Pressure on Redskins to stop charity shooting match

This article is from yesterday's Washington Post. If you read the whole article, you will see the Post amazingly makes this charity event sound as if it is a major challenge to the District's gun control laws. I don't know whether it is just the desire of the press to create a controversy or whether it is just the horror shown by a reporter that someone would want to use a charity event such as this to raise money.

To the folks at Redskins Park, the idea was simple enough: Send a few players to a shooting range and charge football fans to spend the afternoon with them blasting clay pigeons. Proceeds would benefit children. It would be like a celebrity golf tournament, except with shotguns.

But the sponsor for the first Redskins Sporting Clays Challenge is NRA Sports, a division of the National Rifle Association, which recently started pushing Congress to repeal the District's gun laws.

Five gun-control groups and anti-violence organizations are calling on Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder to cancel the competition, which is scheduled for Tuesday at a skeet range in Prince George's County. The groups say it is irresponsible for the Redskins to partner with an organization that is lobbying to legalize handguns and semiautomatic rifles in the nation's capital, where four people were shot to death in a 4 1/2 -hour period one recent weekend.

Snyder has not responded to the requests. Redskins spokesman Karl Swanson said the team does not support repealing the District's gun laws, is not involved in the NRA's political activities and considers the competition a simple fundraiser.

"We think it's a valuable event, and we intend to go forward with it," he said. The antigun groups said they will press their point. . . . .