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Dramatic increase of mass shooting. (Statistics)

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How mass shootings hurt NRA's business deals.

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The aftermath of a mass shooting in America is tragically familiar. After the shock and grief, advocates push lawmakers to pass stricter gun laws. The NRA stands its ground. Nothing really changes.

But something else is happening after the attack at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

People are pushing companies to cut ties with the powerful gun lobby. Advocates are targeting not weapons makers, but banks, rental car agencies, airlines, insurers and other companies with ties to the NRA.

"Americans have had it," said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a group that calls for gun law reform. "This feels like a different energy level," she added.

Related: These companies have cut ties with the NRA

In many cases, the pressure is working.

Delta is ending discounted rates for members of the organization. United Airlines will no longer offer discounts on flights to the NRA annual meeting.

Enterprise Holdings, which runs the Enterprise, Alamo and National car rental groups, will end the discount deal it has with the NRA. So will Avis Budget Group , which owns Avis and Budget, and Hertz .

Similarly, insurance giant MetLife is ending its discount program for NRA members.

The First National Bank of Omaha pledged to stop issuing an NRA-branded Visa card.

The National Rifle Association released a statement on Saturday saying companies "have decided to punish NRA membership in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice."

"In time, these brands will be replaced by others who recognize that patriotism and determined commitment to Constitutional freedoms are characteristics of a marketplace they very much want to serve," the NRA said.

At this point, businesses that work with the NRA are putting their relationships with customers at risk, said William Klepper, a professor at the Columbia Business School.

"Boards and their CEOs ... are saying, 'This is bad for business,'" he said.

Related: A cloud hangs over the gun industry

Consumers are focusing their attention on businesses that work with the NRA, but gunmakers are losing customers, too.

After hearing from their clients, the giant investment management company BlackRock told gunmakers that it wants to understand their response to the shooting.

The firm is the largest shareholder in weapons manufacturers Sturm Ruger and American Outdoor Brands . It is the second-largest shareholder in Vista Outdoor , which makes sporting goods and guns.

Its questions are certain to let the gun companies know they're paying attention.

Bank of America also said it will question gunmakers.

The bank plans "to engage the limited number of clients we have that manufacture assault weapons for non-military use to understand what they can contribute to this shared responsibility," it said in a statement.

"There are some institutional investors who are going to say, 'There's got to be greener pastures,'" Brian Rafn, a gun industry analyst for Morgan Dempsey, said.

Related: Gun safety groups want Apple TV and Amazon Fire to pull NRATV

Shares of American Outdoor Brands have dropped 8% since the day after the shooting. Vista Outdoor, which makes guns and ammunition, has declined 7%. Sturm Ruger is down slightly. All while the broader market has risen.

Gun makers were already suffering from weak sales before Parkland. Sturm Ruger reported a double-digit decline in sales and earnings on Wednesday and said it cut 700 jobs over the last year.

For Watts, targeting companies is a way to pressure Washington and effect broader change.

"What companies do impacts the way that lawmakers think," she said.

Klepper thinks that citizens have started to see corporations as "more reliable responders than government."

"More and more," he said, "business leaders are becoming the voice of principled society."

- CNN's Aaron Smith, Nathaniel Meyersohn and Jackie Wattles contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (New York) First published February 25, 2018: 8:27 AM ET

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But something else is happening after the attack at a high school in Parkland, Florida. People are pushing companies to cut ties with the powerful gun lobby. Advocates are targeting not weapons makers, but banks, rental car agencies, airlines, insurers and other companies with ties to the NRA.

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Companies ending deals with NRA.

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As a groundswell grows against the National Rifle Association in the aftermath of last week's school massacre in Parkland, Fla., several businesses say they are ending their partnerships with the gun advocacy group.

The brands - ranging from insurance companies to airlines to rental car agencies - announced their decisions on social media, many apparently in direct response to tweets demanding change under the trending hashtag #boycottNRA.

Activists are seeking to name and shame business affiliates of the group.

On its website the NRA says, "It pays to be a member! Get back hundreds of dollars more than you pay in dues" and offers "benefits" running the gamut from home and auto insurance to prescription drug discounts to the " Official Wine Club of the NRA."

By Saturday, Delta and United Airlines both joined a growing list of companies distancing themselves from the NRA. Both said they would no longer offer discounts to members.

