NRA and Moms

Fastcompany.com has this article about NRA's marketing and suggests they are targeting moms as a response to the supposed success of Moms Demand Action:

The National Rifle Association doesn't make its demographic makeup public, although you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who wouldn't concede it is overwhelmingly white, conservative, and male. (Gun ownership data published by Pew Research seems to support this.) But lately, it seems like the NRA's leadership is especially interested in courting a new and very vocal demographic with considerable household influence: moms.

I don't know that NRA is specifically targeting moms, but with female gun ownership at all time highs, it only makes sense that the NRA would reach out to women.

That same article included a graphic from Dave Kopel's new piece in America's First Freedom about Shannon Watts, the head of Moms Demand Action. Apparently, Fastcompany.com didn't like that Kopel exposed the facts about Shannon Watts' background because they referred to the article as a "hit piece."  Apparently, Shannon Watts isn't very happy with how the NRA depicted her in that graphic either.

It's probably no accident that this attention to NRA's marketing comes on the heels of NRA unveiling a new membership campaign which features a number of women, one of which is below.

The Guardian Asks If "Gun Lobby" Can Be Beat Through Social Media

The Guardian asks that question in this article.

Gun control campaigners are making greater use of social media to organise their supporters across the US, in an effort to digitally disrupt better-funded pro-gun lobbying groups like the NRA.

Three groups – Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Americans for Responsible Solutions, and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America – came together at the SXSW conference in Austin to discuss their digital strategies.

The first two of those groups may have well-known figureheads – politicians Michael Bloomberg and Gabrielle Giffords respectively – but they are also working hard to spark grassroots online campaigns for supporters to press for changes to state and federal gun laws.

“The problem here is that there are more guns in the United States than there are people. That’s not necessarily a problem in itself, but our laws are letting far too many of those guns fall into the wrong hands,” said Glaze, setting the scene for the groups’ digital efforts.

If you are looking for grassroots support, looking strictly at the numbers, Moms Demand Action has 153,000 followers on Facebook.  Mayors Against Illegal Guns has 21,000.  The NRA destroys both of them with 3.2 million followers on Facebook.  Twitter numbers are lower for NRA but they are still about 10 times higher that the numbers for both Moms Demand Action and Demand Action (the only reference I could find on Twitter to MAIG).  But numbers don't necessarily mean you know how to use social media.  It just means you are good and promotion and getting people to click a "Like" or "Follow" button on a web page.  It seems that NRA has improved their use of the medium. 

As far as effect grassroots activity, NRA members filled a meeting room for the NRA-ILA Grassroots Seminar at the NRA Annual Meeting in Houston and heard NRA-ILA staff and fellow NRA members talk about the effective use use of social media and how to make a difference during the legislative process and campaigns.  By the looks of this crowd of gun banners at the SXSW conference in Austin last month, it appears they have a ways to go.

Moms Demand to Protest NRA Annual Meeting

Sebastian shares a report that Moms Demand Action plans to protest the NRA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis this year as they did last year in Houston.  I was on my way out of town last year about the time the small little band assembled but I'll be in Indy until Sunday this year so I'll be able to cover the protest. Usually these turn out to be almost non events. Moms Demand has shown they are nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of Mayors Against Guns. Will be interesting to see if a real crowd materializes.

Moms Demand Misleads in Push to Criminalize Private Sales

If you saw this Moms Demand Action graphic as a stand alone item, you would think that the Virginia Tech shooter did not undergo background checks before he purchased his firearms.

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The Facebook post on their page however explains what happened a little differently.

Even that explanation is misleading.  Virginia law at the time was not clear related to what information had to be added to state databases related to mental health.  And, since the 2007 shooting, Virginia has changed the law and leads the nation in reporting mental health information for the purposes of background checks.  So, maybe Shannon Watts should find another talking point because the Virginia Tech angle is getting a bit worn.

Cat Fight Between Gun Ban Lobby Groups

It was bound to happen.  Mayor's Against Illegal Guns has become the bully on the block over the last several years because it has had the money, and at times the savvy, to at least make themselves look successful.  At least one gun ban group that has been around longer, and been less successful when it comes to having funding to do what they wanted to do, is starting to get a little jealous.  We now have dueling notices to supporters between MAIG and Brady on the noise from the gun ban lobby related to Facebook/Instagram firearm posts.  Bitter has the story over on Shall Not Be Questioned:

Moms Demand Illegal Mayors, or whatever the two merged groups are called these days, are declaring total victory in the Facebook/Instagram policy statement that any reported post featuring an offer to sell any regulated product privately will generate a reminder to sellers that they shouldn’t violate the law. But the Brady Campaign swiftly sent out a letter to their supporters highlighting that the anti-gun groups didn’t get anything they demanded at all, and this is not in any way a victory. The thing is, the Brady Campaign is right on this, at least coming from a gun banner’s perspective.

So desperate to claim victory is MAIG and their satelite orgainzations, that they take a notice that those posting items for sale (in this case firearms) on Facebook/Instagram should not violate the law, as a smack down to gun owners.  As Bitter points out, in this case, Brady is right.