The news that Bloomberg’s setting up an “Author’s Council” to push gun control is not much of a surprise. We’ve known that the Left has been leveraging Hollywood against our Second Amendment rights for a long time. But while the NRA has done well to sound the alarm, they’ve left the job half-done.
You see, Bloomberg’s Everytown movement has a “Director of Cultural Engagement” who works with Hollywood. You wonder why Grey’s Anatomy came up with some of the plotlines, and how they are universally anti-gun between a mass shooting at the end of season six and an April 2016 episode? How do you think they do?
It’s been going on for decades. Richard Dean Anderson of MacGyver fame was a big supporter of the Brady Campaign back when it was Handgun Control, Inc. Even as Ed Woodward’s Equalizer used a gun to put down bad guys, he once spouted support for gun control measures.
Does it matter? Consider this: The NRA has five million members. Almost eight million people watched the Grey’s Anatomy season finale last week. That’s a difference of three million – or a little bit over the margin that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by this past November.
Let’s face it – we’re not quite at that level. Even Fox News doesn’t get that much viewership. People also dismiss it. But they will take a TV doctor’s pronouncements seriously – as Cigna played off of in an ad.
So, aside from what looks like a news release bellyaching about this, what is the NRA doing? Where is its effort to influence Hollywood? Or authors, for that matter? Granted, Hollywood runs pretty far left, but some major stars end up on TV – see Tom Selleck, who stars on the show Blue Bloods, which will start season eight this fall. Selleck, a long-time celebrity supporter of the NRA, could help things out. But Selleck is no spring chicken. He’s been an active actor for decades. Who takes over then?
The fact is the NRA has forgotten that pop culture molds minds – while those who want to take our Second Amendment rights have embedded themselves in with icons. When Kim Kardashian tweets out a call for gun control, it reaches 52.3 million followers. The NRA has 444,000 followers. And Kim Kardashian is not the only anti-Second Amendment celebrity with a Twitter account. On social media, the NRA is outgunned.
What does this mean? While replacing Scalia with Gorsuch stabilizes SCOTUS in a narrow pro-Second Amendment margin, and replacing Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginburg, and Stephen Breyer with judges from the list President Trump released during the campaign would give us a pro-Second Amendment majority for a generation, that would likely shift if the teens and young adults of today keep seeing their pop culture icons back those who would take away our Second Amendment rights.
When it comes to pop culture, those supporting the Second Amendment need to play catch-up. We’re way behind. It is very possible to play catch-up in the pop culture front – but the NRA has to start getting involved now. Complaining and pointing out the mistakes is all well and good, but if the NRA doesn’t start figuring out how to increase their reach to match that of Hollywood, then we could find ourselves losing our gun rights.