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THE NATIONAL RIFLE Association is facing a corporate backlash as companies take a closer look at their investments, co-branding deals and other ties to the gun industry following the latest school massacre.
A handful of companies have ended discount programs with the NRA as the group aggressively resists calls for stricter gun control after a gunman killed 17 people at a Florida high school last week.
The moves came as petitions circulated online targeting companies offering discounts to NRA members on its website. #BoycottNRA was trending on Twitter.
Members of the NRA have access to special offers from partner companies on its website, ranging from life insurance to wine clubs. But the insurance company MetLife discontinued its discount program with the NRA yesterday. Car rental company Hertz and Symantec, the software company that makes Norton Antivirus technology, did the same.
“We have notified the NRA that we are ending the NRA’s rental car discount program with Hertz,” the company tweeted.
Insurer Chubb said it is ending participation in the NRA’s gun-owner insurance program, but it provided notice three months ago. The program that provided coverage for people involved in gun-related incidents or accidents had been under scrutiny by regulators over marketing issues.
Those defections arrived after car rental company Enterprise Holdings, which also owns Alamo and National, said it was cutting off discounts for NRA members. First National Bank of Omaha, one of the nation’s largest privately held banks, announced that it would not renew a co-branded Visa credit-card with the NRA.
Other companies, including Wyndham Hotels and Best Western hotels, have let social media users know they are no longer affiliated with the NRA, though they did not make clear when the partnerships ended.
The swiftness of the corporate reaction against the NRA has differed from that of past shootings, including the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that claimed 26 lives and the killing of 58 people in Las Vegas last fall, said Bob Spitzer, a political scientist at SUNY Cortland and a scholar on gun politics. Spitzer said the reaction was likely a reaction to the student mobilisation that followed the Florida shooting, but he said it was too soon tell how significantly it will sway the country’s wider gun debate
“If this is as far as it goes, it probably won’t have any measurable effect. If other companies continue to (cut ties) it can start to have an adverse public relations effect,” Spitzer said. “Usually what happens is that the storm passes, and the NRA counts on that.”
Spitzer noted that it was not the first time big business has been pulled into the gun debate. In 2014, Chipotle asked customers not to bring firearms into its stores after gun-rights advocates brought military-style rifles into one of its Texas restaurants. A year earlier, Starbucks Corp. made a similar statement after the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting.
Larry Hutcher, a lawyer who specialises in commercial law and litigation, said companies are reacting to a perception that public opinion is shifting on gun regulation. Polls show growing support for gun control measures, including 97% backing for universal background checks in a Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday.
“It’s based on the fact that these companies and their marketing officers are reading the tea leaves. It makes economic sense to get on the side of the majority of Americans,” said Hutcher, co-managing partner of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference that those advocating for stricter gun control are exploiting the Florida shooting.
President Donald Trump has aligned himself with the NRA, suggesting some teachers could be armed so that they could fire on any attacker. However, Trump has also called for raising the minimum age for purchasing semi-automatic rifles, a move the NRA opposes.
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Good. Keep the pressure up. Nobody needs an assault rifle.
@DJ François: not quite, at least not in your liberal utopia.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/okla-woman-shoots-kills-intruder911-operators-shoot/story?id=15285605
@DJ François: think that was a shotgun. Here’s a guy protecting his home with an AR-15. Liberals like you would rather he handed over his possessions?
‘A 23-year-old Oklahoma man used a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle to shoot and kill three masked teenage intruders dressed in black who broke into his home Monday afternoon.’
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-man-uses-ar-15-kill-three-teen-home-intruders-n739541
@Damien Mooney: let me guess: you’re an advocate for the death penalty?
@Damien Mooney: And your point is?The excuses the pro gun lobby are coming out with are really tawdry and pathetic. No one is banning shotguns but you must be on the hillbillie hooch if you think every home should have an military style weapon
@Damien Mooney: blah blah liberals blah blah. Only someone whose moral compass is adrift thinks it is ok to sell an assault weapon to an 18 year old.
@Damien Mooney: question is, would a standard rifle, a shotgun, or a handgun have achieved the same result? I’d suggest the answer is yes
@Dave O Keeffe: the AR15 is the “standard rifle” in the US, far outselling any other model!
@Pat Cbar: it is not a standard rifle, it’s semi-automatic.
@Damien Mooney:
I wouldn’t shoot and kill someone for breaking into my house. I’m not a nutter. A person’s life is worth far more to me than any house, so I would never be an executioner over petty possessions. It’s so odd that these people are generally religious but have no problem killing people over stuff.
