To hear the National Rifle Association tell it, Saturday’s March for Our Lives was orchestrated by billionaires and Hollywood to push an anti-gun agenda.
On Facebook Saturday morning, the NRA posted a short membership-drive video along with a brief message.
“Stand and Fight for our Kids’ Safety by Joining NRA,” it said. “Today’s protests aren’t spontaneous. Gun-hating billionaires and Hollywood elites are manipulating and exploiting children as part of their plan to DESTROY the Second Amendment and strip us of our right to defend ourselves and our loved ones.”
On Thursday evening, NRA TV posted a clip on its YouTube channel entitled “A march for their lies” where the host addressed the Parkland students and said that if their friends hadn’t died, “no one would know your names.”
“To all the kids from Parkland getting ready to use your First Amendment to attack everyone else’s Second Amendment at your march on Saturday, I wish a hero like Blaine had been at Marjory Douglas High School last month,” Colion Noir said. “Because your classmates would still be alive and no one would know your names. And because the media would have completely and utterly ignored your story the way they ignored his.”
He was referring to Blaine Gaskill, the school resource officer who was instrumental in bringing a school shooting to a quick end at Great Mills High School in Maryland on Tuesday.
Gaskill’s story was widely reported in the media.
During the march Saturday, the NRA was conspicuously silent on Twitter.
As of mid-afternoon on the East Coast, when most of the marches were over, the National Rifle Association had yet to post a single tweet — about the marches or anything else.
It was a notable contrast from March 14, the day students across the country walked out of school to demand action on gun violence. On that day, the NRA tweeted 13 times — including one that contained an image of an AR-style rifle along with the message, “I’ll control my own guns, thank you.”
The organization wields substantial influence in Congress and has been cited by gun control activists as a chief roadblock to gun law reform.