The challenge for gun-safety advocates is not public opinion, but the expression of public opinion in our politics. They are winning the argument, with more than 90 percent approval in some polls for universal background checks and high approval rates for measures such as outlawing “bump stocks” and raising the minimum age to purchase assault-type weapons like the AR-15. That support has not yet translated into legislation — not so much because of National Rifle Association money, but because of the gun-rights group’s ability to mobilize single-issue voters.
Some of that power may be exaggerated. In The Washington Post, Ron Klain points out that “even as the assault-weapons ban and Brady Bill were in effect, the NRA — not its opponents — was losing at the ballot box.”
Additionally, the NRA surely seems to be losing the cultural war. How can you tell? Look at the companies that have ended marketing deals with the NRA. Dick’s Sporting Goods announced on Wednesday:
“We have tremendous respect and admiration for the students organizing and making their voices heard regarding gun violence in schools and elsewhere in our country.
“We have heard you. The nation has heard you.
“We support and respect the Second Amendment, and we recognize and appreciate that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible, law-abiding citizens. But we have to help solve the problem that’s in front of us. Gun violence is an epidemic that’s taking the lives of too many people, including the brightest hope for the future of America — our kids.
“Following all of the rules and laws, we sold a shotgun to the Parkland shooter in November of 2017. It was not the gun, nor type of gun, he used in the shooting. But it could have been.”
As such, Dick’s said it will no longer sell assault-type rifles, sell any gun to people under the age of 21, or offer high-capacity magazines. (The retailer reiterated that it never sold bump stocks.) It also affirmatively stated its support for an assault-weapons ban, raising the legal age to buy guns to 21, a ban on high-capacity magazines and bump stocks, and universal background checks that “include relevant mental health information and previous interactions with the law.” Also, it asked for a “universal database of those banned from buying firearms” and to close gun-show and private-sale loopholes.
Walmart announced that it too would not sell guns to those under 21 and would not sell toys and air guns that resemble assault-type weapons.
Thanks to the NRA’s extremism, one wonders if it has succeeded into turning gun sellers into the equivalent of cigarette manufacturers — scorned and shunned, locked out of sales at certain retailers (e.g., CVS pharmacies).
It is not a matter of making it impossible to find guns to buy. There will be plenty of gun dealers and other sports stores that will sell them, not to mention gun shows and online sales. Rather, it is about changing the accepted norm from unlimited guns sales to much more restricted gun sales. This is nothing less than a full-scale revolt against the NRA’s gun absolutism. The NRA has adopted the slogan — “All it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” To that, the public and companies that depend on public goodwill say, “Poppycock. Let’s have fewer guns.”
If the students from Parkland, Florida, and others can make the receipt of gun money into a negative, in essence making the politicos who take gun money into civic pariahs, they will loosen the NRA’s political choke hold on Congress and state legislatures. No one action — a march, the announcement from Dick’s Sporting Goods, termination of marketing partnerships — will spell the end of the NRA’s power. But collectively all of these steps begin to challenge the NRA’s much-touted “gun culture” sloganeering. The image of the NRA as ignoble and its political influence as noxious makes concrete changes in the law possible.
Wayne LaPierre’s screed at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week may, in retrospect, have been seen not as victory lap celebrating its complete mastery of the GOP, but a last gasp of an organization whose extremism puts in on the wrong side of the zeitgeist.
Jennifer Rubin.
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.