Boycotts don’t ‘scare’ us, NRA says
List of corporations cutting ties with gun lobby grows in wake of mass school shooting
The National Rifle Association lashed out at corporations rushing to abandon it on Saturday, as companies from United Airlines to Best Western have cut ties with the gun lobby group under pressure from a boycott movement following the Feb. 14 high school shooting.
Without context, twin announcements from Delta and United on Saturday morning might look trivial: The end of flight discounts to the NRA’s annual convention, which few outside the gun rights organization likely knew existed.
The two airlines also asked the NRA to remove their information from the gun lobby’s website.
But in abandoning the NRA, the airlines followed car-rental giants Avis, Hertz and Enterprise, the Best Western hotel chain, global insurance company MetLife, and more than a dozen other corporations that have severed affiliations with the gun group in the past two days.
In a statement released Saturday afternoon, the group accused companies of “a shameful display of political and civic cowardice.”
“Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”
While it’s unclear what effect the corporate snubs will have on the NRA, they have given the nascent #BoycottNRA a string of rapid, prominent victories and exposed vulnerabilities in a gun rights lobby that had seemed untouchable before 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., were gunned down last week.
The NRA claims five million members and takes in tens of millions of dollars each year through supporters, which it uses to fight gun regulations in the name of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees Americans the right to bear arms.
The group has faced public anger before — after the massacre of schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, for example. But it has always fought back against pushes for new gun laws, and efforts to significantly restrict firearms inevitably die out as public fury over the shootings ebbs.
But outrage over the Parkland shooting — sustained in part by politically active teenagers who survived the massacre — has shown no signs of fading. Police say a former student killed 17 people with a legally purchased semi-automatic rifle, one of at least 10 guns he owned.
The state of Florida was also facing a potential boycott and backlash as well. One teen survivor of the Florida school shooting suggested on Twitter Saturday morning that tourists stay away from the state during spring break.
“Let’s make a deal,” David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student who has been a major player in the #neveragain movement, tweeted. “DO NOT come to Florida for spring break unless gun legislation is passed.”
As calls for gun control have spread, the NRA has increasingly become a target of activists, with social media hashtags urging boycotts of any corporation found to be linked with it.
Delta and United are the latest to submit to the pressure.
First National Bank of Omaha, one of the largest private U.S. banks, may have been the first to respond pub- licly to the boycott calls. The bank had previously advertised the “Official Credit Card of the NRA,” according to the Omaha World-Herald — a Visa card with 5 per cent back on gas and sporting good purchases.
On Friday morning, Symantec announced that the boycott movement had spread to the software industry. NRA members will now have to pay the same price for its anti-virus software as everyone else.
On the same day, insurer Chubb Ltd. announced that it will stop underwriting “NRA Carry Guard,” a policy marketed to NRA members who face legal or civil lawsuits after they shoot someone, which gun opponents sometimes call “murder insurance.” A spokesperson for Chubb said the company had made the decision months ago, but its announcement of the fact on Friday only increased the perception of a boycott movement swelling against the NRA.
It has now spread across numerous industries and affected some of the world’s largest corporations. The global insurance company MetLife said it has terminated discounts for NRA members. Best Western and Wyndham Hotels announced they are no longer affiliated with the NRA.
Like other companies that ditched the NRA, the Delta and United Airlines faced an immediate backlash from gun rights supporters.
Some other companies have, so far, not been moved by the boycott calls. FedEx, for example, still gives NRA Business Alliance members up to a 26 per cent discount on shipping expenses. Google, Amazon, Apple, AT&T and Roku all stream an NRAproduced video channel despite pressure from gun-control groups. This follows a week when NRA leaders spoke defiantly at public appearances, blaming the fury on media manipulation.
“Many in legacy media love mass shootings,” Dana Loesch said Thursday at a conservative political conference. “Crying white mothers are ratings gold.”
“They want to make us all less free,” NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre said when he took the microphone. The correct response to the Florida shooting, he said, was more armed security on school campuses — not fewer guns in the U.S.
Pressure campaigns have become a favourite tool of liberal groups during Trump’s presidency — from early efforts to boycott Trump-branded products to a Twitter campaign that identified people seen marching at a far-right protest in Charlottesville this past summer.
Social media and internet companies began to ban far-right personalities from their sites after that rally turned violent.
So far, for all the companies that have signed on, the NRA boycotts have managed only to wipe out a few perks for the group’s members. But if the movement keeps spreading, there are signs it could threaten the financial and political cornerstones of the gun lobby. Still, the long-term effects are unknown.
“Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission.” THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION STATEMENT