Delta, United cut ties to NRA as boycott spreads

Delta and United — two of the largest airlines in the world — have joined a growing list of companies cutting ties with the National Rifle Association amid a growing boycott movement inspired by the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School with a legally purchased AR-15 rifle.

Without context, the airlines’ twin announcements Saturday morning might look trivial: The end of a discount program for NRA members, which few outside the gun rights organization likely knew existed before the boycott efforts.

But because they follow similar announcements by 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 used to contract, partner or otherwise affiliate with the NRA, the airline’s move is the latest victory for the #BoycottNRA movement — and the latest bad omen for a gun rights lobby that had seemed untouchable less than two weeks ago.

The speed with which the companies have abandoned the NRA is also a testament to how abruptly the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has disrupted U.S. gun culture.

Hours before the airline reversed itself Saturday, a Delta spokesman had defended its discount for NRA members traveling to the group’s convention in May. In a statement to the liberal outlet ThinkProgress, the spokesman had called the contract “routine” for large groups, adding that it “has more than 2,000 such contracts in place.”

The NRA claims 5 million members, takes in tens of millions of dollars each year through memberships, and devotes massive resources to fighting gun regulations in the name of constitutional protections that guarantee 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 gun-law reforms, 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 dying out. 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.

It has now spread across multiple industries and affected some of the world’s largest corporations. The global insurance company MetLife said it has terminated discounts for NRA members. The hotel chains Best Western and Wyndham Hotels announced they are no longer affiliated with the NRA.

Many of these companies have faced a backlash from NRA supporters. And the gun lobbying group, which is funded largely by its own members, is unlikely to be moved by snubs from companies with which it had only loose and peripheral ties.

Also, not every company has yielded to the boycott effort. FedEx, for example, still gives NRA Business Alliance members up to a 26 percent discount on shipping expenses.