October 2, 2015

Here Are the NRA’s Tweets Since the Oregon Shooting

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On Thursday morning, a gunman opened fire inside a community college in Roseburg, Oregon, killing 10 people and injuring 7 others. The massacre is the latest mass shooting to take place in the United States—and the 45th school shooting in 2015 alone, according to the gun safety coalition Everytown.

A visibly frustrated President Barack Obama noted hours after the rampage that Americans have come to view mass shootings as a “routine” experience—with news of senseless killings taking place only months, and sometimes days, apart. He exclaimed in frustration, “It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.” As for the biggest foe of gun control, the National Rifle Association, here’s how it reacted to the tragedy via its Twitter feed…Actually, it did not react. The NRA’s usually active Twitter feed was silent. Nada. Not a peep. No condolences to the families of those killed or any statement of concern for those injured.

But the NRA has recently been busy tweeting about other gun matters.

Note the time stamps. Its tweets on Thursday halted around the time that news of the shooting emerged. This has become S.O.P. for the gun industry-backed group. When gun massacres occur, it tends to duck and cover—and wait for the expressions of outrage and calls for gun control to pass. Then it’s back to the business of opposing any efforts to enact new gun safety measures.

Update, 12:52 p.m. EST: After more than a day of silence, the NRA finally weighed in on Twitter with information about a kid’s gun program.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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