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December 6, 2013

Daniel Defense Scores against the NFL, without Even Taking the Field


It would have been interesting to see if the television ad that Daniel Defense wanted to run during the 2014 Super Bowl would have caused the hubbub in elite liberal circles that the National Football League clearly feared it would. It may well have, but we’ll never know, for sure, since the NFL decided that its “no firearms” on its airtime ruling would stand after the video review.

While we are disappointed that the nicely-produced Daniel Defense commercial will not run on national television during the Super Bowl, we are very pleased to see the attention being paid to the decision of a major sport’s management that seems so out of touch with the pro-Second Amendment sentiments of so many football fans across the country.  Conservative commentators have been busy scoring points. Nationally-syndicated Columnist Michelle Malkin, for example, wrote “The National Football League’s hypocrisy and selective decency standards reek like a post-game locker room.” Read her column.

The panel members on the popular Fox News program, “The Five” had just as much fun.  After all, since when do the American people need protection from seeing the depiction of a Marine veteran who has made the decision to keep a firearm for the protection of his family?  Well, maybe it’s because that’s not the accepted Manhattan Upper Eastside narrative for you plain folks in flyover country. Enjoy the interaction and banter, led off by Greg Gutfeld.

But the best comment came from company founder Marty Daniel himself, who said, Come on man!, borrowing from the catchphrase used on the “C’Mon Man!” segment that runs on ESPN’s popular Monday Night Countdown football show.

It is league regulation and not federal law that prohibits the advertising of firearms or ammunition on NFL broadcasts.  In the end, Marty Daniel may have gotten a better return on his investment in free media than he would have seen from an overpriced Super Bowl ad. But we wish his company had been given the chance to find out. Americans across this great nation would have cheered the message.

But we’re used to the tsk-tsking, the “we know better” attitude and the selective morality of the power elite and their entertainment allies. We’ll just never accept it. And we salute Marty Daniel and Daniel Defense for taking on the powers that be. They scored without even taking the field.

Larry Keane is Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @lkeane.

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Tags: Firearms media National Football League National Shooting Sports Foundation Second Amendment

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