Aging rapper Eminem took aim at the National Rifle Association at the iHeartRadio Music awards in Inglewood, California on Saturday, alleging its members “love their guns more than our children.”
It’s a subject the Grammy-winning rapper knows well after facing multiple gun charges for illegally, repeatedly carrying a concealed weapon that he allegedly uses to threaten and beat people he doesn’t like.
Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, was introduced at the recent music awards by Alex Moscou — a survivor of the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida who is leveraging the tragedy for fame — before the 45-year-old rapper performed his song Nowhere Fast, along with an added freestyle verse about the NRA’s roughly 5 million members:
This whole country is going nuts, and the NRA is in our way
They’re responsible for this whole production
They hold the strings, they control the puppet
And they threaten to take donor bucks
So they know the government won’t do nothing and no one’s budging
Gun owners clutching their loaded weapons
They love their guns more than our children
Of course, Mathers loves guns, too, according to every album he’s ever made.
Yet unlike the vast majority of NRA members, he’s not that into gun safety.
Mathers received two years of probation for carrying a concealed firearm during a brawl outside of a Detroit-area nightclub in 2000, when he allegedly pistol-whipped a man for kissing his then wife, Kim Mathers. Prosecutors dropped an assault charge as part of the a plea deal, ABC News reported in 2001.
That incident came less than a week before he was arrested again for carrying a concealed weapon, as well as brandishing a weapon, during an argument with the road manager of the rival band Insane Clown Posse outside of a Royal Oak, Michigan record store, according to Rolling Stone.
Mathers was raising a young daughter at the time.
“I’m looking forward to putting this behind me and getting back to spending time with my little girl and making music,” he said after receiving probation for the first incident. “That’s what I do.”
And yet despite the never-ending calls for gun control from Hollywood, Mathers was rewarded for his antics with three Grammy Awards for The Marshall Mathers LP, which sold 1.7 million copies in its first week. Mathers has won a total of 15 Grammys.
Over the last two decades, Mathers has sold a total more than 220 million records across the globe and amassed a net worth of about $190 million – mostly from music that glorifies guns, violence, abuse toward women, and homophobia.
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