First National Bank of Omaha got the ball rolling on Thursday when it announced via tweet that it "will not renew its contract with the National Rifle Association to issue the NRA Visa Card." It was responding to a tweet saying "Please END your relationship with the @NRA. #NRABloodOnYourHands." The bank said "customer feedback" spurred it to review its relationship.

A day later, Symantec, the cybersecurity company, said it had halted its NRA discount program.

About an hour after that, insurance company MetLife followed suit, tweeting, "We value all our customers but have decided to end our discount program with the NRA."

Then rental car companies hopped on board. Enterprise Holdings, which owns and operates car rental agencies Alamo, Enterprise and National, announced via tweets Friday from each brand's account that by March 26, it would sever its NRA member discount program.

Hertz's move came later in the day.

And the list went on.

On Tuesday, ThinkProgress, a project of the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund, published a list of some two dozen "corporate partners" that offer incentives to NRA members. ThinkProgess says it asked all of the corporations "whether they plan to continue their relationships with the gun lobby. A growing number of those companies have ended their relationship with the NRA since this list was initially published."

By their count, more than a dozen have already ended their relationships.

Company spokespeople reached by NPR would not elaborate on the announcements.

In a statement released Saturday, the NRA said the companies were punishing NRA members, "in a shameful display of political and civic cowardice. In time, these brands will be replaced by others who recognize that patriotism and determined commitment to Constitutional freedoms are characteristics of a marketplace they very much want to serve."

The statement went on, "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."

Many social media users have maintained their support for the group, which says it has 5 million members. Some said they would boycott the companies severing ties with the NRA.

There are only 5 million NRA members but over 300 million of us! Businesses have a choice whose business they prefer. We are watching. #BoycottNRA
- (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) February 23, 2018

I will not #BoycottNRA. In fact, I will be renewing my membership and so will millions of other Americans. 💯
- Danny Kampf (@BleedingRedDan) February 23, 2018

The Huffington Post reports that several companies are continuing to stick by the NRA.

But it is not a novelty for companies to distance themselves from the group after mass shootings.

ThinkProgress reports Wyndham Worldwide stopped offering NRA discounts after a pressure campaign in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012.

But the parent company of major hotel brands including Travelodge, Howard Johnson, Ramada and Days Inn emphasized the distance by tweeting Friday that it "is no longer affiliated with the NRA."

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre addressed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday and spoke of "the breakneck speed for gun control laws," following the Florida shooting. "As usual, the opportunists wasted not one second to exploit tragedy for political gain," he said.

Meanwhile, some teachers in Florida were unsettled to learn earlier this week that the retirement funds to which they've been contributing invest in the gun company that produced the weapon used in the Parkland attack. Bloomberg News reports the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan held more than 41,000 shares in American Outdoor Brands Corp. (formerly Smith & Wesson), maker of the AR-15 rifle used by the shooter.

The president of the Florida teachers union has called for the fund to divest itself of shares. But The Washington Post reports that a spokesman with the state pension fund said that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Student survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 of their classmates and educators dead are also using their platform to increase pressure on the NRA.

On Wednesday, at a CNN town hall, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio broke with an NRA stance when he announced he would support raising the age from 18 to 21 for "buying a rifle." He was responding to a question from student survivor Cameron Kasky. However, during the same exchange, Rubio refused to say he would renounce NRA donations. (Rubio has earned the NRA's highest rating, A+.)

Demonstrations by Stoneman Douglas survivors have mobilized students across the country, who have been protesting, staging school walkouts and calling on legislators to act.

" March for Our Lives," a national rally, is planned in Washington, D.C., on March 24.

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One By One, Companies Cut Ties With The NRA

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As a groundswell grows against the National Rifle Association in the aftermath of last week's school massacre in Parkland, Fla., several businesses say they are ending their partnerships with the gun advocacy group. The brands - ranging from insurance companies to airlines to rental car agencies - announced their decisions on social media, many apparently in direct response to tweets demanding change under the trending hashtag #boycottNRA.

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Multiple companies changing age to purchase firearms.

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Earlier, President Trump met at the White House with a bipartisan group of lawmakers and called for a series of gun control measures, some of which the National Rifle Association has vigorously opposed.

Walmart and Dick's acted after a number of major companies moved last week to dissociate themselves from the N.R.A. Hertz car rental, MetLife insurance and Delta Air Lines, among others, publicly ended their relationships with the organization.

