The Patriot Post® · Marketing on the Blood of Innocents
The horrific mass murder at Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, almost two weeks ago elicited the same calls for gun control that we expect after every such incident. Leftists rush to blame the tool and law-abiding citizens instead of the cultural cesspool they themselves have cultivated. The National Rifle Association is always a leftist target, though this time the rate of fire has increased, and it’s yielding some results that will affect NRA members.
Dozens of companies offer partnership discounts to the NRA’s five million members — and many of those companies are caving to leftist pressure by cutting those ties. Allied Van Lines, Avis Budget Group, Chubb, Delta Air Lines, Enterprise (including Alamo and National Car Rental), First National Bank of Omaha, Hertz, Metlife, North American Van Lines, Paramount Rx, SimpliSafe, Starkey Hearing, Symantec, TrueCare and United Continental all announced within the last few days that they are discontinuing NRA discount or affiliate programs. More may follow in the near future. On the other hand, FedEx announced it will not succumb to the #Resistance … albeit while calling for a ban on semi-automatic rifles.
Make no mistake: These companies think they’re serving their own bottom line.
For perspective, here’s list of companies that have no trouble donating to Planned Parenthood, which kills more than 300,000 children every year.
As for the NRA, the panicked herd of companies stampeding for the exits was spooked by an organized leftist campaign of hate. These anti-gun activists and their fired-up base of social media screamers want to pin responsibility for the blood of children on the NRA, its members, politicians who are on its side, and any company that has any relationship to the nearly 150-year-old firearms organization.
“Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA,” First National Bank of Omaha said. “As a result, First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card.”
Translation: They got an earful from angry people who either have an anti-gun agenda or don’t know what else to do with their rage over the deaths of 17 innocent people in Florida.
But these companies are going to get some “customer feedback” from millions of NRA members as a result.
Georgia lawmakers are taking on Delta, refusing to restore the air line’s special tax breaks so long as it maintains its anti-NRA stance.
The NRA defended itself with a statement: “Since the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, a number of companies have decided to sever their relationship with the NRA, in an effort to punish our members who are doctors, farmers, law enforcement officers, fire fighters, nurses, shop owners and school teachers that live in every American community. Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world.”
That statement hints at the reason this boycott is different from most. Boycotts are, of course, as American as the original Boston Tea Party. But most boycotts are grassroots efforts to change what people perceive as a company’s bad decisions. Conservatives, for example, boycotted Target after the retail giant changed its bathroom policy to allow a man to use the little girls’ room, so long as he says he’s a woman.
This purge of the NRA is different, however, because these companies are essentially boycotting their customers. When companies shoot down these discount programs, they are telling NRA members to shop elsewhere. In a free market, that is their right. It’s also our right to tell them to take a hike; we will shop elsewhere.
The NRA isn’t blameless in contributing to the current climate of Outrage™. As columnist Jonah Goldberg put it, “The NRA, not content with its public-policy and constitutional victories over the last decade, has taken to fomenting rage and resentment against ‘elites’ and the media with all the precision of an unmanned fire hose.”
But many of us in our humble shop are lifetime NRA members and we wholeheartedly support its mission to defend the Second Amendment.
No NRA member has committed mass murder — not at a school, a church or anywhere else. In fact, NRA members are often the ones who respond heroically to those atrocities. “Gun-free zones” are attacked by sociopathic killers who are generally fatherless, heavily medicated and simply bent on evil to make a name for themselves. They are not the kind of law-abiding Patriots who make up the ranks of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. So this boycott makes no sense.
Never mind the facts, though. As the NRA said in its statement, “The law-abiding members of the NRA had nothing at all to do with the failure of that school’s security preparedness, the failure of America’s mental health system, the failure of the National Instant Check System or the cruel failures of both federal and local law enforcement. Despite that, some corporations have decided to punish NRA membership in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice.”
The leftist outrage machine isn’t about making Americans safer or securing our Liberty. It is indeed shameful cowardice. Don’t stand for it.
A couple of footnotes:
Guns don’t commit crimes on their own. If you doubt that, just check out the 2ndVote Gun Cam.
If Republicans should stop taking money from the NRA, which advocates a constitutional right, then Democrats should certainly stop taking money from Hollywood, which fills our culture and young minds with increasingly violent content.