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Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash, yesterday penned an emotional opinion piece in the New York Times pleading with her fellow country stars to denounce gun violence and in particular the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the wake of the massacre in Las Vegas this weekend.
In the essay, titled ‘Country Musicians, Stand Up To The NRA’, Cash draws attention to what she claims are unsavoury ties between the firearms advocacy group and the country music world:
"For the past few decades, the National Rifle Association has increasingly nurtured an alliance with country music artists and their fans. You can see it in “N.R.A. Country,” which promotes the artists who support the philosophical, and perhaps economic, thrall of the N.R.A., with the pernicious tag line “Celebrate the Lifestyle.”’
Cash encourages her fellow artists to be bold in the face of likely pushback: "Every time I speak out on the need for stricter gun laws, I get a new profusion of threats. There’s always plenty of the garden-variety 'your dad would be ashamed of you' sexist nonsense, along with the much more menacing threats to my family and personal safety.
"Last year, I performed at the Concert Across America to End Gun Violence with Jackson Browne, Eddie Vedder, Marc Cohn and the Harlem Gospel Choir, and we got death threats. People wanted to kill us because we wanted to end gun violence. That’s where we are: America, 2017."
She is also highly critical of the extent to which the NRA has infiltrated the US government in recent decades: "A shadow government exists in the world of gun sales, and the people who write gun regulations are the very people who profit from gun sales. The N.R.A. would like to keep it that way.
"Just this week, the House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on a measure that would loosen restrictions on gun silencers and armor-piercing bullets (the vote was indefinitely postponed after the Las Vegas massacre). It’s not hard to learn about how millions of N.R.A. dollars have spread throughout Congress to influence that vote."
Cash argues that the massacre in Las Vegas, in which 59 people died and more than 527 were injured, is just the tip of the iceberg. "From 2005 to 2015, some 300,000 people were killed by gun violence. That’s roughly the population of Pittsburgh. The grief that extends through the affected families is endless."
Four-time Grammy award winner Rosanne Cash has had 11 number-one country hit singles, 21 top-40 country singles, and has received two gold records.
She is currently touring the USA.
