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    How Tim Walz went from NRA favorite to ‘straight Fs’ on gun rights

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    At his first rally as Kamala Harris’s running mate Tuesday, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, invoked an issue at the forefront of many Americans’ minds: the right “for our children to be free to go to school without worrying they’ll be shot dead in their classrooms”.But Walz wasn’t always a fierce advocate against gun violence. The evolution of the vice-presidential candidate, who once boasted an A rating from the NRA, shows the growing relevance of gen Z voters, who’ve grown up amid a surge in mass shootings in the US and are enthusiastically backing Harris.“Gun violence is the number one killer of our generation, meaning we can’t afford anything less than leaders who will prioritize basic gun safety,” Timberlyn Mazeikis, a gun violence survivor and volunteer leader with Students Demand Action from Minnesota, said in a joint statement issued by Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action supporting Walz yesterday.Elected to the US House of Representatives in 2007, Walz was long beloved by gun rights advocates. The National Rifle Association endorsed and donated to his campaigns, giving him an A rating. In 2016 Guns & Ammo magazine included him on its list of top 20 politicians for gun owners.That wasn’t terribly surprising. Walz was representing a rural red Minnesota district and had grown up at a time and place where guns were popular for hunting – not mass shootings.“I grew up in a small town, [so] I’d put my shotgun in my car, or at school or in the football locker, to go pheasant hunting afterwards,” he told Pod Save America last month. “But we weren’t getting shot in school.”That all changed after the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, he has said.In a 2018 video March for Our Lives co-founder and Parkland survivor David Hogg reshared on X last month, Walz recounts his then teenage daughter Hope approaching him in the days after the shooting: “Dad, you’re the only person I know who’s in elected office, you need to stop what’s happening with this.”“For me, it was both a reckoning and an embarrassment,” he told Pod Save America, recalling that the children killed at Sandy Hook elementary school would have been his son’s age.Two weeks later, while campaigning for governor, Walz authored an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, where he called the NRA “the biggest single obstacle to passing the most basic measures to prevent gun violence in America”. He went on to say that he’d donated the $18,000 the organization had donated to his past campaigns and wouldn’t accept NRA contributions in the future. He noted that he was currently co-sponsoring a “bump stocks” ban and came out in support of an assault weapons ban.As Minnesota governor, Walz has signed wide-ranging gun safety measures into law, most notably a 2023 law including universal background checks and a “red flag law” (which allows state officials to temporarily seize the firearms of someone a court has ruled may be dangerous to themselves or others).This year, Walz called for Minnesota lawmakers to go even further, asking them to support measures that would require safe firearm storage, better reporting of lost and stolen guns, and harsher penalties for “straw buyers” (those who purchase firearms for others who cannot legally have them). Since then, he’s signed legislation that prohibits automatic weapon modification devices and collects data on gun crime.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWalz remains an enthusiastic hunter – something he’s emphasized in previous campaigns and makes him something of an everyman.“There’s a vision to reduce gun violence with absolutely no infringement on those who lawfully own guns, to use them for things that many of us cherish,” he told reporters in Bloomington, Minnesota, last week.Gun safety advocates have already come out in support of his candidacy, including the gun violence prevention organization founded by former congresswoman and gun violence survivor Gabby Giffords (who joined Walz in Minnesota in 2023 when he signed the state’s universal background checks into law).“As governor, Tim did what others called impossible, passing background checks and extreme risk protection laws in Minnesota with a slim gun safety majority,” Giffords said. “It wasn’t easy, but he got it done with hard work and effective leadership. His work as governor has saved lives, and I know that will continue when he is vice-president.”Harris’s campaign, which has already drawn great support from gen Z voters and gun violence prevention advocates, has called for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws. Last month, the NRA called her “an existential threat to the second amendment”.That doesn’t seem to bother Walz. “I had an A rating from the NRA. Now I get straight F’s,” he tweeted last month. “And I sleep just fine.” More

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      Both sides of gun issue seek to stir up US voters as NRA influence wanes

