HEY NRA, ASK YOURSELF WHY YOUR LITTLE STUNT WORKED

Yesterday, NRATV posted a YouTube video in which one of its spokestrolls, Colion Noir, accused news organizations of encouraging school shootings. Noir appeared to advocate censorship of the media.

Can anyone tell me the last time a mass school shooter left a manifesto, a comment on social media, or a video where they said they were inspired to commit their atrocity ... by a firearm. Name one. I'm sure you can't and neither can I.

Because as much as the media love to pivot the conversation after a mass school shooting to gun control, the pen is still mightier than the sword. These kids aren't being inspired by an innate hunk of plastic and metal laying on a table, they're inspired by the infamous glory of past shooters who they relate to ... and no entity on the planet does a better job whether directly or indirectly, of glorifying these killers, and thereby providing the inspiration for the next one ... than our mainstream media.

After a montage of televised massacre coverage, Noir says:

It's time to put an end to this glorification of carnage in pursuit of ratings, because it is killing our kids. It's time for Congress to step up and pass legislation putting common sense limitations on our mainstream media's ability to report on these school shootings.

... Pass a law stopping the media from reporting the killer's name or showing his face.

You can still report on the shootings ... we just need reasonable laws that place limitations on the glory and fame you give to these killers and their twisted motivations...

But this was a trick. A couple of minutes into the video, Noir reveals the con:

You know that feeling of anxiety that shot through your body when I said the government should pass laws to limit the media's ability to exercise their First Amendment right.

That's the same feeling gun owners get when they hear people say the same thing about the Second Amendment. Hearing me advocate for the government's ability to limit anyone's First Amendment rights, including the media, should anger all of you watching this video, the same way it should anger you when anyone tries to use the same limitations on the Second Amendment.

Tess Owen of Vice News was fished in. Either she didn't watch the video to the end or she and her editor decided it was good clickbait -- in a post that's still up, she wrote:

The National Rifle Association is calling for outright censorship as news of yet another school shooting dominates national headlines.

Quite a few folks on Twitter also failed to watch the video to the end.



Noir was amused by the "too long, didn't watch" response to his stunt:

I hate to humble brag but My recent video just exposed how our mainstream media refuses to watch a 4min video in its entirety before reporting on it and pushing their agenda. #YallHadOneJob
Full Video: https://t.co/xHtedCmP1a

— Colion Noir (@MrColionNoir) May 24, 2018

There's no excuse when a professional news organization blunders this way -- Vice should acknowledge the error and take the post down. The tweeters who missed the twist at the end of Noir's video should delete what they posted about it.

But have Noir and the NRA asked themselves why this stunt was effective? If people are willing to believe that the NRA would happily gut the First Amendment, maybe it's because that seems very much in character for the organization.

We all remember the NRATV video from last year in which Dana Loesch accused liberals and the news media of fomenting insurrection.

They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again. And then they use their ex-president to endorse “the resistance.”

All to make them march. Make them protest. Make them scream racism and sexism and xenophobia and homophobia. To smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.

And when that happens, they’ll use it as an excuse for their outrage. The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.

And the one from early this year in which Loesch flicks a lighter next to a copy of The New York Times. (After placing her toe right on that line, she says, "You know, I don’t even have to do this. You guys are doing a good enough job burning down your reputations all by yourselves.")



Even in the current video, Noir makes it perfectly clear that he'd prefer silence from the mainstream media.

Attention seeking in this country is at an all time high and if social media has proven one thing, it's that there are people out there willing to do anything for attention, even if it means slaughtering classmates they hate but letting the ones they like live so that they can tell their story to every mainstream media news outlet who are itching like fiends to be the FIRST to do a deep sea dive into the killers' background.

As they see it, they get to leave a legacy of carnage, and the higher the body count the better—and we all know Wolf-Blitzer will be right there with the death toll counter keeping score.

The first part of Noir's video, in which he accuses the press of being mass shooters' accomplices and issues a call for censorship, is much more passionate and heartfelt than the part in which he claims to care about defending the First Amendment as well as the Second.

And maybe that's why this video was posted to YouTube and Twitter, but doesn't appear on NRATV's own website. Were liberals taken in by the first part of this video? Yes -- but it appears that NRATV didn't want its own followers to have the same reaction. I'm sure many fans of Noir, Loesch, and the NRA also believe what Noir says in the first part of the video, and would happily have left it at that.