in the eye of the beholder, but CBS running this on April 2 with no obvious sign I could see it was a joke seems strange. (I wonder how long the link will live.)

My book, Gun Control on Trial, had some more measured critiques of how the NRA chooses to pursue gun rights.