NRA responds to boycott movement after United, Delta latest to cut ties
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 a Feb. 14 high school shooting.
Without context, twin announcements from Delta and United airlines 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 before they became boycott targets.
“Delta is reaching out to the NRA to let them know we will be ending their contract for discounted rates through our group travel program. We will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website,” the airline announced on Twitter.
“United is notifying the NRA that we will no longer offer a discounted rate to their annual meeting and we are asking that the NRA remove our information from their website,” United said on Twitter.
But in abandoning the NRA, the airlines followed car rental giants Avis, Hertz and Enterprise, the Best Western hotel chain, the global insurance company MetLife, and more than a dozen other corporations that have severed affiliations with the gun group in the last 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 are Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were gunned down last week.
The NRA claims 5 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. Constitu- tion, 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 semiautomatic rifle, one of at least 10 guns he owned.
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 publicly 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 percent back on gas and sporting good purchases.
“Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA,” the bank said in a statement published Thursday, eights days after the Parkland shooting. “As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.”
Enterprise followed suit a few hours later. “All three of our brands have ended the discount for NRA members,” effective March 26, the car rental company wrote on Twitter Thursday afternoon. Hertz, Avis Budget Group and TrueCar would soon join Enterprise and end their NRA discounts. So did movers North American Van Lines and Allied Van Lines.
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 Limited 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 spokesman for Chubb told Reuters that the company had made the decision months p 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.
Facing questions from the liberal outlet ThinkProgress about its discounts for NRA members flying to the group’s convention in May, a Delta spokesman at first defended the program as “routine.” The airline “has more than 2,000 such contracts in place,” the spokesman said, ThinkProgress wrote Friday evening.