National Rifle Association executive director Chris Cox speaks at the National Rifle Association convention on May 20, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. | AP Photo Why the NRA isn’t talking about guns While Democrats find their voice on guns, the NRA goes off message. And they're hoping it gets Trump in the White House.

The National Rifle Association is bringing Benghazi to the Democrats’ gun fight.

Speaker after Democratic speaker went after the gun rights group on Tuesday in Philadelphia, from Howard Dean to a black mother grieving her murdered son. And that wasn’t even the main event, with the most high-profile gun control activists on the marquee for Wednesday.


As far as the Second Amendment message at the Republican National Convention, it was conspicuously low-key, garnering nary a mention during the “Make America Safe Again” evening.

That’s just fine with the NRA’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox. He used his unprecedented primetime slot on the RNC’s second night to deliver an unambiguous pro-Second Amendment message, but weeks before that, it was his group that started the tangent. Their first national ad of the cycle features a Benghazi security contractor blaming Hillary Clinton for his colleagues’ deaths. It doesn’t mention guns at all – but NRA is throwing another seven figures into its initial $2 million buy to extend it in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Nevada.

And it won’t be the last off-topic message from the NRA. The group, under siege like never before as Democrats get bolder on guns, is filling a void. They’re relatively alone against an emboldened enemy as other big political spenders on the right, like the Koch brothers, refuse to help Donald Trump.

"The other ads will communicate to the American people directly about Hillary Clinton, about Donald Trump, about the things that separate the two as it relates to this individual freedom and who's going to protect it and who's going to destroy it," Cox said in an interview on Tuesday.

Though he wouldn’t elaborate on the topics, Cox said the new spots will be “out soon.”

The gun control advocates who are dominating the stage in Philadelphia, however, think it’s all about deflection in the wake of new concerns about mass shootings.

“They’re not trying to broaden the message, they’re trying to avoid an issue that loses for them,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, part of the constellation of groups under the Everytown for Gun Safety umbrella.

But Watts also sees a “sea change” in the politics of guns. Clinton made her record of cracking down on gun manufacturers a major part of her primary campaign, and rather than tack to the center, she’s only amplified her message in the general. Support for expanding background checks has become the new orthodoxy in the Democratic Party, and Clinton’s running mate made his battles with the NRA in Virginia a major selling point.

“They campaigned against me in every statewide race that I have ever run, but I never lost an election,” Sen. Tim Kaine said on Saturday, as Clinton introduced him as her VP pick. Opposition from a “powerful group,” he added, is like a “cup of coffee.”

Kaine is set to speak on Wednesday, after former Rep. Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, who founded Americans for Responsible Solutions after the Sandy Hook shooting. There will be Erica Lafferty Smegielski, who lost her mother, a principal, in that massacre, and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who led a filibuster last month to demand a vote on expanding background checks and on blocking people on the terror watch list from buying firearms. Mike Bloomberg, Everytown’s chief funder, will also endorse Clinton that night.

Guns did play in one unusually big way at the GOP convention: Cox was the first NRA official ever to speak from a party convention stage, and both Trump and his eldest son pledged to protect the Second Amendment. But the emphasis was minimal compared to the constant messaging from a variety of speakers in Philadelphia.

And there have been signs of the NRA seeking to broaden its reach for the past few years, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. The group first experimented with the approach ahead of the 2014 midterms, with a set of 16 ads that seem proto-Trump, meant to capture “shared values” among people who see the country “going off the rails” under President Barack Obama, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre told The Washington Times. Themes varied from urban apathy to media elitism and the IRS scandal.

But Cox insists the NRA’s brand is as good as ever (and some gun control groups agree: in a new strategy document, Americans for Responsible Solutions recommends avoiding attacks on the NRA in favor of the gun lobby, citing polling and its popular safety training and hunting programs). And its network of activists – those fabled “single-issue voters” – have helped block relatively modest changes under heavy pressure: support for expanding background checks hovers in the 80 percent range, but the proposals have gone nowhere in Congress.

It won’t take much to remind its most intense voters that Clinton said in a private fundraiser that "the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment," according to a leaked recording. And to prevent her from nominating future justices, the NRA is looking to activate voters who might be generally supportive of their cause – but not so obsessive.

“We don't have to engage in other issues,” Cox said. But the NRA will “talk about other issues that further solidify our case against Hillary Clinton with regards to her poor judgment and the fact that she's lost all credibility on these issues.”

He added, “Not every American voter is the same, and not every Second Amendment supporter in this country looks alike.”

At the same time, gun control advocates think they have more of that soft support, but they’re trying to overcome the “intensity gap.”

As a result, both sides are delivering a similar message: Be afraid.

“This is a national security issue, that our government's failed to keep us safe, that the policies of Hillary Clinton has made the situation worse,” said Cox. “The American people are fearful, they have a reason to be fearful and at the end of the day they understand that they're responsible ultimately for their own security.”

That means people need to be able to exercise their Second Amendment rights, Cox said.

Watts said a different sort of fear is helping harden support for more gun laws.

“We finally have bridged this intensity gap because moms feel like ‘It could be my first grader,’” Watts said. “It feels like anarchy when everyone is armed, including dangerous people. This is the outcome of that.”

But that doesn’t comport with reality, and it creates some mixed messaging for both sides.

Violent crime – including gun crime – is at historic lows. Former Attorney General Eric Holder made the point from the stage on Tuesday. In certain contexts, it’s an NRA talking point, too.

So both sides highlight tragic outlier violence, whether it’s mass shootings or attacks by illegal immigrants.

At the first night of the Republican National Convention, devoted to “Making American Safe Again,” major NRA surrogates, including the Benghazi ad star Mark “Oz” Geist and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke focused on terrorism and attacks on police, respectively, without mentioning gun rights.

While the NRA is looking to talk about conservative issues beyond guns, various Democratic constituencies are adding it to their menu of concerns. A new PAC, the Pride Fund to End Gun violence is tapping LGBT donors, and on Saturday, the National Council of La Raza voted to back universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. Giffords’ group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, has been briefing abortion rights and other Democrat-aligned groups on their data-driven messaging strategy.

It’s part of why once pro-gun Democrats have been slipping away. Ted Strickland in Ohio, for example, is running for Senate in favor of background checks after winning races for other offices with an A+ rating from the NRA. The group has vowed tow punish him for the betrayal.

But there are still some Democrats willing to engage with the gun lobby: the Congressional Sportsmens Caucus Foundation, sponsored by the industry, hosted a luncheon in Philadelphia on Tuesday. But it was decidedly lower key than the group’s “Stars and Stripes Shootout” last week at an upscale range outside Cleveland. Geist was the celebrity guest.

