The National Rifle Association's ad campaign is moving in a, uh, bold new artistic direction. While the organization's earlier promotional videos featured spokespeople angrily growling words like "protest" and "comedians" through gritted teeth, a new one out Monday features no scripted lines at all. It's just a TV playing the news, and a grimacing, sledgehammer-toting man who doesn't like it very much.
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This begs a lot of questions. Like, what TV-smashing space is this? Is it rentable, like an Escape the Room situation? Why is it bad for John Oliver to say the words "National Rifle Association"? And what exactly are they labeling "fake" in that montage? (Are they mad about the Diet Cokes? It is Donald Trump's own former campaign manager who has described the president's soda-heavy regimen in excruciating detail.)
Some observations: The HAMMER OF TRUTH is an odd instrument of choice here, especially since we assume everyone on set was armed. Maybe shooting the TV would have been too on the nose, or maybe some kind of permit is required to fire a real gun on camera. Alternatively, perhaps they know that shooting at an image of journalists would be a very, very bad look. But smashing a TV doesn't prove any of those clips wrong—it just means that its owner needs to go to Best Buy tomorrow. CNN is going to keep broadcasting whether you destroy your appliances or not.
The ad is especially baffling because the NRA has precious little to be angry about right now. Rates of gun violence and death in the US are astronomical, which serves both the NRA's interests and also those of the gun manufacturing industry, since mass shootings often cause a spike in gun sales. Congress doesn't have the collective spine to do anything about it even when Democrats are in power. In fact, legislators are currently looking at NRA-backed legislation that would make one state's concealed-carry permits good nationwide, kind of like driver licenses. When the NRA had the chance to talk about it on 60 Minutes, though—with reporters—it still found reason to chicken out.
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To recap: The NRA wants you to be furious about how terribly the media treats both Donald Trump and them, but also, they're too busy smashing flatscreens to talk about anything else.
