Are the NRA's corporate partners and boycott urging critics stifling its free speech?

Businesses have been dropping the organisation like a hot potato in the wake of the Florida shootings amid calls for a boycott of those that are still on board

NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre. Corporate partners have been dropping the organisation (Getty Images)

Deliver Us From Evil, said the New York Daily News’ front page next to a mocked up FedEx logo that instead read GunEx.

The headline called out the iconic delivery company for its continued partnership with America’s National Rifle Association in the wake of the mass shooting that left 17 dead at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

A growing number business partners of the NRA have been dropping the organisation, cancelling the discounts offered to its members, and bringing to an end other activities.

They include airlines Delta and United, car rental companies Hertz and Enterprise, the First National Bank of Omaha, which has pledged to stop issuing an NRA branded Visa card, insurer MetLife, and more besides.

Others, including FedEx, have come under pressure to do the same. So have Amazon, Apple, and YouTube, which carry the organisation’s TV channel and content.

“A shameful display of political and civic cowardice,” was the NRA’s tweeted response to being treated like the proverbial hot potato.

Conservative supporters steamed in behind it. “Free speech squelchers,” declared Michelle Malkin, a high profile right wing commentator. “Mob justice,” said the Red State website, accusing opponents of trying to silence the organisation.

Are they correct?

After its initial silence in the wake of the tragedy, the NRA came out punching, with its chief executive Wayne LaPierre delivering an incendiary speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference last week that accused gun control advocates of engaging in a “socialist plot” while vilifying what he called their “shameful politicisation” of a tragedy.

Meanwhile spokesperson Dana Loesch incredibly claimed that “crying white mothers” were “ratings gold” to “many in the legacy media”.

And there was plenty more like that.

Is it any wonder that businesses, mindful of their brand equity, don’t want to be associated with an organisation that spits that kind of bile at a time when polls show a substantial majority of Americans want tighter gun control. Some 70 per cent, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS between February 20 and February 23.

Partnering with an organisation that engages in such divisive rhetoric is simply bad for business.

Those urging boycotts of the companies that so far think otherwise, meanwhile, aren’t “squelching free speech” or anything like it. They are simply exercising theirs, both as commenters (under the first amendment of the US Constitution), and also as consumers.

The same is true of similar situations, where businesses have either expressed or been associated with objectionable views. People urging boycotts or appealing to partners to drop their associations have every right to do so, in the same way that people have a right to express views that they find objectionable.

Companies thus targeted aren't obligated respond. Nor are their consumers obligated to listen.

So let’s can the talk of Twitter mobs with pitchforks when what we really have here is people expressing their view that a tragedy demands change.

Whether the tech giants should carry the NRA’s channel is, granted, rather more nuanced. This does seem to raise the question of NRA’s right to free speech, and this is an area where one has to tread with great care.

However, let’s be clear here, the companies so mentioned already make value judgements in what they allow to appear on their platforms. They do not offer an absolute right to do as you please to those that make use of them.

You wouldn’t, for example, expect to find hardcore pornography on them. Extremist imams urging young muslims to take up arms against the great Satan would also be liable to get taken down, and with good reason.

Many, notably advertisers, argue that they need to do more to filter out nasty and extremist material because they don’t, understandably, want their names appearing alongside it or to have played a role, however small, in funding it.

Were its channels to be taken down, the NRA would not have been gagged. It would still be able to run its material on its own website, which is what I used to watch Mr LaPierre’s vile speech last week. It isn't hard to find.

What we have here is really a question of whether what he and Ms Loesch have said in the wake of the deaths of 17 children crossed over the line reading objectionable and into something else. Look at what Ms Loesch said. Or listen to Mr Lapierre’s speech. Then ask yourself that question.