Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
The NRA is promoting the ridiculous allegation that children who’ve been ripped apart from their families are being held in facilities that are “too nice.”
Chuck Holton, a correspondent for the gun extremist organization’s propaganda outlet, NRA-TV, made the extraordinary claim during a segment discussing the Trump administration’s harsh anti-family policy.
Holton was attempting to defend the assault on families by falsely alleging that the Trump policy was “essentially the same” as President Barack Obama’s. But Trump chose to differentiate himself from both Obama and George W. Bush before him by prosecuting all border crossers, triggering family separation.
Holton then took his argument further and said, “I’ve visited those facilities. Those facilities, if anything, are too nice.”
He later added that the children were kept in a “very safe, secure environment with hot showers, probably for the first time in their lives, with three hot meals a day, with games to play and education and health screenings.” He even marveled that “they were given free phone calls back to their homes.”
The problem remains that young children are being separated from their parents. The accommodations could be the equivalent of a five-star luxury hotel, but that does not counter the trauma of being taken away from family.
Not only is family separation traumatizing, but it could be permanent. Also, the government previously lost track of separated children, adding another layer of trauma and horror to a heartbreaking experience.
The facilities have not been open to independent inspection and several senators have been barred from entering. Only government-approved photos and videos have come out of them.
At least one lawsuit alleges that children at these facilities have been forcibly injected with drugs to make them more manageable, and audio leaked from another facility captured children screaming for their parents nonstop.
The experience is so traumatic and psychologically harmful that the U.N. Human Rights Council said it may constitute torture.
The bizarre NRA commentary is in line with how the extremist organization has oriented itself, especially during the Trump era. The NRA invested millions in Trump’s campaign and has served as his attack dog ever since.
It repeatedly lashed out at the survivors of the Parkland school shooting and opposed gun safety measures that would help children, even going as far as mocking grief-stricken teen shooting survivors.
The NRA is oriented around backing Trump and has demonstrated that it doesn’t care about child safety — so it’s only natural that they would be leading the charge to defend Trump and the detention of children taken from their families.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
