CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--Last week saw the exodus of several major American corporations from their previous relationships with the National Rifle Association. We can expect the trend to continue. This is both the effect of and will further contribute to delegitimizing the NRA in American politics. There is a direct analogy to the movement to get Rush Limbaugh removed from major radio stations, a tactic which worked surprisingly well.
The NRA has been recognized to be a strongly conservative organization for many years now. In recent years, it has linked itself to the Republican Party and to conservative politics. But up till now, it has managed to keep a toe hold in the corporate mainstream. Over the past few days, companies that fly airplanes and companies that rent cars have announced that they are severing ties with the NRA.
The point is that the NRA has now been consigned to that place in the corporate mind where the modest profit to made from serving the NRA membership is outweighed by the public relations loss.
In brief, the NRA is now semi-officially recognized as the organization that is willing to trade children's lives for gun sales.
As usual, the NRA helped these companies to get to that decision:
As Talking Points Memo explained, "NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference that those advocating for stricter gun control are exploiting the Florida shooting."
One is tempted to go all Andy Borowitz and say something like, "Prime Minister Hideki Tojo of Japan stated, 'President Roosevelt's reference to December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy' is exploiting political tensions between Japan and the United States."
To express one's natural outrage over an act of mass murder and to demand that action be taken for the legal weaknesses that allowed it to happen is exploitation? This reaction is in the same space as Trump's reaction to a previous massacre, where he responded to a reporter's question by stating that it wasn't the time to talk about gun control.
It's not entirely unexpected that there would be a final straw, and we are now experiencing the blow back to such posturing. When an 18 year old student calls B.S. on the NRA and it goes on national television, that is significant. When Sen. Marco Rubio gets stuffed by a high school student at a major rally (Rubio ducks the question of whether he will turn down NRA donations in the future) that is significant.
The NRA pointed out that losing corporate sponsors such as Delta doesn't hurt them or its members economically. But we should recognize that what these corporate desertions have accomplished is a lot more important. The NRA has been moved from being an obviously conservative-oriented pressure group to an org anization that is now officially recognized as going into the taboo category.
James Fallows has been writing about the AR-15 rifle since the early 1980s. At the time, he was explaining how the Army's bureaucracy had turned a workable rifle into something that was subject to jamming at the worst possible time. In more recent years, he has been following the gun control debate. You can find his work online, along with links to other important contributions.
In particular (if you don't have an overly sensitive stomach, there is an article by Florida radiologist Heather Sher titled What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns.
You can find links to other Atlantic pieces on gun violence and gun control on the Atlantic screens.
Afterwards
As of this writing, Derek Thompson has just published a piece in the Atlantic titled Why Are Corporations Finally Turning Against the NRA? Thompson argues for the idea that some corporations have actually become socially liberal, as they demonstrated in their support for gay rights a few years ago. He also points out that corporations have to react to events much more rapidly than political parties and elected office holders. Whatever the truth to this, the Thompson piece does a good job of discussing how the new generation of gun control activists have spread their message using social media.
Perhaps the overall message is that the sudden activism is showing enough popular support that the corporations are finally being force to say which side they support. Waffling is no longer an option.
Trump Explains How to Combat Gun Violence
At least he is quoted as saying the following: “I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.”
Some voices on the left are being a bit sarcastic about this comment, referring to the commander in chief as President Bone Spurs. I won't defend Trump very often, but I would concede that there is a difference between getting drafted to be sent to Viet Nam and defending the lives of your own children. I don't believe Trump either, but there is a difference. Or you might ask, "If Donald Trump is brave enough (as he claims) that he would have run into that school, then why isn't he brave enough to challenge the NRA?"
Addendum: Two Conventions
The California Democratic Party met over the weekend in San Diego. Along the way, the convention somehow managed to avoid endorsing a 4 term U.S. Senator but did manage to endorse a member of the state legislature who has been alleged to have engaged in sexual harassment. As someone who was a delegate to a few earlier conventions, I don't find this behavior particularly surprising. What is a bit surprising is that the majority of convention votes (but not the 60% required for official endorsement) went to Dianne Feinstein's most serious opponent, Kevin de Leon.
It might be worthwhile to point out to convention delegates that the voters don't really care about your endorsements (particularly the rubber stamp endorsements for incumbents). It might also be worthwhile to point out to voters that these convention endorsements are all about party loyalty and not really about competence or ability.
On the other end of the political spectrum, there was the Conservative Political Action Conference. Conservative columnist Mona Charen brags that she spoke out about Donald Trump's record on women's dignity to CPAC's highly conservative audience. Old cliches about rodents leaving a sinking ship come to mind.
Oscar Nominated Short Fiction
There are five short films nominated in this category. Out of the five films, two involve young men with semiautomatic or automatic rifles terrorizing people. A third involves a young man and an older man terrorizing people with pistols. Needless to say, each of these films takes a point of view opposed to gun violence. One of these films, Dekalb Elementary, takes place in the U.S. in the present day. It is an ultimately difficult film to watch in that it attempts to humanize the guy with the rifle while, at the same time, presenting a school employee as capable of talking the rifleman into surrendering. The Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) points out that this film is based on a real 911 call placed during a school shooting incident. The lead actress is excellent.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw