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Saturday, January 19, 2013

Rallies Against Gun Control

Gun supporters on Saturday at the Statehouse in Concord, N. H. The rally, organized by Guns Across America, was one of a planned 49, in all states but Alaska, to advocate firearm ownership rights.Jim Cole/Associated PressGun supporters on Saturday at the Statehouse in Concord, N.H. The rally, organized by Guns Across America, was one of a planned 49, in all states but Alaska, to advocate firearm ownership rights.

They turned out in the thousands with assault rifles, pistols, American flags raised and, in some cases, placards comparing gun control advocates to Nazis.

It was titled Gun Appreciation Day, a nationwide event organized through a Web site registered to a “Republican New Media consulting firm” called Political Media Inc. The intent, organizers said, was to “send a loud and clear message to Congress and President Obama” against gun control.

The idea, in the face of moves to curb guns after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which killed 20 children and 6 adults in December, met with some controversy. The Web site Media Matters pointed out that one sponsor was a white nationalist group called the American Third Position. (The organizers apologized, said they had failed to vet the group and removed it from their list.)

News reports and pictures posted across social media, and local news reports, seemed to show that rallies organized by the official group and others at state capitols across America had attracted anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of gun enthusiasts. In Hartford, “between 200 and 400 people” ! were expected to attend, according to The Hartford Courant.

In Colorado, where James E. Holmes killed 12 and wounded 58 in a shooting spree at a movie theater in Aurora last year, some compared attempts to control guns with communism.

In Buffalo, the name of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who had just signed sweeping gun control laws, was put on placards with swastikas.

Across the country, the views of those attending other rallies, and posting their support online, were equally unambiguous: