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What better way could there be to stand for (supposed) “First Amendment rights,” “free speech,” and “religious liberty” and exercise your Second Amendment rights by buying a Duck Dynasty brand semiautomatic rifle? The Robertson clan — a family that owns a business focused on shooting ducks — are really marketing geniuses. The Louisiana multi-millionaires have parlayed their business into several popular cable TV reality shows, and now have joined with Mossberg, the nation’s oldest family-owned gun manufacturer, to sell Duck Dynasty shotguns, semiautomatic rifles and a semiautomatic pistol.
The guns, according to CNN Money, “will come in a ‘waterfowl pattern’ camouflage design, though not all of them are intended for duck hunting. They also bear the Duck Commander logo, of a duck in flight.”
And the Atlantic Wire reports, the 33-inch .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle costs $509.
Each weapon includes the Duck Commander logo and trademarked slogan: “Faith. Family. Ducks.” In case you forget your life’s priorities, they’re right there on your shotgun barrel.
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“Let’s go kill some ducks, boys,” Phil Robertson himself says in the video promotion above. “Mossberg. Built rugged, proudly American. Just like us.” In another, he makes a not-very-subtle religious reference: “Where there’s a design, there’s a designer. We were designed to kill ducks.” Also, to be on television and sell television shows and duck- and television-related merchandise, as it was written.
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Phil Robertson, the elder patriarch of the Duck Dynasty clan, was excoriated by the left and lionized by the right for his vile, ugly, and ignorant comments he made during an interview with GQ magazine.
Conservatives wrongly claim Robertson was exercising his First Amendment rights by offering hate speech and ignorant commentary to GQ. Of course, if they actually read the Constitution, they would know that the First Amendment has nothing to do with Robertson’s “right” to yammer ignorantly — and nothing to do with A&E’s right to suspend him.
But really, what could be more “American,” right after publicly attacking LGBT and Black people — two of the largest victim groups of violent hate crimes — than to offer your name, brand, and family motto to a line of semi-automatic rifles?