The National Rifle Association, long considered one of the most powerful and professional lobbying groups in the world, is losing a crucial public relations battle to a bunch of teenagers from Florida.
I have been writing since the Feb. 14 shooting that left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., about the media power of the student survivors. It is built on the combination of strong social media skills and moral authority _ two things the NRA seems woefully deficient in.
That moral authority derives in part from the pain the students suffered in coming under fire from a former student with a semiautomatic AR-15 assault weapon and seeing classmates die. But that traumatic event also seems to have left them with a moral clarity that is the very opposite of politicians like Republican Florda Sen. Marco Rubio who take money from the NRA and then try to complicate, confuse and muddle the issue of the death and destruction caused by military weapons.
But as much as the students have to do with the early success of their campaign to get tougher gun laws on the books, the other half of the story is how badly the NRA and elements on the right have stumbled coming out of the gate in opposing the teens.
By far the worst decision was in letting Dana Loesch, spokeswoman for the NRA, be the face of the organization in this battle.
After a day and night of powerful appearances by Stoneman Douglas students Wednesday at a White House "listening" session and then a CNN town hall hosted by Jake Tapper, the NRA blasted back Thursday with Loesch strutting around the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a portrait of bombast, in-your-face defiance and reckless rhetoric.
As I watched Loesch at CPAC, the image that came to mind was that of former Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon strutting around a stage in Alabama defending Senate candidate Roy Moore and denouncing candidates who didn't hew as far to the alt-right as him in the coming midterm election.
How did that work out, Steve?
The new narrative Loesch wanted to sell at CPAC: Blame the FBI, which admitted that it failed to investigate a tip about the Florida shooting suspect, and other law enforcement agencies for the slaughter at Stoneman Douglas. And blame the media for wallowing in sensationalistic coverage of this tragedy. But, whatever you do, don't blame guns.
"My condemnation is for those folks at the FBI _ I know there are some good agents there _ for those at the FBI that dropped the ball eight separate times with catastrophic consequences," she said, attempting to plug her narrative into the one the right-wing messaging machine has been sounding for months in an attempt to discredit the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
But Loesch's big moment came when she leaned into the microphones and did a Donald Trump-wannabe attack on the media covering CPAC.
"Now I'm going to say something that some people are going to say is controversial, so I'm going to say it really slowly so that all of you people on the platform in the back can hear me loud and clear:
"Many in the legacy media love mass shootings," she said moving back and forth between two microphones on the podium to drag out the statement and accentuate each of the words of her reckless claim. "You guys love it."
I am not going to respond to such an off-the-wall, baseless claim. If it was said against a specific person, it could constitute as slander. But you can say anything you want about the press at a right-wing rally, and it is OK, I guess, because that's what our president does time and time again.
But forget Loesch's words _ if you can.
TV is a visual medium, and Loesch's sneering image _ as it was multiplied exponentially in video replays throughout social media _ became the NRA's response in the minds of many to the earnestness and pain etched by tragedy on the faces of some of the Florida students.
Bad optics doesn't start to describe Loesch's performance. And I cannot start to estimate how much ground the NRA lost in this war thanks to her grandstanding and hotdogging at CPAC.
And Loesch only compounded the sneering persona in subsequent appearances straight through to Sunday shows like ABC's "This Week."
While Loesch took her act to all those legacy media stops, the teens of Stoneman Douglas were shredding the NRA on social media.
This fact tells you most of what you need to know about that battleground: Emma Gonzalez, a Stoneman Douglas student with one of the most compelling media personas, joined Twitter less than two weeks ago and already has 1.06 million followers as of Tuesday, versus the NRA, which joined in 2009, and has 593,000 followers.
That's not so surprising given the rigid, institutional voice the NRA has on Twitter with tweets like this one Monday, referencing the news that major companies like Delta, United, Avis and Hertz were ending discount relationship with the gun organization: "Let it be absolutely clear. The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world."
None of this is to say the students are going to ultimately succeed in getting assault weapons banned anywhere. There seems to be no limit to the hold the NRA has on some legislators who care more about money than anything else _ especially Republican ones. And forget about any real help from the White House in the end.
But the students of Stoneman Douglas have already won at least one major victory. Cable news almost always moves on from an event like a mass shooting in a week to 10 days.
We are now 13 days out with a major march for gun law reform on the horizon, and no part of legacy media seems anywhere near leaving the students and their crusade behind.
Sneer on, Dana. Sneer on.
