When Olympic athletes speak out in favor of “progressive” causes, they make front page news in the United States. But when a multiple gold medal winner at multiple Olympics speaks in favor of the Second Amendment and self defense, it was the foreign press that covered the issue. Kim Rhode from theguardian.com:
“When you look at these events that have been occurring, they’ve been occurring in some of the strictest gun law countries in the world,” she said. “You have Paris, you have San Bernardino, which was actually in a gun-free zone, so, yeah, it’s actually something that you take into consideration.
“For me personally, I realize the first responsibility of a police officer is to respond to an incident and for me personally, in that five minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes in some cases that it takes for them to get there, how do you want to stand there? I would rather have my second amendment right.”
Rhode, who has won three Olympic gold medals, the last of which came in the 2012 London Games, believes her sport has been “stigmatized” in recent years. She lamented the loss of the world of her parents, where children read “dime novels” about Teddy Roosevelt and Annie Oakley and guns were celebrated as a part of culture.
Kim Rhode’s statements in favor of self defense, freedom, and American culture were ignored by the dominant media in the United States. While Rhode comments at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro were met with deafening silence from The New York Times, the Washington Post, AP and the LA Times, the foreign press printed lenghthy articles. They appeared in the UK Guardian and Independent.
Japan Times spent column inches explaining the demented death threats that shooting atheletes receive from anti-gun and anti-hunting extremists.
Several shooters have received death threats, requiring extra security.
Trap shooter Corey Cogdell-Unrein needed extra protection after someone posted hunting videos on her Facebook page without her knowledge.
A two-time Olympian, she grew up in Alaska, where the family hunted for its food, and still hunts. Despite saying she didn’t agree with the content of the videos, Cogdell-Unrein received numerous death threats before the 2012 Olympics.
After the London Games, where she won bronze, thousands of people signed a petition to strip her of the medal.
To their credit, NPR did a story before the Olympic games, and USA Today briefly mentioned Rhode’s statements in a related story about teammate Ginny Thrasher.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.