The NRA's Deranged New Attack Ad Shows How Threatened It Feels by the Anti-Gun Movement

No one likes to be subjected to intense scrutiny, or, you know, have a nationwide movement dedicated to dismantling your nefarious stronghold on the American political system, but the NRA is not dealing with its increasingly negative coverage particularly well.

In response to both the activism spearheaded by the survivors of the Parkland shooting and the national March For Our Lives occurring this weekend, the NRA is on the warpath, and is stooping to the lowest of lows.

In a new video, Colion Noir, gun advocate YouTuber turned NRA TV star, takes on a recent PSA featuring Parkland survivor David Hogg, who was the subject of a right-wing conspiracy theory that Donald Trump Jr. apparently approved of.

The premise of the NRA video parodies the PSA’s format and hashtag (#WhatIf). In the original, Hogg asks questions like, “What if our politicians weren’t the bitch of the NRA?” and “What if we all voted and said this is not okay?” and “What if we stood up as Americans and fought for our freedom and our children’s lives?”

Noir pulled out all the stops for his response, giving us a minute and a half of inanity, and asking some questions of his own:

What if we didn’t exploit the trauma of kids to push a political agenda? What if the media actually covered the kids that completely disagree with you? What if we had put armed guards in every school in America five years ago when the NRA first called for it?

Accusing the students who are organizing to change the NRA’s influence on politics due to their SURVIVING A SCHOOL SHOOTING of being brainwashed by a “political agenda” is a hell of a thing.

After calling out the FBI and the Sheriff’s office, Noir then asks: “What if the football coach who heroically sacrificed his life had an AR-15 instead of empty hands?” Which is an incredible way to, say, “exploit the trauma” to “push a political agenda.”

Noir also asks, “What if I told you that calling someone a bitch because they disagree with you isn’t American—it’s just childish?” Painting the NRA, an organization that constantly bankrolls politicians or punishes them for supporting gun control laws, as a regular old person with regular old opinions is pretty American. But it’s also a lie, which is kind of childish.

“You people want a culture war, but the culture isn’t on your side,” Noir concludes at the end of the video, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Imagine trying to tell teenagers—TEENAGERS—that the culture isn’t on their side. Snapchat? TEENAGERS. The Beatles? TEENAGERS. Teens are the damn culture.

This video, much like all NRA videos, is fairly appalling in its willingness to smear anyone—including someone who just lost their friends in a preventable massacre—who works to wrest their power from them. But it’s also clear that the NRA feels very threatened by the potential of Hogg, other activists, and the March For Our Lives, so it’s always at least a little entertaining to watch them shake in their boots a bit.