I would completely prefer he handed over his possessions, are you really stating that you want to be allowed to kill another human being over a television set? You sick puppy.
@Dave O Keeffe: it is certainly not a bolt action rifle, but it’s numbers sold, manufactured and assembled make it the #1 model of rifle in the US and therefore the standard rifle.
@Pat Cbar: clearly you’re deliberately misinterpreting my comment. Good for you.
@Dave O Keeffe: you’re showing your firearm ignorance – virtually all pistols are semi-automatic, most rifles, and a lot of shotguns too. Semi-automatic means when you pull the trigger the gun fires one bullet and loads the chamber with the next. You’d swear “semi-automatic” was something sinister the way the anti-gun brigade use it.
@John Smith:
Fair play. I think the good book says turn the other cheek, and you’re willing to do it. One has to respect that. Its a very hard to choice to make and requires admirable courage. I hope you respect that some people fear being beaten, raped, and murdered in their home and chose to protect themselves with guns to avoid that happening to them and their family members. It has to be what makes you able to sleep at night, and that varies person to person.
@Frank Kennedy: and yet nowhere in any of my comments did I say anything about handguns not being semi-automatic. Also, you’re showing your ignorance though, as pistols are by definition semi-automatic. Probably why I said handgun and not pistol eh?
We’re allowed to comment on this one?
@Billy-Bob White: yup ye can. My comment is always follow the money. Who is paying who and and what are they getting in return. the NRA have spent a lot of money on politicians over the years who keep voting in a favourable ways for the NRA. Sales of guns depend on a scared population don’t you know. Young people in the USA are waking up finally and that will scare the people in power more than anything. This issue is a hot potato now and doing nothing is not an option anymore.
@Róisín Daly: the NRA support candidates who support the Second Amendment. These candidates don’t just pretend to be pro gun rights, they actually believe in the right to bear arms. Shocking.
@Billy-Bob White: Bel
@Billy-Bob White: *Belief in the right to bear arms doesn’t equate to a belief to bear *any* arms at all times.
@Billy-Bob White: they clearly choose to ignore the part in the second amendment about regulation.
@Róisín Daly: well said. Fear is the fuel of the NRA.
@Billy-Bob White: well I think people who want more gun laws will vote now for candidates that reflect that. People love their kids more than someone else’s guns.
@Billy-Bob White: I think you’re right – assuming that most of them have free will, and don’t have to stand up to huge pressure to go along with the whole charade. On the other hand, they aren’t following the part about a well-regulated militia at all.
@Deborah Behan: some mothers use guns to protect their kids.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/okla-woman-shoots-kills-intruder911-operators-shoot/story?id=15285605
@Damien Mooney: so, which proposed law would take her guns away from her? If anything they’d provide her with more training and knowledge of the law so she would know that she was within her rights to shoot the intruder
@Fiona Fitzgerald: don’t forget there is a comma in the Second Ammendment which according to some lawyers separates 2 statements!
@Billy-Bob White: yeah no prob in having the right to have guns. But you need common sense laws in place to weed out people who should not be near guns. Like this chap and many others like him. Use your noggin…
And I’m wondering what has the National Roads Authority of Ireland to say that on this
@Antoinette Mullen: on this article.
@Antoinette Mullen: I’d say they’d say sensible gun laws save lives but that’s just a guess.
@Deborah Behan: And insist that you need a PSC before you can apply for a gun.
It is wrong to demonise the many millions of regular, law-abiding citizens who have chosen to join the NRA.
@Butch Francis: no its not. They suppprt lib gun laws, they have blood on their hands. Hopefully what we’re seeing here are the first cracks, the begining of something.
@Butch Francis: does 5 qualify as many?
@Tony Dowling: not so fast http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/mar/18/lena-taylor/most-nra-members-back-background-checks-all-gun-pu/
@Butch Francis: I don’t see that gun-owners, even legal ones, have a constitutional right to special commercial discounts from particular businesses. They have a right to decline to participate, don’t they? They aren’t being forced at gunpoint to support what they and their many customers don’t believe is right, are they? Don’t they have free choice?
If anything, the NRA is by bribery and coercion actively undermining the democracy in which everyone lives, solely out of self-interest in individual privilege. It’s a bit ironic that the US constitution is what they claim to protect by exercising their rights against the will of the governed. Are US politicians actually free to decline the payoffs to side with the NRA lobby?
@Butch Francis: the kids have already said they don’t hate NRA members just the huge gun companies that prevent sensible gun laws who are also represented by the NRA.