In a news release late Wednesday, Walmart noted that in 2015 it discontinued the sale of high-powered rifles, including AR-15-style weapons, in its stores in the United States. But at the time, Walmart sidestepped any controversy involving gun politics, attributing its decision to lower customer demand for the military-style rifles.

This time, Walmart directly linked its action to the shooting in Florida, saying, "In light of recent events, we've taken an opportunity to review our policy on firearm sales."

Top Walmart executives made the decision and then informed the board, a company spokesman said.

Walmart sells guns in roughly half of its nearly 4,000 supercenters, the company said, but the sheer scale of its customer base gives its decision significant heft. Every week, more than 150 million people around the country shop at Walmart.

Dick's decision was announced by Edward Stack, the 63-year-old chief executive whose father founded the store in 1948. Mr. Stack made clear that he was deliberately steering his company directly into the storm over gun reform.

"When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset," Mr. Stack said in an interview. "We love these kids and their rallying cry, 'Enough is enough.' It got to us."

He added, "We're going to take a stand and step up and tell people our view and, hopefully, bring people along into the conversation."

The decision drew immediate - and passionate - reaction on social media. By midday, the number of Twitter messages containing Dick's name had jumped 12,000 percent from the average over the previous 10 days, according to Sprout Social, a social media management, advocacy and analytics software platform.

About 79 percent of the tweets had a positive sentiment, Sprout Social said, including supportive messages from Hollywood actors and actresses.

But the company's critics posted their plans to no longer shop at the retailer, some closing their tweets with "#boycott."

Investors did not appear to worry about a backlash, as Dick's stock spent much of Wednesday trading about 1.8 percent higher before finishing up 0.69 percent.

Mr. Stack said Dick's hoped to move the conversation beyond social media and into the political realm. As part of its stance, the company is calling on elected officials to pass what it called "common sense gun reform": raising the minimum age to buy guns to 21, banning assault-type weapons and so-called bump stocks, and conducting broader background checks that include mental-health information and previous interactions with law enforcement.

This is not the first time that Dick's has made changes in response to a school massacre. In 2012, after a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Dick's removed assault-style rifles from its main stores. But a few months later, the company began carrying the firearms at its outdoor and hunting retail chain, Field & Stream.

As of Wednesday morning, the company said, AR-15-style and other semiautomatic rifles will no longer be sold in its 35 Field & Stream stores or on its websites. And this time, Mr. Stack added, the changes will be permanent.

Mr. Stack said the retailer had begun scouring its purchase records shortly after the identity of the suspected Parkland killer, Nikolas Cruz, became known. The company soon discovered that it had legally sold a gun to Mr. Cruz in November, though it was not the type used in the school shooting.

"But it came to us that we could have been a part of this story," Mr. Stack said. "We said, 'We don't want to be a part of this any longer.'"

That response raised rounds of discussions with the company's top executives and its directors, all of whom backed the decision to take a stand, Mr. Stack said.

He said Dick's remained a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment and would continue to sell a variety of sport and hunting firearms. Although he has never been a member of the N.R.A., Mr. Stack said, he is a gun owner and enjoys trapshooting.

But when it comes to selling guns to individuals under 21 or stocking assault-style rifles, Mr. Stack said, his company is done. "We don't want to be a part of a mass shooting," he said.

The company said that it had not decided what to do with its inventory of assault-style rifles but that they would not be sold in the marketplace.

Legal experts said they saw no likely challenges to Dick's decision to stop selling assault-style rifles. But the decision to stop selling weapons to anyone under 21, however, could be tested in court.

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles, said Dick's could be challenged in lawsuits claiming a violation of laws that bar age discrimination. Although federal civil rights laws do not apply, some states, including New York, prohibit businesses from denying goods and services on the basis of age.

"Don't be surprised if an aggressive attorney general of a gun-friendly state brings an age-discrimination claim against Dick's," Professor Winkler wrote in an email response to questions.

The company said that it believed its decision was in accordance with the law and that it was instituting the policy immediately.

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Walmart and Dick's Raise Minimum Age for Gun Buyers to 21

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Earlier, President Trump met at the White House with a bipartisan group of lawmakers and called for a series of gun control measures, some of which the National Rifle Association has vigorously opposed. Walmart and Dick's acted after a number of major companies moved last week to dissociate themselves from the N.R.A.

