Tone-deaf NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch furiously railed against gun restrictions as the country demands an end to gun violence.
Multiple corporations like Dick's Sporting Goods, Walmart, and Kroger are now imposing an age limit of 21 to buy firearms. And the National Rifle Association is furious.
Appearing on Fox News with Martha MacCallum, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch angrily railed against the new policy, employing racist imagery and pivoting to a myth that guns make young women safer from assault or murder, when studies show the opposite.
"The people who are going to be affected by this law, Martha — it's not the 19-year-old gangbanger in Chicago, and it is not the people who have been found mentally unfit and dangerous to themselves and others," said Loesch.
And for all her insistence that an age limit would not save lives, the fact remains that the 19-year-old Parkland shooter bought his gun perfectly legally. Such an age limit would have excluded him from doing so.
A few states are moving to pass laws raising the age to buy a rifle. But the odds of Republican leaders passing such a measure in Congress are next to zero, and Trump backed off the idea after meeting with the NRA. In the states that do not act, major retailers are taking a stand.
Companies imposing new restrictions join the former corporate partners of the NRA who are dumping their alliance to take a stand against gun violence.
The NRA can tell that public pressure is working. All they have left is to rage against the social forces they are rapidly becoming powerless to stop.
