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Dana Loesch follows NRA playbook in Town Hall meeting by deflecting questions, avoiding fundamental conversation about gun access

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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/nra-dana-loesch-deflects-questions-town-hall-meeting-article-1.3835143

CNN’s Town Hall meeting in Sunrise, Florida began like the most honest conversation America has had about gun violence in decades. Surviving students and parents of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting peppered politicians like GOP Sen. Marco Rubio with questions about his NRA funding and positions on guns, specifically the AR-15 rifle.

But the conversation shifted when NRA spokesman Dana Loesch took a seat and began fielding questions.

A Generation-X gun rights advocate, Loesch learned how to hunt and shoot from her grandfather in the Ozark Mountains. She is a God-fearing Christian who still goes to church regularly, she claims. She made her name for years as a conservative commentator before becoming the face of the National Rifle Association last year.

The anticipation peaked when CNN let the compelling, surviving high school senior Emma Gonzalez ask the NRA representative, “Do you believe that it should be harder to obtain the semi-automatic weapons and modifications for these weapons to make them fully automatic, like bump stocks?”

The question was on point, but the NRA spokesperson never answered it.

Instead, Loesch validated the young, grieving woman’s emotions, saying she was a teenage activist herself. The NRA representative then deflected the conversation to the shooter whom she described as a “monster” who was “nuts,” adding that “crazy” people like him should not have access to firearms.

Loesch then changed the conversation to states who don’t fully report incidences of mental illness to the national background check system. Gonzalez ended up silencing the crowd herself when people starting shouting and accusing the NRA official of dodging the question.

The high school senior, it seems, was played along with CNN and the rest of the nation.

The national outrage over the Parkland, Florida high school shooting has all the markings of a tipping point in the national debate over gun violence. Five years ago, however, the pro-gun movement managed to survive another alleged tipping point after the Newtown, Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

No one should count the NRA out yet.

The same day as the CNN Town Hall meeting, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence held a meeting together in the White House with survivors and educators who have endured shootings in Parkland, Newtown and Washington, D.C. One young man, a Parkland high school shooting survivor, managed to drill down on the issue of access to semi-automatic weapons. The rest, who seemed to be carefully vetted, expressed emotions demanding actions without saying exactly what they wanted.

The NRA is smarter than you think. For decades its representatives and pundits followed a playbook. Avoid the fundamental conversation about gun access. Deflect the dialogue by saying things like, “Before we pass new laws, enforce the laws already on the books,” without mentioning that NRA lobbying has ensured most of the same laws remain unenforceable.

Or change the conversation to focus on the mentally ill. If that fails, entangle opponents in the minutiae of firearms. As a last resort, wrap yourself in the Second Amendment. Meaning: posit a false choice between doing nothing about guns or trying to confiscate and outlaw them all.

Rubio seemed to be feeling the pressure. He suggested such a false choice, before unexpectedly breaking with the NRA on two points: setting an age limit to purchase firearms and limiting the ammunition capacity of magazines.

His A+ NRA rating may decline.

But Loesch made no concessions, while attempting to strike a sympathetic tone with the audience in the hall and homes across America.

Her recruitment by the NRA is part of an ongoing tactical shift for the organization.

For decades the NRA has sheltered in place, remaining leery of fellow conservative politicians and groups. No less than Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush each ended up betraying the gun lobby by denouncing high-capacity rifles and NRA anti-government rhetoric, respectively. Even with the rise of the Tea Party, which drew in activists like Loesch, the NRA kept its distance from what it saw as a largely leaderless, unpredictable movement.

Today many pro-gun activists still don’t trust President Trump. But the NRA has thrown its lot in with Trump and his supporters, betting that gun activists and his backers have plenty in common.

Loesch leads the NRA today on the culture war’s frontline. She has narrated videos lashing out at Hollywood along with the liberal media, saying the NRA will meet their purported lies with “the clenched fist of truth.”

But she showed another side at CNN’s Town Hall meeting that validated her opponents’ emotions instead of attacking them, just like President Trump did the same day inside the Oval Office.

Parkland school shooting survivors like Gonzalez have the potential to change the nation. But only if they and other gun reform advocates figure out a way to compel the NRA to answer the question.