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Is enough finally enough? Gun Debate after latest mass shooting.

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Is this the moment when the politics of guns shifts? Since the fatal shooting of seventeen students and staff members last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, advocates of stricter gun laws have been asking that question, with the wary hopefulness of people who, time and again, have seen such turning points lead nowhere. This moment does feel different, though, largely because the teen-age survivors of the Parkland shooting have commanded the national stage with their raw and righteous indignation.

Last week, they got a real response, though so far it has come more from businesses than from elected representatives. The nationwide sporting-goods chain Dick's announced that it would no longer carry assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, and would not sell guns to people under the age of twenty-one, regardless of local laws. The company's C.E.O., Edward Stack, told the Times, "We love these kids and their rallying cry 'Enough is enough.' It got to us." By the end of the week, Kroger and Walmart had said that their stores, too, would no longer sell guns to customers younger than twenty-one.

Meanwhile, President Trump startled senators and representatives in a meeting at the White House last Wednesday by telling them that he wanted to revive a bill mandating universal background checks for gun buyers, chiding them for being frightened of the N.R.A., and saying that, in some situations, he was in favor of taking people's guns away first, and asking questions later. This was particularly outlandish, given his ties to the N.R.A. and his enthusiasm for arming schoolteachers, not to mention the fact that, a day later, he was back tweeting "Good (Great) meeting tonight at the Oval Office with the NRA!"

But his remarks matter, anyway. The primitive sensors by which Donald Trump divides the world into winners and losers were telling him that for now, at least, the proponents of unfettered gun rights smell like losers. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted last week, eighty-eight per cent of Americans now support universal background checks, eighty-one per cent think that a person should be at least twenty-one in order to buy a gun, seventy per cent endorse a ban on high-capacity magazines, and sixty-eight per cent support a ban on assault-style weapons.

Still, gun-control advocates might not want to place too much hope in any single moment, even this one. They will have to play a long game, made up of many moments. That's what their opponents have done. Matthew Lacombe, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University, has been analyzing the N.R.A.'s rhetoric over the decades in editorials and letters to the editor that have appeared in its magazine, The American Rifleman. The organization's leaders and members used a remarkably consistent series of words to describe their identity: "law-abiding," "peaceable," "patriotic," "freedom-loving," and "average citizens." Their opponents were "un-American," "tyrannical," "Communist," and "élitist." Wayne LaPierre, the president of the N.R.A., echoed this language in a speech last week at the Conservative Political Action Committee, invoking a Democratic Party "infested with saboteurs who don't believe in capitalism, don't believe in the Constitution, don't believe in our freedom, and don't believe in America as we know it."

The N.R.A. has been honing its message since the nineteen-thirties, when it first became visible on the national scene, fighting federal legislation that mandated an early gun-registration and dealer-licensing system. "By the time the bill emerged from the lawmaking process," the political scientist Carol Skalnik Leff and the historian Mark Leff write, it had been "gutted-stripped of its handgun clauses and revised in line with the objections of the National Rifle Association."

The N.R.A.'s advantage isn't only its ability to donate to candidates or to pay for expensive lobbyists and ads, though that is formidable. It spent four hundred and nineteen million dollars in the 2016 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which reports that "career NRA support for some members of the 115th Congress now reaches well into the seven-figure range." It spent more than thirty million dollars supporting Trump's campaign.

But the organization also benefits from its unequivocal rejection of virtually all gun regulations, and from the way that certainty resonates. Most gun owners are not N.R.A. members, but, according to Gallup, people who want lenient gun laws are significantly more likely to be single-issue voters than those who want stricter laws. Gun owners are also more likely than non-gun owners to have contacted a public official about gun policy.

All kinds of people own guns, for all kinds of reasons. Still, some demographic features of gun ownership tend to reinforce a particular political posture. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that forty-eight per cent of white men own a gun, compared with twenty-five per cent of white women, twenty-five per cent of non-white men, and sixteen per cent of non-white women. Gun owners are far more likely to live in rural areas. Forty-one per cent of whites with a bachelor's degree are gun owners, versus twenty-six per cent of whites with a more advanced degree. Half of all gun owners say that ownership is essential to their identity.

