The NRA has
surprised many by the breadth of its media blackout following the Newtown
massacre. Its Facebook and Twitter accounts are gone. Is the firearms
organization acknowledging complicity, or simply biding time?
On May 1,
1999, just 11 days after the Columbine High School Massacre that took the lives
of 12 students and a teacher, the president of the National Rifle Association,
Charlton Heston, stepped up to a podium. He was 20 kilometers from the site of
the shootings.
"Don't
come here?" the 78-year-old asked, mocking the Denver mayor's request to
cancel the NRA's annual meeting. "We're already here. This community is
our home. Every community in America is our home. We are a 128-year-old fixture
of mainstream America."
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| Heston: "They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead hands" |
With 4.3
million NRA members and another 80 million Americans owning firearms, the NRA
is a powerful force in American culture and politics. Yet while its numbers are
as high as ever, the clear-eyed defiance that pervaded Heston's speech 13 years
ago - the sense of disbelief, even, that his organization could be blamed for a
shooting spree - has disappeared.
The
semi-automatic assault rifle
Throughout
America, Heston's words were ill-received. The backlash culminated with the
release of Michael Moore's documentary, "Bowling for Columbine,"
which included clips from the speech. On forums throughout the Internet, NRA
advocates claimed that Moore grossly misrepresented the NRA by cherrypicking
Heston's speech.
Still, the
NRA got the message - partially. It gave no public response to the Virginia
Tech Massacre that left 37 dead and 17 injured, yet neither did it feel the
need to update its website, which contained aggressive talking points for a
speech given at the NRA's annual meeting three days earlier. The recents
attacks, after all, were carried out with handguns, a relatively
non-controversial firearm in American culture.
 |
| Virginia Tech is the worst single-gunman attack in US history |
Yet after
Heston had finished his two-term limit at in 2003, his role was taken over by
Sandra Froman, a San Francisco-born lawyer and graduate of Harvard University.
First among her tasks was to persuade members of US Congress - and a skeptical
President Bush - to allow a 10-year-old ban on assault rifles to expire in
2004. The NRA's lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, was
successful.
In the last
five years, the decision to legalize those weapons has come under heavy
scrutiny. Yet some see a touch of sophistry in the debate.
"The
semi-automatic rifle ban was purely cosmetic," said Dr. Brian Anse
Patrick, a 58-year-old professor at Toledo University and author of the book
"National Rifle Association in the media." "Sure, some guns had
a few different hand grips. But you could could still buy the same functional
AR-15."
It was a
Smith & Wesson M&P15 assault rifle and a Remington tactical shotgun
that allowed 24-year-old gunman James Eagan Holmes to to carry out a massacre
in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado earlier this year. This time the NRA
responded via its podcast.
Reporter
Ginny Simone spoke of "the unthinkable tragic shooting that shocked the
country today." She ended by saying that, “at this hour the NRA is telling
all media, including the NRA Daily News, that its policy is that it will have
no comment until all the facts are known in this case.”
The deaths
of 12 people and injuries of 58 others merited 35 seconds of the NRA's podcast.
A tough two
weeks
That brings
events to 11 days ago, when NRA Executive Vice President and spokesperson Wayne
LaPierre gave a radio interview. In it, he criticized the media for its attempt
to jump "on the back of this national tragedy to try to piggyback their
anti-Second Amendment national agenda… and try to force it on Americans all
over the country.”
LaPierre
was not talking of recent shooting sprees, but of NFL football player Jovan
Belcher. On December 1, Belcher shot his girlfriend nine times before fleeing and
committing suicide in front of coaches. LaPierre went on to say that the media
"sure doesn't talk about the [proverbial] woman who saved herself from
getting raped by having a handgun."
That was
the NRA's last public statement. Since then a 22-year-old man shot 3 people at
an Oregon mall before committing suicide; 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed 26
people, most of them children, at Sandy Hook Elementary; and on Saturday,
December 15, a deranged man fired 50 rounds outside a shopping mall in Newport
Beach, California, injuring no one.
 |
| The AR-15 semi-automatic rifle was Adam Lanza's weapon of choice in Connecticut |
Over the
last few days the NRA has removed both its Facebook page and Twitter accounts.
It has also denied requests from Deutsche Welle for an interview. In response
to DW's question as to when the media blackout will cease, an employee of the
NRA responded that they would do so when "all the details about the
shootings are in."
"This
is not a snap decision," Patrick said. "This is a strategy. You'll
find in a week or two they'll come up with a statement."
The future
of the NRA
Online, a
handful of Americans are calling for NRA President David Keene to be shot
When the
NRA does issue an official statement, it will surely take into account the mood
in Washington. Senior Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has called
openly for a study of gun violence and mental health issues. On the other side
of the hall, the pro-gun Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose
position allows him to set the Senate schedule, has also stated a desire to
place gun control on the table. Even NRA member and West Virginia Democratic
Senator Joe Manchin has agreed to a debate.
In general,
however, the NRA has been silent, and at times apologetic, only when attacks
are carried out with semi-automatic assault rifles. Even NRA spokespersons
appear to have a difficult time justifying such weaponry in the wake of a
massacre.
Where
handguns, hunting rifles or shotguns are involved, though - veritable staples
of American gun ownership, and the weapons used in the Columbine and Virginia
Tech massacres - the organization remains defiant.
Regardless
of the NRA's next move, Dr. Patrick has a clear prediction for the future of
America's largest firearms organization."NRA membership will increase
markedly because of this," the professor said. "Throughout the 1990s,
the more negative coverage the NRA got, the higher the membership."
 |
A child gazes from a school bus as it passes by the St. Rose
of Lima Catholic church while mourners gathered for a funeral
service for shooting victim Jessica Rekos, 6, on December 18,
2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. (John Moore/
|
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