@Deborah Behan: Yes. The surviving kids, that is. They want a future and an education and I’m delighted to see them exercising their own right to those. If there are more politicians in favour of gun regulation, they deserve their chance too. The gun-toting lobby is too powerful right now.
I agree with the common person who wants a firearm in their home to protect their home and family however I cannot justify why one needs a semi-automatic assault rifle like the AR-15. Under what circumstances is a rifle such as this required in a home invasion situation?
@John: If you were hiding out in a compound in Abbottabad and a Seal team crashed a helicopter into your chicken coup ?
@John: always good to loosen the bonds of ignorance that ties you down and do some research. Or perhaps you’d rather he allowed the burglars free reign to ransack his house?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-man-uses-ar-15-kill-three-teen-home-intruders-n739541
@Damien Mooney: ha ha. Poor Damien’s idea of research is a link to BBC NEWS.
Bless him.
@Ger Healy: *BBC News*
@Ger Healy: *NBC News*
sorry predictive text
@Damien Mooney: would a shotgun or a handgun have achieved the same result? I think so.
@Damien Mooney: New troll alert.
@Dave O Keeffe: shotgun is too messy, and a handgun is too hard to acquire legally
@Dave O Keeffe: shotgun is too messy, and a handgun is too hard to acquire legally
@Pat Cbar: messy? Is that what people are thinking of during a home invasion? I’d actually prefer a shotgun as it would require less accuracy in a time of panic
@Pat Cbar: also, interesting that you’ve pointed out that a semi-automatic assault rifle is easier to get legally than a handgun
@Dave O Keeffe:
That’s because most murders are by handgun in the US. And they’re easy to conceal as you walk up to the counter to rob a store/behind someone at an ATM. There’s around 10,000 non-suicide deaths by firearm in the US every year, 250 by rifle, 9,750 by handgun. So while school shooters seem to be using AR15s, the rest of the thugs are using handguns. So they raised the handgun age to 21, and likely have to do the same AR15s now.
@John:
Not sure where you live but in the US the AR15 is the most popular rifle with 8 million of them in civilian hands. ARs are comfortable to shoot due to low recoil and light bullet weight so lots of people use them as a cheap range gun. They’re reliable and easy to fix and there’s a huge number of cheap spare parts available. That said, your average multi-gun owner keeps a handgun beside their bed not a rifle.
You do see AR15s as defensive weapons in places prone to rioting. A lot of gun owners in California quote the LA riots where 60 people were killed (mainly unarmed shopkeepers) as reason to keep a gun capable of carnage handy. But need for one is not common, agreed.
Boycott all the companies who do business with the NRA
Hit them where it hurts.their profits.its small but its a start.
Do people even realise that large amounts of American society is and has always been f’d up. They succeed through ignorance and not thinking of consequence whether through internal or foreign policy and now it’s starting to bite them in the ass. They could have a nationwide ban on guns in America and it wouldn’t solve anything. As much as we give out about it, European society is what America should be aiming for.
@Lad: true , kind of amusing that so may here want to pontificate about American society as if we have some kind of irish utopia going on here – Jesus there isn’t a single significant part of the country that isn’t in a shambles and need serious reform , transport , justice , criminal law / prisons , Health A+E , transport , education , housing and homeless are just a couple that spring to mind – kinda odd that so many get vexed about gun laws and how things in America when in the overall scheme of things it will make absolutely NO DIFFERENCE to ireland and the people living on this great island.
Four deputies waited outside school while this atrocity played out…what is going on in the USA.
@Tomas: “Everybody wants to be gangster till it’s time to do gangster sh#t”…In other words.. everyone thinks they’re the hard man until faced with a situation that could get them killed…
@Vigo the Carpathian:
I’m calling bullshit on this now – 4 armed officers outside a school where a gunman is killing children inside, knew about it, and did nothing?. Officers sworn to server and protect, collect a paycheck for doing that, but don’t. Nah, shame on them if its true but I find it hard to be true considering how many gun deaths there are in the States, going towards gunfire isn’t unusual like it would be in Ireland. The more I’ve thought on this its not very plausible that there were shots going off and all they did was listen. Cop cars carry escalation weapons in them since the 70′s so four officers doing nothing sounds very hard to believe.
It’s 100% the kids. No two ways about it. I for one am ecstatic at their mobilisation and their determination. Good work, to all involved!
