NRA puts up a feminine front

New spokesman however won’t be softening her pro-gun stance

CHICAGO: Dana Loesch

(pic) is the new public face of the National Rifle Association, an organisation long associated with older white men.

At 39, she’s poised, photogenic and a skilled public speaker, yet she’s not softening the message of the NRA as it becomes an increasingly active voice in the nation’s culture wars, with positions on everything from immigration to the media.

In the aftermath of the shooting deaths of 17 people at a Florida high school, it’s Loesch who has been the NRA’s main messenger.

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, the site of the Valentine’s Day shooting.

Often brash and combative, Loesch was measured and eventempered, 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 ultra-conservative base built by Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice-president and CEO since 1991.

“She can bring the hot sauce without having that persona” of an angry white man.

Even before taking over as NRA spokesman 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 programme, 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 near Washington.

Loesch defiantly defended NRA’s five 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.”

And, her voice dripping with con- descension, she addressed journalists from the mainstream media, who she said “love mass shootings” because “crying white mothers are ratings gold”.

Her criticism of the media recalled an NRA video last summer in which she attacked The New York Times. In the video, Loesch said NRA members have “had it” with the newspaper’s “fake news” and warned: “Consider this the shot across your proverbial bow. ... In short? We’re coming for you.”

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said she was not reassured by Loesch’s appearance.

“She’s younger, a woman and a mum. But her rhetoric is just as radicalised, if not more, than Wayne LaPierre’s.”— AP