Whenever a mass shooting occurs, one thing that is almost as certain as death and taxes is that the National Rifle Association will open its collective mouth and jam its collective foot in deep. If Wayne LaPierre and friends aren’t saying something along the lines of “(noun)(verb) more guns,” they are usually saying or doing something equally tone-deaf.
The aftermath of a horrific shooting at a church in Sunderland Springs, Texas was no different. Just minutes after news broke about the shooting, the NRA saw fit to lecture us on–wait for it–gun terminology.
Just minutes after news of the shooting broke, this appeared on the Twitter feed of NRABlog, the official blog of the NRA’s firearms education and safety program.
The tweet linked to a blog post about the differences between clips and magazines. While large organizations schedule their social media posts well in advance, you would think that an outfit like the NRA would have had someone with a pulse on hand to make sure tweets and Facebook posts didn’t appear at inappropriate times.
When Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts saw this roll across his feed, he hit the ceiling.
Thanks, @NRA, for helping us focus on the real issues here, literally minutes after more Americans are massacred. https://t.co/umCqUFouKA
— Seth Moulton (@sethmoulton) November 5, 2017
Within a few hours, the NRA deleted the tweet. However, it’s still archived here.
It didn’t come without some prodding, though. Deep State Nation got a sample.
Really? 27 people died and 24 were injured and you're worried about which storage device of mass destruction was used? Get Real.
— (((Deana "No Children in Tent Camps" Holmes))) (@mmmirele) November 5, 2017
https://twitter.com/liftrs/status/927277782761201664
Either way people are dead. But heck, now we can correctly identify the parts of the weapon that killed them. #NRAPriorities
— Latetotheshow (@RoyHinrichs1) November 5, 2017
It's so important to the next of kin to see that the press gets this right.
— Rob van Kan (@EdgeOfEurope) November 5, 2017
https://twitter.com/tanecast/status/927271897515024384
Sadly, this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a tone-deaf response from the NRA in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting. Back in 2012, the Twitter feed of the NRA’s official journal, American Rifleman, asked its followers about weekend plans just hours after James Holmes shot up a theater in Aurora, Colorado. The NRA later said that the people behind that account were unaware of the tragedy.
Just months later, the NRA went into radio silence in the days after the Sandy Hook shooting. It finally lifted that silence three days later, via a statement obtained by Leslie Mayes, the Washington bureau producer for Time Warner Cable’s news channels.
.@NRA Statement: "Until the facts are thoroughly known, NRA will not have any comment." #NRA #CTShooing
— Leslie Mayes? (@LeslieMayesTV) December 14, 2012
Wait a minute. Twenty kids were literally shot to pieces, and the NRA thought it needed to wait until “the facts are thoroughly known”?
On both occasions, the NRA got deservedly kicked up, down, and sideways. This episode shows that five years later, they still haven’t learned a thing.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