Only 31% of Americans have guns….Almost 200 million guns in total…..Taking away NRA discounts won’t annoy most customers
@John003: You do realise that many people have multiple guns. Based on the population of the US, if every NRA member had about 3 guns, that would bring the total to about 200 million at a rough estimate. I’m not suggesting that only NRA members have guns, just pointing out that there’s a lot you didn’t take into consideration when you commented
@Anne Marie Devlin: it’s astonishing, 3% of Americans own half of the civilian guns.
@Dave O Keeffe:
Unfortunately there’s no national gun registry in the US so no one has accurate profiles of “the average gun owner” (it also makes banning guns a near impossible task). Many gun owners aren’t NRA members. For starters, few democrat gun owners are going to join the NRA. Many people see the NRA as racist so count out a lot of non-white gun owners. Others will avoid for the stigma – many lawyers say NRA membership disclosed in a trial will prejudice a jury negatively much more often than positively.
The Marxists never miss an opportunity to attack free speech and capitalism do they?
@Fergus Kavanagh: __ What?
@Fergus Kavanagh: yeah, cool story
@Fergus Kavanagh: How is it Marxist to oppose agenda of the NRA?
@Fergus Kavanagh: reds under the beds is so last century.
@Fergus Kavanagh: If you knew the first thing about Marx you’d know that he was in favour of an armed “proletariat” to overthrow the “bourgeoise” or to at least keep them in check. In that regard the NRAs message is unmistakably Marxist with their fear mongering about the “Washington elite taking people’s guns” …”Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.” – Karl Marx
@Vigo the Carpathian: Oh and while we’re on about him… My brother knows Karl Marx…
@Vigo the Carpathian: I should have said ‘neo marxists’ my deepest apologies. Similar dangerous ideology, but their weapon is bullying, shame and trial by popular opinion.
@Fergus Kavanagh: You’re still making no sense. It IS shameful to stand side-by-side by the NRA as a corporation, and it’s not a Marxist (or neo-Marxist) position to want to call that out.
@Malachi: The problem is using shame and bullying to oppose free speech and free choice rather than letting the markets decide. The market is the greatest indication of the will of the people. Lefties are using dirty tactics like this one to advance their agenda. Look at platforms like YouTube. For a while the platform was a haven for free speech but lefties have used the same strategy.. Shame and trial by public opinion on companies to withdraw sponsorship from popular Youtubers, removing their platform for free speech and censoring them as the left desires. Then rinse and repeat.
@Fergus Kavanagh: Ah so now it’s the “neo Marxists” is it as opposed to the NRA who are good old fashioned Marxists…Got ya…
@Fergus Kavanagh: as described in the article, the tactic is commercial choice and pressure. That is a very capitalist approach and nothing to do with marxism – neo or otherwise.
@Fergus Kavanagh: have a look at the first amendment, (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”) it has nothing to do with private entities deciding what they will and won’t give a platform to.
@Fergus Kavanagh: Dave’s comment above nails it. Free speech is, in my opinion, the most important freedom any person has. That’s freedom from government censorship, according to the First Amendment.
Private companies like having a popular public image. If their customers (or others) give out about their actions, like supporting the NRA, they aren’t having their freedom of speech impinged. They don’t *have* to bow to public pressure, but companies often do because negative publicity actually isn’t always a good thing.
It is the First Amendment right of any American to criticise a company that supports the NRA – don’t forget that .
@Malachi: A lot of people’s idea of freedom of speech seems to be the idea that everybody owes them a platform to speak and that everybody must listen to whatever rubbish they come out with…
@Vigo the Carpathian: they also seem to be quite opposed to the free speech rights of those that tell them to shut the fu(K up
@Fergus Kavanagh: You’re a little boy with no clue about the real world,
@Fergus Kavanagh: “The problem is using shame and bullying to oppose free speech and free choice rather than letting the markets decide… Shame and trial by public opinion on companies to withdraw sponsorship from popular Youtubers…”
Sounds more like they’re using free speech and the markets decided to exercise their free choice to withdraw incentives. Will you be complaining about the organisations who are now choosing to do the inverse?
This really should have happened when they opposed a ban on people on the terrorism watchlist owning guns.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, hit em where it hurts, in their pockets. If all companies withdraw their support for the NRA they’ll know they mean business.
Guns kill, roads kill – ban guns and roads.
@Adam Reid: Were roads built to kill as many people as efficiently as possible??
@Adam Reid: cop on! People die of choking so we ban food? Dangerous drivers kill as do maniacs with guns.
@Adam Reid: logical fallacy fail
@Terri McCormick O’Gorman: “cop on! People die of choking so we ban food?” Kinder Surprise Eggs banned in USA, so…
I never heard of these discounts given to NRA members until now.
have your say