NRA BOYCOTT MOVEMENT
Pressure on firms to cut ties
If the #BoycottNRA movement were a land invasion, it would have blitzed across the countryside of corporate America in the last three days, pressuring United Airlines, Best Western, MetLife and at least a dozen other companies — one after another — to abolish discounts and perks for National Rifle Association members.
But the Florida shooting-inspired boycott has, so far, stalled at the first stronghold of resistance: None of the video streaming giants, Apple, Google’s YouTube, or Amazon have acknowledged a petition and viral demands to take NRA videos offline.
If they do, and the world’s largest tech corporations effectively declare the NRA a pariah, then boycotters have already proposed plans to advance on the gunrights group’s power centres: its political capital and massive funding, which for decades have made the NRA one the most feared lobbies in the United States.
Or the boycott could end here, and ultimately fail to change U.S. gun laws or culture, as other anti-NRA campaigns have failed before.
The campaign went viral after the Feb. 14 massacre of 17 people, most of them Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students, with a legally purchased AR-15 rifle in Parkland, Fla.
One of the first tweets to go semiviral was posted by a self-described retired principal. A few days later, a combination of gun control activists, teenage shooting survivors and liberal groups had turned the hashtag into a full blown pressure campaign. Any corporation with even a tangential affiliation to the NRA was called out, with lists circulating across Twitter.
First National Bank of Omaha, one of the largest private banks in the United States, may have been the first to bow to the boycott. The bank announced on Thursday, a week after the shooting, that it would discontinue its “NRA Visa Card,” which had given members 5 per cent back on gas and sporting good purchases.
Enterprise, the rental car giant, followed suit a few hours later. Hertz, Avis Budget Group and TrueCar would soon join Enterprise, as would North American Van Lines and Allied Van Lines.
The companies faced a backlash from gun rights supporters, but only a few corporations on the boycott list resisted. Chubb Limited insurance announced the end of a policy for members who faced lawsuits for shooting people — Chubb called the program “NRA Carry Guard,” while critics had labelled it “murder insurance.”
By the end of Saturday, more than a dozen of the country’s larger corporations — representing the travel, software, insurance, banking and hospitality industries — had all abandoned the NRA.
Nothing like that had happened after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, or any other gun massacre in modern history.
However, there is a big difference between now and 2012, in the form of Dana Loesch, the new public face of the NRA, an organization long associated with older white men.
At 39, she’s poised, photogenic and a skilled public speaker. The NRA dispatched Loesch last week to a CNN town hall, where she was questioned by students and parents from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Often brash and combative, Loesch was measured and even-tempered, though she was booed when she left the stage.
Charlie Sykes, a longtime conservative radio host who has been critical of the NRA, said Loesch’s skill is communicating with a broad range of Americans while retaining the ultraconservative base built by Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice-president and CEO since 1991.
“Imagine Wayne LaPierre sitting in that seat and you realize the significance of Dana,” Sykes said. “She can bring the hot sauce without having that persona” of an angry white man.
Even before taking over as NRA spokeswoman last year, Loesch had a robust conservative following, cultivated on social media — she has 765,000 Twitter followers — and through years of television and radio appearances, including on her own radio program, The Dana Show.
The day after the televised town hall, she was back in her more familiar mode, speaking to a far friendlier audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Loesch defiantly defended NRA’s 5 million members, who she said “will not be gaslighted into thinking that we’re responsible for a tragedy that we had nothing to do with.”
Her voice dripping with condescension, she addressed journalists from the mainstream media, who she said “love mass shootings” because “crying white mothers are ratings gold.”
Loesch was back on TV Sunday, defending NRA members and arguing against calls to ban semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the Florida school shooting. “This is not the fault, nor are five million innocent law-abiding Americans culpable for this,” she said on ABC’s This Week.
In response, David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, said students were focused on countering Loesch as they campaign for tighter gun laws.
“She’s sounding positive and confident and that’s what she wants the people in the NRA to believe, her five million plus members,” Hogg said on CNN. “She wants them to think that she’s on their side, but she’s not. She’s actually working with the gun manufacturers.”