Fear is a factor: nearly half of male gun owners and almost a third of female owners say that they have a loaded gun "easily accessible to them at all times at home." According to the Pew study, "There is a significant link between owning a gun for protection and perceptions of whether the world broadly speaking has become more dangerous." Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist who interviewed male gun owners in Michigan, found that many of them considered firearms crucial to reclaiming a sense of purpose, especially if they were no longer breadwinners.

Security, nostalgia for an era of unchallenged privilege, a sense of beleaguered white masculinity: these are powerful forces. They helped get Donald Trump elected. Advocacy for gun-control laws may never provide the same single-minded identity that politicized gun ownership seems to exert. But this year, again thanks in part to the Parkland students, it's beginning to take a stronger hold. People who want this moment to mean something should remember that they are the majority, and that they, too, can choose, for however long it takes, to be single-issue voters. ♦

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Is this the moment when the politics of guns shifts? Since the fatal shooting of seventeen students and staff members last month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, advocates of stricter gun laws have been asking that question, with the wary hopefulness of people who, time and again, have seen such turning points lead nowhere.

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Florida teens making their voices heard in gun control debate.

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Imagine going to school, or a club or program when your classes are done for the day. Sure, your behavior is being watched by teachers and program leaders - but imagine if some of them were also asked to report any supposedly suspicious behavior to the police.

For some of those impacted by a government program called Countering Violent Extremism, this is not imagination, it's real life. CVE is a government program started by the Obama administration in 2014, that builds initiatives meant to prevent radicalization with regard to terrorism, and does so by building partnerships with organizations, programs, and faith leaders, while funding, monitoring, and collecting information on these endeavors. And yes, youths are affected by this, too. In Minneapolis in particular, where CVE's main target is the Somali community, which is comprised largely of refugees who are black and Muslim, one partner of the program is Minneapolis Public Schools.

However, as a recent report from the NYU School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice claims, CVE programs are "built on two shaky premises":

The first is that extremist ideology is a precursor to, and driver of, terrorism. While this proposition has some intuitive appeal, it has been disproven by decades of empirical research. Many people hold views that can be described as "extreme and never act violently; the reverse is also true. The second premise is that there is a predictable path toward terrorism with clear markers that can be used to identify potential terrorists. This notion has also been repeatedly debunked by empirical research.

This program is also accused by many groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), of targeting Muslims in particular. "Observers note that CVE is generally driven by news events, that the current program exclusively targets American Muslims and find that claims that the government is targeting all forms of violent extremism are inconsistently supported," CAIR writes on its website. "There are arguments that the current CVE initiative undermines our national ideals, such as government not having a role in the free exercise of religion." And as the Brennan Center for Justice report points out, "teachers and psychologists have sounded the alarm about CVE. The nation's second-largest teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers objected strongly to an FBI CVE program, describing it as 'ideological profiling and surveillance' that would have 'a chilling effect on our schools and immigrant communities, jeopardizing children's sense of safety and well-being and threatening the security and sense of trust of entire communities.'" Teen Vogue reached out to the Department of Justice for comment regarding these allegations.

CVE follows a legacy of counter-terrorism programs and policy, including the National Security Exit-Entry Registration System (or NSEERS), which was a program created in 2002 by the Bush Administration and officially axed by President Obama during his final days in office that was meant to prevent terrorist attacks by tracking male immigrants from 25 mainly Muslim-majority countries. And consider that CVE resembles former FBI programs like COINTELPRO, which is a domestic counterintelligence program that lasted from 1956 to 1971 and initially started to "disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States," according to the FBI's website.

Community members, like youth organizer Ayaan Dahir, believe CVE not only engages in profiling, but that they are also dehumanizing. And, according to a secret FBI report, as The Intercept reported out in 2016, "It can be difficult, if not impossible, to predict for any given individual what factor or combination of factors will prompt that individual's radicalization or mobilization to violence."

In Minnesota, a nonprofit organization named Youthprise is in charge of managing and redistributing CVE money through grants. However, in February of this year, Youthprise was the target of protesters challenging the organization's participation in CVE. When asked about this, Youthprise told Teen Vogue: "We are committing to continued investment in the Somali community. We are committing to working with Somali youth to make decisions about what these investments should look like. We are committing to helping dismantle Islamophobia and to supporting Somali youth. We are committing to seeking funds aligned with our values rooted in positive youth development. We are committing to not seeking funding that is tied to deficit-driven anti-radicalization purposes."