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      Anti-gun-control groups and gun-safety advocates are launching hefty voter-mobilization drives this year with the stakes high in the fall elections given the stark differences on gun violence policy between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.But the long-powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), which has been beset with financial and legal headaches for several years, is not expected to be nearly as active as in 2016, when it spent more than $31m to back Trump’s victorious campaign by boosting his political fortunes in key states, say gun experts and ex-NRA insiders.Now, though, other anti-gun-control groups are trying to take up the slack.For instance, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), an influential firearms industry lobbying group, has begun an eight-figure voter-mobilization drive to help pro-gun interests defeat President Biden, whose strong support for gun-control measures it finds anathema.The NSSF’s general counsel, Larry Keane, said that the organization’s “GunVote” campaign will focus on seven to nine battleground states, where it will mount voter-registration, education and get-out-the-vote efforts to help Trump win the presidency again.On the other side of this year’s election brawl over gun control, Everytown for Gun Safety is planning a large effort to get its millions of supporters to help re-elect Biden and defeat Trump, who has a record of siding firmly with pro-gun priorities.“We’re going to knock on doors, make calls, rally and campaign for President Biden,” said Nick Suplina, the senior vice-president for law and policy at Everytown, which claims nearly 10 million supporters including mayors, students, gun owners, teachers and others.The stakes seem higher than usual given Biden’s successes as president backing new gun-control measures such as the first new law in three decades boosting gun safety, and Biden’s talk of doing more if he’s re-elected, including fighting for an assault weapons ban, which would probably need Democratic control of Congress to enact.By contrast, Trump has often reiterated his fealty to the pro-gun lobby, which characterized his presidency. At last month’s NRA annual meeting, Trump earned a ringing endorsement and pledged that if he wins, “no one will lay a finger on your firearms”.But the once deep-pocketed and five-million-member NRA remains mired in internal and financial headaches: its annual revenues have dropped for several years while its legal expenses have risen.The NRA’s problems were underscored when its longtime top executive, Wayne LaPierre, resigned in January as he was about to go on trial in New York, where he was convicted of looting the organization to enjoy lavish personal perks including fancy vacations and expensive clothes.“The NRA is going to again be a peripheral player for lack of funding this election cycle, and that could hurt Trump in several battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota,” a former NRA board member said.“It’s a vacuum compared to 2016 when the NRA was robustly engaged,” the ex-board member added.Longtime observers of gun-control fights agree.Robert Spitzer, the author of several books on gun issues and an emeritus political science professor at Suny Cortland in New York, said the NRA was “as strongly behind [Trump] as they have been before”.“However, the organization simply does not possess the money or personnel to be as influential as they were in 2016, when they spent over $31m on his campaign, and over $70m on Republican efforts around the country. Still, the gun issue will continue to be salient to an important segment of the Trump base.”Spitzer added: “Other gun groups, such as the NSSF and state gun groups, will be working to supplant the NRA’s traditional dominance in national politics. They do not possess the degree of organization, experience and reach as the NRA of old, but they will ratchet up their efforts.”That’s what the NSSF, whose members include such gun giants as Sturm, Ruger & Co and Smith & Wesson, plus other anti-gun-control groups say they intend to do. “There’s a stark difference between Trump and Biden,” Keane said in explaining the NSSF’s hefty effort this year. “It’s clear there are ongoing challenges at the NRA.”Some ex-NRA leaders credit NSSF with trying to fill the NRA’s vacuum. “NSSF has attempted, and continues, to fill the gap left by a weakened NRA,” Jim Baker, the NRA’s former top lobbyist, said.The NRA did not respond to a call seeking comments.Further, the Trump campaign in tandem with the Republican National Committee has launched Gun Owners for Trump including firearms makers and gun-rights advocates such as Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation; Women for Gun Rights; and some NRA officials.To spur more pro-gun votes at the polls, Trump has spoken twice this year at NRA events. At their May meeting, Trump employed some incendiary conspiracy-mongering, telling the crowd that Biden “has a 40-year record of trying to rip firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGun-control advocates and the Biden campaign are using Trump’s own pro-gun pledges and cavalier attitude towards gun violence to rev up their backers, including younger voters and women.After an Iowa school shooting in January, for instance, Trump callously opined that “we have to get over it”, a clip of which is being circulated by Democrats and pro-gun-control advocates.Likewise, another clip in circulation shows Trump boasting to NRA members in May that he “did nothing” as president on guns. Actually, Trump signed a “bump stock” ban after the country’s largest gun massacre ever in Las Vegas, but the supreme court overturned it this month.Biden cemented his gun-control credentials in 2022 when, after the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, he pushed hard for a gun-safety bill that passed on a bipartisan basis, becoming the first new gun-control law in almost three decades.To energize his supporters, Biden spoke to an Everytown training event for about 1,000 gun-safety volunteers including students on 12 June, where he cited several major achievements, including setting up a White House office focused on curbing gun violence and beefing up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Explosives and Firearms.Biden urged a ban on assault-style weapons and universal background checks for purchases of firearms, both goals he has stressed before.“We need you to overcome the unrelenting opposition of the gun lobby,” Biden said.Suplina said Everytown’s plans for targeting states to help Biden and how much they intend to spend overall this election cycle were not ready to be announced, but he did reveal that Everytown intends to support 465 of its volunteers who are running for office this year. The majority of these races are state and local.Further, Everytown will be backing Senate and House candidates who support gun-safety measures, Suplina said.Overall, Everytown spent about $55m on 2020 election efforts.Other gun-control advocates have broad election plans“This cycle, GIiffords will use its unique identity as a gun owner and survivor-led organization to reach a broad gun safety coalition in battlegrounds – including Democrats, Republicans, young voters, gun owners, and people of color,” Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords, said in a statementThe group plans on “supporting gun safety champions in key House and Senate races, [and] communicating the Biden-Harris administration’s historic gun safety accomplishments in states across the map,” she added.Looking ahead, Spitzer stressed that Biden “has continued to speak out on gun safety, and gun-safety groups will surely redouble their efforts on his behalf, not only to help him get re-elected, but to advance the cause of down-ballot Democrats running for Congress and state offices, where the fate of many gun laws lie”. 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      Joe Biden delivers gun safety speech hours after son’s firearms conviction

