NRA goes silent after Connecticut school shooting

WASHINGTON — Where is the NRA?

The nation's largest gun-rights organization - typically outspoken about its positions even after shooting deaths - has gone all but silent since last week's rampage at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school that left 26 people dead, including 20 children.

Its Facebook page has disappeared. It has posted no tweets. It makes no mention of the shooting on its website. None of its leaders hit the media circuit Sunday to promote its support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms as the nation mourns the latest shooting victims and opens a new debate over gun restrictions. On Monday, the NRA offered no rebuttal as 300 anti-gun protesters marched to its Capitol Hill office.

Seldom has the NRA gone so long after a fatal shooting without a public presence. It resumed tweeting just one day after a gunman killed two people and then himself at an Oregon shopping mall last Tuesday, and one day after six people were fatally shot at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August.

The Connecticut shootings occurred three days after the incident in Oregon.

Since the Connecticut shootings, the NRA has been taunted and criticized at length, vitriol that may have prompted the shuttering of its Facebook page just a day after the association boasted about reaching 1.7 million supporters on the social media network.

Twitter users have been relentless, protesting the organization with hashtags like NoWayNRA.

The NRA has not responded to them. Its last tweets, sent Friday, offered a chance to win an auto flashlight.

The NRA outspent its chief opponent by a 73-1 margin to lobby the outgoing Congress, according to the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, which tracks such spending. It spent more than 4,000 times its biggest opponents during the 2012 election.

In all, the group spent at least $24 million this election cycle - $16.8 million through its political action committee and nearly $7.5 million through its affiliated Institute for Legislative Action. Its chief foil, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, spent just $5,816.

On direct lobbying, the NRA also was mismatched. Through July 1, the NRA spent $4.4 million to lobby Congress to the Brady Campaign's $60,000.

Why aren't the news stories about the instant politicization by so many anti-gun proponents mere hours after this happened?

So an organization that has been constantly threatened [twitchy.com], misrepresented [theatlantic.com], and attacked by the left [huffingtonpost.com] hasn't spoke after a politically charged event, and this is a surprise?

Why aren't the news stories about the instant politicization by so many anti-gun proponents mere hours after this happened?

Owning a semi automatic rifle, shotgun, or pistol is a "choice".
I'm pro choice! And I'm proud!

This is the bigger problem. People exploiting the senseless death of innocent children to advance their agenda. "Who cares about the kids, we care about the guns."

This is the bigger problem. People exploiting the senseless death of innocent children to advance their agenda. "Who cares about the kids, we care about the guns."

"When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

...

Grow gonads?

What would you have them do? *Anything* they'd say right now would be torn to shreds, pro, con, neutral, whatever.

Did you know the second largest gun lobby [gawker.com] is located in.......... Newtown, CT? The National Shooting Sports Foundation [nssf.org]!

People that crap on the NRA and the like know little of what they do. Quite a bit of effort is expended on safety training and support. Do you think that gun owners like to see illegal sales and mass shootings?

yeah. it makes people more afraid and makes them go out and buy guns to protect themselves. all the nra is a front for arms dealers, domestic terrorists and the mouth piece for gun manufacturers.

Do you truthfully think that if they wouldn't have let those funds lapse that it would've stopped this tragedy? C'mon, I doubt they were planning on putting an armed guard in an elementary school in rural CT.

yeah. it makes people more afraid and makes them go out and buy guns to protect themselves. all the nra is a front for arms dealers, domestic terrorists and the mouth piece for gun manufacturers.