Unless you’ve been living under a pile of rocks you know that the National Rifle Association (NRA) held its annual meeting last week. From what I’ve heard there was an estimated 70,000 NRA members in attendance. Every year there is a traditional protest held by whatever gun control group happens to be prominent (relatively speaking, of course). This year the Michael Bloomberg funded group Moms Demand Something or Other Action were the protest holders. According to gun control advocates the people of the United States desperately want stricter gun control laws. But if the number of protesters who turned up to this year’s annual protest are any indicator the demand only exists in their heads:
I was interested in seeing what Shannon Watts and her allies at Moms Demand Illegal Actions From Mayors In Everytown (MDIAFMIE) were to say during their trip to Indianapolis. The group had promised to “send NRA leadership a message.”
Apparently, their message was “we don’t want to be anywhere near where you are,” because when I decided to attend their rally, I found that I had to hike down W Maryland Street, hang a left on N Illinois, turn right on E Market, hang a left around Monument Circle, and then schlep four blocks up, to see this.
Most of the MDIAFMI members attending the rally were convincingly camouflaged as an empty lawn, but there were perhaps 100+ people (some have claimed as many as 200, but a good 10%-15% appeared to be media, so that number seems inflated) clustered around the stage, roughly matching the numbers of supporters that Bloomberg paid to attend.
Roughly 100 people? Wow. No wonder they held their protest several blocks from the NRA meeting. It would be embarrassing to have your protests outnumbered by the people simply going to and exiting from the meeting you’re protesting.
This is par for the course. Every year the NRA protests fails to attract any real numbers. But, as they say, it’s the thought that counts. And it’s nice to know that the gun control crowd is thinking about us.