Smyth (www.franksmyth.com) is a freelance journalist who has covered the NRA for Mother Jones, The Progressive and MSNBC.

What’s behind the AR-15’s allure, and why we must restrict its sale if we want to limit future mass shootings

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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/behind-ar-15-allure-article-1.3823134

The AR-15 is America’s best-selling rifle, helping gun sales more than double over the past 20 years. An estimated 8 million AR-style rifles are in circulation, with more being sold every day.

The weapon is a modification of the M-16 rifle issued to U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. Firing a small caliber bullet propelled by much gunpowder, its round is designed to maximize damage to tissue and bone.

Like the M-16, AR-style rifle magazines hold up to 30 rounds. But the AR-15 fires semi-automatically, so, instead of “spraying” bullets, it reloads to fire as quickly as one can squeeze the trigger. AR-style rifles rarely jam.

The shooter who killed 17 students at a Parkland, Florida high school and injured 14 others can be heard on a cellphone video firing rounds at will amid screams by students.

The United States is the only country in the world where high-powered, semi-automatic rifles can be so easily purchased. Once marketed as assault weapons to advance sales, they now have different names within the gun community.

The gun industry labels them tactical rifles. AR enthusiasts on forums like AR15.com call them “EBRs” or “Enhanced Battle Rifles.” One “Gen-X” National Rifle Association columnist calls them “modern sporting weapons.”

From 1994 to 2004, the federal assault weapons ban outlawed sales of some new semi-automatic weapons, limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds and banned add-on features like a flash suppressor. Since it expired, the gun industry and the NRA have together incorporated AR-style rifles into High Power Rifle Competitions, making them a new sporting weapon while further expanding their circulation.

Over just the past six years, shooters have used AR-style rifles to injure or kill dozens of people in each incident in Parkland, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown and Aurora. Whether motivated by mental illness, terrorism or revenge, the shooters rarely broke any laws in obtaining their guns.

What’s behind the AR-15’s allure

NRA leaders tend to go dark after each mass shooting, while sympathetic politicians and pundits claim no one should politicize the (latest) tragedy. Yet like a never-ending horror movie, America’s toll of gun violence continues to rise including far more, but less publicized gun violence among urban minority youth.

It was a former Fox News host who recently said out loud what many others think. Mass shootings, wrote Bill O’Reilly, are “the price of freedom.”

Americans have not seriously discussed gun reform in decades. The loss of 20 young children and six educators at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown gave rise to a debate in Congress that faded within four months. After America’s largest shooting, in Las Vegas, Congress debated not restricting guns but only possibly an after-market accessory-bump stocks. Today Republican leaders are offering prayers instead of action. Or talking about anything — from better reporting of military domestic abusers, to improved monitoring of disturbed children along with potential terrorists — but gun reform.

Democratic leaders are again talking about attempting to pass a new assault weapons ban. But like other modest measures passed by Congress in past years, as well as measures adopted in a number of liberal states, the ban focuses more on the features of weapons than on who can access them.

Today in most states, one has to be a convicted felon or have been deemed mentally unfit by a court authority to be ineligible to buy a firearm. Even individuals charged with domestic abuse may still keep their guns in most states.

Real reform would mean asking, Who needs tactical weapons?

This is heresy to the NRA. But without addressing gun access, any attempt to curb gun violence will fail.

Take New Jersey. Before buying any gun, an individual must apply for a firearms ID card requiring a background check and fingerprints. One must apply for a separate handgun permit involving repeated checks to buy a single revolver or pistol.

Fla. school gunman Nikolas Cruz faces premeditated murder charges
That may sound like a lot of bureaucracy, but state and federal courts have so far upheld that such regulations are constitutional.

Individuals buy AR-style rifles for many reasons, including not to be outgunned by any potential (or imaginary) attackers. They include criminals and home burglars, and marauding rioters like after the 1992 acquittal of L.A. police officers for beating Rodney King, and government forces seeking — in the minds of many gun activists — to impose some kind of dictatorial state.

During the Obama administration there was talk of overthrowing the government. Under President Trump the talk is of defending his continuance in power.

America could curb gun violence by legally regulating access to guns including tactical rifles. But doing so would require changing the conversation.

Smyth (www.franksmyth.com) is a freelance journalist who has covered the NRA for Mother Jones, The Progressive and MSNBC.