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      Joe Biden, facing a backlash from young voters over the war in Gaza, has sought to rally support around the issue of gun safety just hours after his son Hunter was convicted of lying about his drug use to illegally buy a firearm.Contrasted his record with election rival Donald Trump, the US president brought an audience that included many students to its feet at the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s annual Gun Sense University conference in Washington on Tuesday.But in a reminder of the issues jostling for priority in voters’ minds, Biden’s remarks were briefly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters. One shouted: “You’re complicit in genocide!” As the crowd booed, Biden said: “No, no, no, no … It’s OK. Look, they care. Innocent children have been lost. They make a point.”He went on to give an otherwise uneventful speech that made no mention of Hunter Biden’s conviction in Delaware earlier in the day on three felony counts relating to buying a handgun while being a user of crack cocaine.The conference, which brings together Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers and survivors of gun violence from all 50 states, served as a show of strength for Biden at a time when his position looks fragile in opinion polls.Speakers praised his commitment, compassion and willingness to listen. Julvonnia McDowell, whose 14-year-old son JaJuan was shot and killed by another teenager playing with an unsecured firearm in Savannah, Georgia, told the gathering: “I can say today, standing here right now, he’s been true to his word on the urgency of creating a safer future for families like mine and yours.”She added: “I am proud to stand with him.”Biden was greeted by chants of “Four more years” and “Let’s go, Joe!” He received loud acclaim when he reminded the audience that in June 2022 he signed the most significant federal bipartisan gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years. On Wednesday the justice department announced it has charged more than 500 defendants under the new law.There was another big cheer when Biden noted his creation last September of the first White House office of gun violence to coordinate a nationwide effort to reduce gun violence, “overseen by my incredible vice-president”.But perhaps the most enthusiastic response came to the president’s renewed call for a ban on assault weapons, sparking prolonged cheering, whooping and chants of “Four more years!” Biden asked: “Who in God’s name needs a magazine which can hold 200 children?” Someone shouted: “Nobody!” Biden replied: “Nobody. That’s right.”He added: “They’re weapons of war and, by the way, it’s time we establish universal background checks.”Biden asserted that the country’s murder rate saw the highest increase on record in the year before he came to the presidency. But last year saw the largest drop in murder rates in history, he added.He condemned congressional Republicans for seeking to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a law enforcement agency responsible for fighting gun crime. “You can’t be pro-law enforcement and say you are pro-law enforcement and be pro-abolishing the ATF. It’s outrageous.”He went on to take a swipe at Trump, reminding voters of the stakes in November. “After a school shooting in Iowa killed a student and a teacher, my predecessor was asked about it. You remember what he said. He said, have to get over it. Hell no, know enough to get over it!“More children are killed in America by guns and cancer and car accidents combined. My predecessor told the NRA [National Rifle Association] convention recently he’s proud that ‘I did nothing on guns when I was president’ and by doing nothing, he made the situation considerably worse.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s why Everytown, why all of you here today are so damned important. We need you. We need you to overcome the unrelenting opposition of the gun lobby, gun manufacturers, so many politicians when they oppose commonsense gun legislation.”In the 2024 election cycle the NRA has contributed a total of $191,900 to 166 House Republicans, according to the non-profit group OpenSecrets. It gave nearly $75,000 to Senate Republican candidates and the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. The NRA has spent more than $100m to help elect Republicans over the past decade.Trump has said there is “no bigger fan” of the NRA and is vowing to roll back the measures and implement national concealed carry reciprocity legislation which, critics say, will weaken states’ gun safety laws and harm law enforcement.A 2022 poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats and a majority of those in gun-owning households.Believing this to be an arena where the electoral choice is clear cut, the Biden campaign is seeking to make a major push on gun safety. Last week the vice-president Kamala Harris held a gun violence prevention campaign event in Maryland with Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks and hosted a Students for Biden-Harris organising call.Voters cited addressing gun violence as their third most important issue during the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Politico-Harvard survey. But in this cycle it is competing with the cost of living, immigration, abortion rights, the defence of democracy and the war in Gaza.Drew Spiegel, 19, a gun violence survivor and student from Deerfield, Illinois, said: “Joe Biden has done the most any administration in my life has done for gun violence prevention. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was the first comprehensive gun reform we got in 30 years, which is remarkable and I am super proud of his administration for that.“I believe that Biden is certainly on the right track, which is why it’s critical to keep him in office. We saw what Donald Trump has in store and he has no intentions of making our communities safer, of keeping guns off the hands of dangerous people. He will cosy up to the NRA, as he has already done, and not only will they stop reform from happening but they will actively take us in the opposite direction.” More