In the Twin Cities, it is Somali youth who are making noise against CVE. Two youth groups doing this work include the Young Muslim Collective and the Anti-CVE Campaign. Young Muslim Collective, started in February of 2016, is a coalition of students from the Twin Cities area, and was started to create change and address the struggles of marginalized Muslims in Minnesota. They have done this by hosting community events about CVE, organizing actions around CVE and Islamophobia, and hosting vigils for victims of Islamophobia.

Meanwhile, the Anti-CVE Campaign is an initiative started in June 2016 predominantly by Minneapolis-area high school students. They, too, have organized protests around CVE, and taught workshops about the policy and Islamophobia around the Twin Cities. Both of these groups, are majority black, entirely Muslim, and all youth.

Most recently, in June, Young Muslim Collective hosted a vigil in honor of Nabra Hassanen, Philando Castile, Charleena Lyles, and the victims of the Finsbury Park attack and Grenfell Tower fire. In addition to organizing panels and protests, they also celebrate the beauty in being young, black, and Muslim by hosting Iftars (the meal that breaks fast at sundown during the holy month of Ramadan), classes, and hosting events to dissect all the ways race and faith intersect.

"[CVE] directly affects my community, because of the pilot programs that were brought into my community and into the nonprofits that directly affect my community," Anti-CVE Campaign leader Mahamed Salad, a rising senior at Minneapolis South High, tells Teen Vogue. "Systematic Islamophobia or oppression has affected me my whole life, in regards to just me day to day being questioned and being asked like why I am in America or why I am doing the things I do." He adds that obstacles are ever-present in his organizing - "as a Muslim, for sure, and as an immigrant, those two things definitely affect me," he says.

"Because of my age, people kind of look at youth and say, oh these kids only care about the latest iPhone, or sports, and things like that, and sometimes it's true. But they don't see that we also have intellect and insight, and bright ideas and bright minds ... and that we are just as much a part of this community as anyone else," he adds.

Ayaan Dahir of Young Muslim Collective, tells Teen Vogue that the best advice she would offer young people wanting to make a difference in their community is to educate themselves about the problem first. "I know when you first really understand an issue and you start uncovering something that is not obvious, there is an overwhelming urge to move and act. But your action needs to be coupled with education. You can't undo a system you don't understand," Ayaan says. "Read, read, and read again. Be critical of everything you read and let your personal experience inform your education. And then act. There is no blueprint, no how-to guide, or GPS on what you should do in your exact moment. The only way to learn what works is to learn what doesn't."

Don't fear taking missteps, Ayaan adds: "If you're a human being, you are 100% likely to be wrong on something. It is up to you to choose how you will apply your knowledge to the movement and what role you want to take on."

Related: Watch Muslim Girls Get REAL About Love, Faith, and Donald Trump
Check this out:

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These Teens Are Making Their Voices Heard Against a Government Program They Say Fuels Islamophobia

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Imagine going to school, or a club or program when your classes are done for the day. Sure, your behavior is being watched by teachers and program leaders - but imagine if some of them were also asked to report any supposedly suspicious behavior to the police.

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What Americans on Social media think about gun control.

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If you watched CNN's emotionally charged town hall presentation on gun violence Wednesday night - titled "Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action" - I'm sorry.

No, really. I am genuinely sorry. Televised political "town halls" tend to be awkward, terrible, stilted, cringe-inducing and wildly artificial showboating affairs. We can thank President Jimmy Carter for pioneering this nightmarish trend in 1977, and President Bill Clinton for cheerfully carrying it forward to torture us through the 1990s. But a televised political town hall dedicated to gun violence, held just days after a horrific high school mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. - and populated by grieving parents and students - could only serve as a recipe for misery.

If you did watch it, however, you may have noticed something odd, creeping out from behind the obviously distressing subject matter. Our political dialogue, it seems, has become increasingly Twitterized.

Twitter, of course, is that infamous online chaos pool that many journalists regularly swear they'll abandon for good, only to come crawling back like a beleaguered country-song barfly to that beautiful bluejeaned girl with the big-city dreams and frequently cheating heart. In the world of Twitter, snap judgments rule. Tribalism reigns. It is a world of blaring headlines, void of context, and the blaring headlines often serve as a simple excuse to yell. It is a place where public shaming, "dragging" and ganging up on people is widely accepted.

It is a place where nothing gets achieved, few to zero problems are fixed and very little constructive dialogue ever takes place. Ever.

