The NRA Has An Awful New Youth-Oriented Talk Show
Selling guns to young people with Lululemon and twerking references. Great timing, guys!
While the US again debates gun laws following last weekend’s incident, in which Elliot Rodger embarked on a killing spree using 3 legally purchased guns and 400 rounds, the NRA have again been thrust into the spotlight due to their rigorous pro-gun lobbying. Hours before the incident that killed 6 and injured 13, they had tweeted, “We Love Our Moms and Trust Our Doctors, But We Still Don’t Want #GunControl”. With equally impeccable timing, the notorious American gun lobby has released a web series pairing guns with pop culture in an effort to recruit young people to their pro-gun cause. Don’t worry, though: we’ve watched Noir so you don’t have to.
Meet Your Hosts
This totally necessary multi-part series is co-hosted by Amy Robbins and a guy called Colion Noir: a Texan ‘NRA News Commentator’ and YouTube star with over 200,000 subscribers. He’s the kind of guy who posts videos of himself shooting an assault rifle overlaid with calming, classical piano music.
He’s also the kind of guy who uses infallible logic to take down the NRA naysayers — like in his latest post, in which he explains that fear-mongering on the part of anti-gun advocates is like when a doctor tells you to stop smoking because it will give you cancer, and you call him a fear mongerer. Colion rightly notes that the doctor would think you were an idiot, because the doctor is warning you about something that might kill you, based on statistical analysis. So you should probably stop smoking because there’s a fair chance that you’ll die. It’s sort of like when you don’t remove guns from the general public. Wait, what?
If you, like me, were wondering if he was arguing for or against guns in that video, he clarifies his stance here.
The NRA’s Glowing Social Media Record
Remember that time the NRA tweeted this, mere hours after the Aurora shootings?
They clearly have a solid social media strategy in place over at their headquarters. And like a kid that goes into a shame spiral after eating the entire jar of Tim Tams, they followed that bungle with a social media blackout after the Sandy Hook shootings only six months later.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t stay away from the cookie jar for long, making their re-entry into polite society by blaming the Sandy Hook shootings on Hurricane Sandy, video games, celebrities, music videos and President Obama. Wait, you didn’t think GUNS had anything to do with a 20 year-old gunning down 20 children and six adults at a primary school using his mother’s Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, did you?
We mustn’t laugh, though. It’s incredibly difficult to push a complex, politically sensitive agenda like gun ownership among young people. So how can the NRA get the youth onside? Hire an African-American host and make him repeatedly use the word swag? Reference upwardly mobile youth brands like Nike? Yep, that ought to do it.
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Here are the five best moments:
1. When They Complain About Dropping Five Grand On A Sick Gun That Comes In A Cardboard Box
CN: Why the hell do I have to call up a guy to cerakote [custom paint job] my gun like I’m making some back alley drug deal? I can get on nike.com right now and make a pair of shoes with more colours than a Colors of Benetton ad… It pissed me off, too. I want a nice box, I don’t want the Build-a-Bear beginning set of a homeless guy’s apartment.
AR: I get Lululemon headbands in better packaging than that. Like, the packaging is SO NICE that I don’t even throw it away. And they remind me to drink water every day! They make it really cute and that’s what the gun industry is missing!
2. When They Awkwardly Reference That Gross, Pretty-Much-Porn Website worldstartwerking.com
CN: We’ll talk about how using Google Glass is going to make your next Worldstar moment THAT much cooler.
AR: You actually think somebody in a Worldstar twerking video is wearing Google Glass?… Can you show me how you would be able to twerk with Google Glass on?
3. When They Explain Why Hilary And Bill Clearly Don’t Have Sex Anymore
CN: It’s pretty blatant that Hillary is no longer sleeping with Bill Clinton because if she were, he would inform her that this whole gun issue thing, and trying to walk this elusive line of gun control but still for the Second Amendment rights, is probably not the smartest thing to do.
[Cut to two minutes of gun porn and planes(?) with piano music overlaid. Have token female host adjust her skirt just in time for more gratuitously sexist discussion about hotties with bodies.]
4. When They Explain Why A Billionaire Philanthropist Is ‘Lame’
CN: Is it me or is Mayor Bloomberg the lamest billionaire on the planet? If I were a billionaire, I’d be on Dan Bilzerian’s boat trying to convince the gorgeously tanned bombshell that I really do love her for her personality.
AR: Okay, I LOVE that you called him the world’s lamest billionaire. It’s so true!
5. When They Drop Some Awkward, Gratuitous Product Placement
CN: The Smith & Wesson M&P Shield is the Will Smith of the gun world. It’s the gun even an anti-gunner would love. It’s the most politically correct gun on the planet…a gun for the city urbanite, who makes frequent trips to the CVS at the bottom of his loft because he refuses to buy food from the natural grocery store…for the 24-year-old bombshell whose idea of acceptable grocery store attire is a pair of yoga tights and a T-shirt.
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