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      Trump floats idea of three-term presidency at NRA convention

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      Donald Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the National Rifle Association in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration.“You know, FDR 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” The ex-president and GOP presidential frontrunner said to the organization’s annual convention in Dallas, prompting some in the crowd to yell “three!” Politico reported.Trump has floated a third term in past comments, even mentioning a prolonged presidency while campaigning in 2020. He has also tried distancing himself from this idea, telling Time magazine in April: “I wouldn’t be in favor of it at all. I intend to serve four years and do a great job.”The 22nd amendment, which was enacted following Franklin Delano Rosevelt’s fourth term, limits the presidency to two terms.In his speech to the NRA, Trump spoke on abortion, immigration and criticized Robert F Kennedy Jr as being part of the “radical left”. He also complained about the multiple criminal cases against him, including a gag order that bars him from commenting about witnesses in his ongoing New York City criminal trial.Trump has the NRA’s endorsement, but the organization has recently been reeling from legal and financial woe and is not quite the force in US politics it once was.The NRA is holding its convention less than three months after its former long-serving leader Wayne LaPierre – as well as other executives of the group – were held liable in a lawsuit centered on the organization’s lavish spending.Trump, who said he heard that gun owners “don’t vote,” pushed NRA members to hit the polls in November: “Let’s be rebellious and vote this time, OK?”Biden’s administration has worked to curb gun violence, including a host of executive actions and the launch of the first federal office to prevent gun violence, Politico noted.Biden has also pushed to broaden background checks while buying guns, and to end a workaround that permits firearm sales without background checks apart from traditional stores.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns,” Trump railed.Only 12% of Americans believe gun laws should be loosened while 56% say they should be toughened and 31% assert they should be maintained as they are for now, according to an October poll conducted by Gallup. More

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      Trump to address NRA after threatening to roll back gun control laws if elected

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      Amid fears that he would reverse gains made by gun control activists if elected to a second presidency this fall, Donald Trump on Saturday is scheduled to address the National Rifle Association’s annual convention.The former Republican president is set to take the stage in Dallas after threatening to roll back the firearms regulations enacted by the Joe Biden White House and expand gun rights – at the expense of American lives – if voters lift him to victory over the Democratic incumbent in November.Trump’s message marks a sharp contrast with Biden, who signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022 and has hailed it as evidence of his commitment to gun safety, among other measures.Congress passed that law after a string of deadly, high-profile mass shootings, which nonetheless continue to occur. But it marked the first time in nearly 30 years that the US enacted a new major gun law at the federal level, expanding background checks for the youngest firearm buyers and investing in community violence intervention programs.Trump has hit the campaign trail openly expressing his wish to impose a law that would force states to recognize concealed carry firearm permits issued by other states. And his answer to the school shootings that the US has consistently seen throughout its modern history is to arm teachers and fund programs training educators how to shoot effectively.Most Americans do not agree with Trump’s approach to gun control. Only 12% of Americans believe gun laws should be loosened while 56% say they should be toughened and 31% assert they should be maintained as they are for now, according to an October poll conducted by Gallup.The NRA is holding its convention less than three months after its former long-serving leader Wayne LaPierre – as well as other executives of the group – were held liable in a lawsuit centered on the organization’s lavish spending. More