Not everyone in America is on Twitter, thank goodness, but its signature style seems to be catching on. So on Wednesday, a high school junior took to the CNN stage and launched into Sen. Marco Rubio with the following line: "It's hard to look at you and not look down the barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz."

Wait. What? Weirdly, nobody on the stage even seemed to flinch. Cruz, of course, is the alleged gunman who killed 17 people at the Florida high school. Rubio, on the other hand, is a deer-in-the-headlights politician who was surely berating himself for falling for the oldest trick in the book, participating in a televised political town hall.

That same student went on to declare that when it comes to guns, we should split the world between people who "want to make a difference" and people who simply "prefer money." Ah. OK. Judging by the applause, making a difference would involve banning "every semi-automatic rifle that's sold in America" - a decidedly unconstitutional idea that inspired enthusiastic cheers. Strangely, making a difference apparently does not involve spending a great deal of time questioning why multiple law-enforcement officials were warned repeatedly about the shooter - and his very specific threat to kill people at his school - to no avail. That, after all, is uncomfortable and complicated. America, you've been Twitterized.

Or take National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch, another guest at the town hall, who earned an impressive crop of nonsensical boos. When Loesch suggested strengthening the background check system, she was booed. When she noted that guns are important for women's self-defense, she was booed. At one point, an audience member shouted that she was a "murderer." Had Loesch promised everyone a new car, Oprah-style, she probably would have been booed as well.

On the flip side, the NRA apparently has decided that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Here's the organization's bold new talking point, launched through a promotional video and at the Conservative Political Action Conference: "The mainstream media loves mass shootings." Wait. What? Look, I support the Second Amendment, and I own guns, but somebody needs to pull the NRA aside and gently tell them that this behavior is unbecoming and even a little insane. (It would look right at home, of course, on Twitter.)

Here's the thing: In the wake of mass shootings - in the wake of that horrifying, sinking "not again" gut feeling shared by almost every single person nationwide - I understand why people want to ban certain guns. I disagree with the idea, but I understand it.

Here's my worry: In our increasingly Twitterized nation, that relatively simple concept - "I disagree with the idea, but I understand it" - seems to be an increasingly endangered thought process. Political insults, of course, are nothing new. But just earlier this month, New York Times columnist David Brooks earned widespread scorn and evisceration for a rather mild column suggesting that all Americans, including law-abiding gun owners, are worthy of respect. Yikes.

This is disappointing, because there are concrete steps we can take to try to tackle gun violence - and perhaps even some that could be accepted on both sides of the aisle. At National Review, for instance, David French has offered a substantial proposal for gun-violence restraining orders, which would stop people like Cruz from getting weapons in the first place. Could we discuss it without yelling or booing or heckling or immediately dismissing it out of hand, in the grand style of Twitter dot com?

Let's hope so. It's really not that hard to do.
National Review Heather Wilhelm is a columnist for National Review Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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If you watched CNN's emotionally charged town hall presentation on gun violence Wednesday night - titled "Stand Up: The Students of Stoneman Douglas Demand Action" - I'm sorry. No, really. I am genuinely sorry. Televised political "town halls" tend to be awkward, terrible, stilted, cringe-inducing and wildly artificial showboating affairs.

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Gun limit bill and ties cut to NRA

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The N.R.A. asserted that the law was a particularly egregious violation of the rights of young women, who they contended "pose a relatively slight risk of perpetrating a school shooting such as the one that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or, for that matter, a violent crime of any kind."

Standing with a group of families who had traveled to the State Capitol from Parkland, an emotional Mr. Scott called the classmates of the slain students and their parents his inspiration, and praised them for helping persuade lawmakers to pass legislation, even if neither they nor he agreed with all of its provisions.

"You made your voices heard," he told the Stoneman Douglas High students. "You helped change your state. You made a difference. You should be proud."

Outside of Tallahassee, the law might not look that groundbreaking: It does not go as far as laws enacted by other more Democratic-leaning states after deadly shootings. Connecticut expanded a ban on assault weapons, prohibited the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines and imposed stricter background checks on gun purchases after 20 children and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in 2012. Colorado required background checks for private gun sales and limited magazines after 12 people were killed at a movie theater in 2012.

But this is Florida, a laboratory for the N.R.A. and a state that has become recognized for its consistent efforts under legislative Republican control since 1996 to expand gun rights. For example, residents only have to comply with a simple protocol to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons. And Florida has embraced "Stand Your Ground" laws that protect the use of deadly force in public.

