Watching NRATV, a Life-Style Channel Built on Instruments of Death, After Parkland

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The anchors of the N.R.A.’s digital TV channel, NRATV, including Grant Stinchfield, seek to disqualify gun-control activists as worthy debaters.YouTube

Since the massacre in Parkland, Florida, gun-control activists have pressured Apple, Amazon, and other streaming platforms to drop NRATV, and thereby join other companies that have cut ties with the National Rifle Association. The N.R.A.’s twenty-four-hour digital channel is a remarkable product, marked by an affluent look and a confident monomania; it keeps up the morale of loyalists primed to exalt the N.R.A.’s values, and it delights enthusiasts by investing guns with all of the glamour and valor its producers can muster. The color scheme of the graphics involves a lot of stark white, matte black, and gunmetal gray, with accents in a vigilant shade of yellow, evoking police tape, the border of a National Geographic cover, and the hoarded hopes of gold speculators.

It is a life-style channel built on instruments of death, and the reiteration of sound bites intrinsic to this life style spills over from NRATV’s simulations of a news desk and into a flow of programming in which film of outdoor recreation, chronicles of Second World War battles, and adrenaline-pumping self-defense demos all swirl together. Onscreen, when the letters of the NRATV logo loom into self-promotional view, we see the text of the Second Amendment running along the logo’s graphic grooves, like edge-lettering on a coin.

A talk-show-type host arrives onscreen at the top of each weekday hour. At midday, this is Grant Stinchfield, who wears a 9-millimetre handgun on his hip as he firmly breathes his messages. (The gun, he says, is protection in the event that “evil does come calling.”) Stinchfield favors half-zip pullovers and, like many of the men on NRATV, golf shirts. Some men, more youthful and less square, wear T-shirts printed with words like “Honor” and “Freedom” and “Crush Everything”; in a promo, Stinchfield himself wears a “Socialist Tears” T-shirt and safety goggles while taking a sledgehammer to a TV set that had the temerity to play a John Oliver clip. The men and women of NRATV are alike in manifesting tasteful manicures; the ladies handle their Glocks while wearing princess-pink nail polish.

The Parkland shooting has not plunged NRATV into crisis mode, because its whole philosophy is to be prepared for crises—that’s why Stinchfield’s packing heat in the first place. On Thursday, he pressed one in at a difficult angle. President Trump had artlessly blathered that authorities should “take the guns first, go through due process second” when dealing with citizens prejudged as dangerous. The host needed to repudiate that idea, and he did so while the chyron hailed due process as “the foundation of the Constitution.” Stinchfield assured the audience that Trump’s seeming apostasy was but a small misunderstanding, and that the N.R.A. would talk some sense into a President the show describes—against considerable evidence suggesting otherwise—as “a reasonable man who respects freedom.” All the while, a screen within the screen surged with triumphal images of Washington, D.C., in monochrome, such that its landmarks assumed a severe silver sheen. Between the scheme of the cinematography and the thrust of the message, the Washington Monument looked like nothing so much as a five-hundred-and-fifty-five-foot sniper tower.

To clear the palate, the host pivoted to a segment—the chyron read “Gun Grabbers Ignorant About Firearms”—that exemplified what NRATV hosts do best: scoffing at the factual errors of politicians and pundits. Stinchfield scored rhetorical points with pedantic layups and indignant dunks when correcting mistakes. His targets ranged from sloppy language about what constitutes a revolver to silly assumptions about the ability of women to handle weapons. The tactic, which seeks to disqualify gun-control activists as worthy debaters, enables NRATV hosts to dismiss arguments wholesale while allowing them to showcase a proud touch with fine print. The channel foregrounds its attention to precision at every opportunity, whether what it is streaming has been constructed on the model of a talk-news program, a reality show, a History Channel outtake, an “Antiques Roadshow” appraisal, a fitness video, a tourist-site film exhibit, or an ad for a hunting-lodge timeshare. It pays all due attention to paperwork, safety rules, and proper jargon. Meanwhile, it scoffs at outsiders, such as “left-wing élitists,” in a tone combining pity and concern.

“Love at First Shot,” an NRA Women production sponsored by Smith & Wesson, is a reality show depicting, in its third season, three journeys toward empowerment by way of licensed firearms. Natalie is a tech executive whose interest in competitive shooting is an outgrowth of her professional drive. Jasmine is a Dallas-based fashion blogger pursuing a concealed-handgun license. (A menacing encounter spurred her interest in personal protection, and her fiancé gave her a weapon as a present; now here she is in training class, with her Starbucks cup.) Erin, a practiced fly-fisher, is expanding her interests to include hunting. In Erin’s first appearance, her instructor hands her an AR-15, and the student, surmounting intimidation, faces the target and pulls the trigger. Her instructor describes the gun’s firing as “just a nice, light ploof of happiness.” “Ploof,” she said! Happiness is a warm gun, she affirmed, recasting an explosion as a gentle ecstasy.

Only one commercial airs on NRATV; it is for the N.R.A.’s upcoming annual meeting, in Dallas, and collates footage from last year’s meeting, with shills, spokeswomen, and laymen reciting a variety of hawkish slogans. Or, to look at things from another angle, NRATV is itself an unending commercial. It advertises peace of mind around the clock.