The NRA Might Be Down, But They’re Not Out.
There was a surprise for me in my mailbox yesterday,
namely, the November issue of American Rifleman, which happens to be the
premier publication of the NRA.
The reason I was surprised was that back in April, a detailed story by Mike Spies that was carried
in The New Yorker and The Trace provoked an avalanche of criticism
about America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ which made it appear that the
pro-gun group was headed for a quick demise.
Not only did the NRA find itself being attacked for
shabby bookkeeping, sweetheart business dealings and all kinds of other
nefarious deeds, but for the first time in more than 40 years, an attempt was made to
jettison the leadership and bring in an entirely new management group. The
effort collapsed when it turned out that the chief promoter of this coup
d’etat, Oliver North, was himself profiting from an inside deal with the NRA‘s
advertising agency which led to the NRA giving the boot both to North
and to the advertising agency as well.
Despite this reprieve, the news for the NRA kept
getting worse and worse, with simultaneous investigations being carried out by
the New York State Attorney General (the NRA is incorporated in New York
as a not-for-profit corporation) along with an investigation by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) about
the alleged connections between the NRA and Maria Butina, the so-called
Russian ‘spy.’ The latter effort resulted Wyden’s report which didn’t show any
unlawful NRA activity at all; the former investigation will shlep on until
even the cows in all those upstate New York counties come home.
What really got things going, however, was that more
than 80 people were killed and injured in two mass shootings which occurred in
just two days. The shooting in El Paso on August 3 took 22 lives and injured 24
more; the next day a shooting in Dayton resulted in another 10 killed and 27
injured. That’s quite a score.
Whenever there is a mass shooting two things occur: 1).
There is an immediate spike in media coverage and public concern about the
event; 2). The gun-control narrative to define these shootings invariably finds
some way or another to blame the NRA. Either the NRA is guilty of
preventing laws that would curb the violence, or the NRA promotes armed,
self-defense which is just another way to spread the idea that guns are good,
gun-grabbers are bad.
After all the sturm und drang about guns after
those mass shootings, the whole issue of gun control has once again gone back to
where it always sits; namely, nobody really cares about it at all. The keywords
‘gun violence’ spiked to four times the usual level of Google searches
during the week of August 4 -10; it’s now back to just about the lowest level
recorded this year. As for the Presidential candidates,
they went through their usual talking-points about guns during their last
debate, but the fact that gun control is no longer a toxic issue for Democrats
is old news.
On the other hand, getting back to my beloved American
Rifleman, the issue contains the usual mélange of reviews of new guns and
shooting products and a great article on the M1903-A1 Springfield that was our
sniper rifle in World War II. But the issue also contains a lengthy op-ed by
Wayne-o, which can be seen on the NRA website, a commentary
about the ‘future of the NRA.”
Compared to the NRA’s messaging over the last few
years, Wayne-o’s commentary is actually pretty tame stuff. Gone is the bombast
of video performers like Colion Noir, gone is the racially-tinged stupidities
of Dana Loesch, gone is the attempt to make the NRA a leading voice for
the alt-right. If anything, the tone and content of Wayne-o’s spiel reminds me
of what I heard when I went to NRA shows in 1980 and 1981.
This change in NRA communication strategy
actually seems to be working quite well. From April through June the NRA
website registered
around 500,000 visits each month. The total for September was 1,750,000 – that’s
right, more than three times as many visits as when things were going to Hell.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the NRA‘s
death may be greatly exaggerated.