That such a gun-friendly state adopted any firearm restrictions represents a sea change, even more so as the restrictions were drafted and approved in a matter of three weeks, after a bipartisan vote and the signature of a Republican governor likely to be on the ballot later this year as a Senate candidate.

"If you would have had this conversation with me before session, I would've said it's just not going to happen," said Senator René García, a moderate Republican from the Miami area who has served 16 years in the Legislature. "Not only did we get this bill passed, but the fact that we had debate on these amendments on the floor was huge. I don't remember having these debates on the floor ever before."

The N.R.A. has had to contend with other states also considering action since the Parkland shooting. In Illinois, lawmakers passed a bill last week that would require gun dealers to be licensed by the state, but it was not clear whether the Republican governor would sign it into law. In Vermont, lawmakers advanced legislation that would raise the minimum age to buy a gun to 21 and allow for judges to seize guns from people deemed dangerous.

Elsewhere, legislators took steps toward expanding the legal use of firearms. In Mississippi, state senators approved a bill on Wednesday that would allow trained school employees to carry concealed weapons. And in Missouri, a House committee last week advanced a bill that would allow people with concealed-carry permits to have a weapon in so-called gun-free zones.

The law's passage came as a surprise to many in Florida, where lawmakers had failed to enact legislation after the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016, which left 49 dead, and the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport that killed five people in 2017. The governor mentioned both crimes on Friday.

Lawmakers like Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, voted against the bill because it did not include a ban on assault weapons or other broad measures sought by survivors of all the shootings.

"The bill doesn't deal with the real problem at all: The problem is guns," he said.

On the other side of the debate, lawmakers from the most conservative rural districts and Republicans seeking statewide office in contested primaries opposed the new law, saying it trampled on Second Amendment rights.

"I just can't imagine that Nikolas Cruz can commit such a heinous crime and then, as a result, we tell potentially a 20-year-old single mother living alone that she cannot purchase a firearm to protect herself," Representative Jay Fant of Jacksonville, a Republican running for attorney general, said on the House floor.

Mr. Scott can afford to break with the gun lobby now because he is unlikely to face a Republican primary in his expected Senate campaign against Bill Nelson, the Democratic incumbent, in the midterms in November. In signing the bill, Mr. Scott offered a glimpse at how he might use the legislation in the coming campaign to paint Congress as ineffective.

"If you look at the federal government, nothing seems to happen there," Mr. Scott said, noting he was enacting legislation just three weeks and two days after the rampage. "That's how government should work."

Mr. Scott remains opposed to the provision in the law that the N.R.A. has been seeking for years: Allowing for certain teachers and school staff to be armed on campus. But he called the legislation a compromise and noted that the so-called guardian program is voluntary: "If counties do not want to do this, they simply can say no." The state's largest and most urban school districts are expected to do just that.

In Tallahassee, the families who joined Mr. Scott chose Tony Montalto, whose daughter, Gina, was killed in the Parkland shooting, to deliver a statement calling the legislation "an important first step to enhance the safety of our schools."

"When it comes to preventing future acts of horrific school violence, this is the beginning of the journey," Mr. Montalto said. "We have paid a terrible price for this progress."

Rebecca Schneid, 16, the editor of The Eagle Eye, the Stoneman Douglas High student newspaper, also applauded the bill, even while admitting it was "not perfect."

"I never really expected to get something done so fast," she said. "We've been calling them out, and that really scared them. And that's scaring them into making sure they actually do represent us. They know that if they don't, we're going to vote them out."

"We're going to keep sending people to Tallahassee," she went on, "because when we go away, this goes away."

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Florida Governor Signs Gun Limits Into Law, Breaking With the N.R.A.

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The N.R.A. asserted that the law was a particularly egregious violation of the rights of young women, who they contended "pose a relatively slight risk of perpetrating a school shooting such as the one that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or, for that matter, a violent crime of any kind."

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Trump's solution to school shootings.

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Trump's Gun Plan to Include Encouraging States to Allow Armed School Staff

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The White House is preparing to release a plan on guns Sunday that would incorporate several proposals aimed at school safety.

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Police on scene post shooting.

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This is the man responsible for the school shooting.

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Americans have easy access to military grade weapons.

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Citizens taking a stand.