ON GUNS, FOX GIVES UP

It would have been reasonable to expect Fox News to be leading the pro-NRA fight right now, but I'm looking at the news channel's websites and it appears that Fox has retreated to its happy place.

Here's the front page at FoxNews.com right now:



And here's the front page at Fox News Insider:



Earlier this morning, it was this:



The gun thing isn't working. The right is trying its usual mental health distraction, and many on the right are trying to build a new Benghazi out of law enforcement failures and missteps. ("Parkland Stand Down?" is the title of a video posted by the right-wing pollster Rasmussen, and the incident is being directly compared to Benghazi by NRATV.) National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke is calling on pro-gunners to go after survivor David Hogg. And there is still quite a bit of Parkland coverage at Fox.

But it's clearly being downgraded as a story. The right-wing memes aren't connecting the way they used to. Democrats and liberals aren't cowering in fear. Wayne LaPierre delivered a red-meat speech to the converted at CPAC, but he's less visible elsewhere, and Dana Loesch, before her red-meat CPAC speech, mostly pulled her punches on CNN.

Most of corporate America seems to be sick of the NRA -- and today we're learning that Dick's Sporting Goods, a major national gun dealer, won't sell assault-style rifles anymore, won't sell high-capacity magazines, and won't sell any gun to a person under 21 even if permitted by local law. Dick's has risked offending the gun absolutists in the past:

This is not the first time Dick’s has made changes in response to a school massacre. In 2012, after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Dick’s removed assault-style rifles from its main retail stores. But a few months later, the company began carrying the firearms at its outdoor and hunting retail chain, Field & Stream.

This time, Mr. Stack said, the changes will be permanent.

The company survived that. If corporate officers have concluded that it will survive this -- and still presumably sell a profitable quantity of goods to gun owners -- there's a clear perception out there that suburban outrage over gun violence outweighs any anger on the gun absolutists' part. Rupert Murdoch (who is, of course, from a country that significantly tightening gaw laws after a massacre) might be thinking along similar lines, and Fox might be tiptoeing away from this story as a result.