After Sandy Hook School Shooting, NRA Is MIA On Facebook

In these days following the brutal massacre of six adults and 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, the National Rifle Association, America’s original gun lobby, has been unusually quiet. The lobby’s highly professional website sits without updates, its Twitter feed remains untouched, and the Facebook account reduced to a single image of the NRA logo and a link to their entry on Wikipedia. National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre is nowhere to be found and part-time NRA board member and full-time “Motor City Madman” Ted Nugent is uncharacteristically quiet. With Americans coping with yet another mass murder in a year full of mass murder, and new gun laws being seriously talked about for the first time in a generation, it’s pretty much high noon in America’s “gunfight.” Surprisingly, the National Rifle Association has snuck out of town.

Luckily for overzealous gun enthusiasts everywhere, the metaphorical cavalry in the form of the somber and compassionate Libertarian, Larry Pratt and his Gun Owners of America has arrived, taking full advantage of the NRA’s silence to claim the extremist position for their own. Using his sudden and hopefully brief popularity, Pratt has been showing up everywhere from Fox & Friends to Hardball with almost every AM radio huckster booked in between. The GOA leader has been preaching to anyone who’ll listen that gun free zones are free range hunting preserves for psychopaths and that the only way to keep us all from being murdered is to pack heat and be ready to fast draw like Josie Wales on a moment’s notice.

Pratt’s position, calling for armed teachers, is supported by one of the few pro-gun politicians “brave” enough to show up on a Sunday morning talk show, far-right conservative Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas). The Texas representative, while appearing on Fox News Sunday, said of murdered Sandy Hook principal, Dawn Hochsprung.

I wish to God she had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out, and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.

Dawn Hochsprun seen here with students and staff.

I’m in no position to judge, but from what little I’ve seen of Ms. Hochsprun, who unquestionably showed her heroic actions and determination to protect her students no matter what, seems to me to have been a woman more interested in teaching children then being a gunfighter.

Don’t kid yourself that the NRA is running from this fight, because that really isn’t the group’s style. The National Rifle Association is being quiet, letting the smaller and less sophisticated gun lobbies take the lead. Leaders of the NRA are a canny lot who recognize that arguing for more guns over the bodies of dead children is a political no win, have wisely decided to leave the initial defense to Pratt, and skip the political push back that’s bound to take place. Before the end of the week though, watch for a rebounding NRA, conservative pundits and pro-gun politicians to paint anyone wanting even the smallest reform as being a radical demanding a complete ban on all guns, with the government going door to door to collect everyone’s precious firepower, laughing while they blow their noses with the Constitution, throwing it back into a now unarmed Americas face.

All overwrought imagery aside, if Americans are going to have an adult conversation about guns, we need to throw the old tropes about the anti-gun hippie and the pro-gun redneck away and work to leave the traditional American paranoia out of it. That means organizations such as the GOA and the NRA, despite positioning themselves as the spokesmen for the pro-gun side, can’t necessarily be trusted to take part in any conversation that demands people telling the truth.

As for their current internet vanishing act, especially from social media like Facebook, keep in mind, as any hunter can tell you, you can do far more damage under cover than you ever can out in the open. If the National Rifle Association knows anything, it’s how to be patient during a hunt.