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      South Dakota governor says her two-year-old grandchild has several guns

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      South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.During her remarks, Noem spoke about her grandchildren: Addie, who is almost two, and Branch, who is a few months old. Noem then said that Addie already had a shotgun and a rifle.“Now Addie, who you know – soon will need them, I wanna reassure you, she already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle and she’s got a little pony named Sparkles too. So the girl is set up,” said Noem.Noem’s remarks on her grandchild have gone viral on social media, with many commenters decrying the governor promoting gun ownership among children.“Absolutely sickening. How the hell is this real life in America?” wrote the Tennessee Democrat Chris D Jackson on Twitter.Another user commented: “Call CPS”.Noem’s comments follow yet another recent mass shooting involving children. Last month, three children and three adults were killed by a shooter – a former student – at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee.Noem also signed an executive order during her remarks that seeks to “further protect the second amendment rights of South Dakotans”, and was joined on stage by the NRA’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre.“South Dakota is setting the standard for the most second amendment friendly state in the nation,” said Noem when discussing the executive order.The executive order would prohibit state agencies from contracting with any business that discriminate against a “firearm-related entity”, KELO reported.Former vice-president Mike Pence also spoke at the conference, but was booed loudly by audience members as he made his way to speak in his home state – possibly because some of the Republican base turned on him after he certified the 2020 election results. More

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      ‘There’s an art to not alarming people’: the duo who pranked Trump, Cruz and the NRA

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      Interview‘There’s an art to not alarming people’: the duo who pranked Trump, Cruz and the NRAMatthew Cantor The Good Liars – AKA Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler – have mined a rich seam by infiltrating rightwing events and satirizing them with a straight faceThey have told Donald Trump he’s boring, obtained Dr Ben Carson’s signature to authorize a weed prescription, and attempted an exorcism on Ted Cruz.Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, AKA the Good Liars, have been working together since the era of Occupy Wall Street. Interviewing rightwing activists and slipping undercover into political rallies, their brand of satire exists somewhere between The Daily Show’s correspondent segments and the character-driven comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen.Comedian infiltrates NRA event to mock Wayne LaPierre’s ‘thoughts and prayers’Read moreAt an event for Ted Cruz – a frequent target – Stiefler managed to get onstage next to the senator and ask the crowd: “What made everyone so weird and sad that they had to come out here?” During a moment of prayer with the then presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, Selvig asked God to “give the candidates the strength to know when to quit”. But you might know them best from a recent appearance at an NRA convention in Houston, days after the school shooting in Texas.Addressing attendees as well as the NRA’s executive vice-president himself, Selvig made an impassioned speech, condemning “the leftwing media” for “saying Wayne LaPierre isn’t doing enough to stop these mass shootings”.He reeled off a seemingly endless list of tragedies before reminding the crowd that “the NRA under Wayne LaPierre’s leadership has provided thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families. And maybe these mass shootings would stop happening if we all thought a little bit more and we prayed a little bit more.”Many in the audience appeared to miss the satire. But when a clip of the speech emerged online, the rest of the world certainly didn’t. As of Monday, the video had received nearly 10m views on Twitter alone.It was hardly planned in advance. “We didn’t know that I was going to have that opportunity to be on a microphone with Wayne LaPierre until I walked into the room,” Selvig tells the Guardian. He spent the moments before his speech trying to craft remarks that “matched the tone” of the others there – apparently successfully, given the applause afterward.Selvig and Stiefler – born in the 80s, though they found themselves temporarily unable to speak when asked their exact ages – met through friends on the comedy scene in New York City. They became friends playing basketball together before conducting their first joint project, during Occupy Wall Street. Selvig and Stiefler posed as bankers, telling the media they represented the “Occupy Occupy Wall Street” movement and were proud to be part of the 1%. Speaking to protesters while wearing “thrift store suits”, they would lament their plight: “‘We’re gonna have to stop doing so much cocaine if we can’t afford it any more because you guys are out here,’” Stiefler recalls saying. “Kind of, like, over-the-top stuff that ended up being taken seriously.”They were surprised when actual bankers fell for the joke and joined them. “We sold merch, like to be funny – we thought we would sell zero of them. But we sold a bunch of, like, $300 cufflinks that said ‘1%’ on them, you know, playing this part,” Stiefler says. “We were trying to be found out and we couldn’t.” Finally, Rachel Maddow caught on.The time we asked Ted Cruz why he is so sad and weird. pic.twitter.com/1tbIrypaar— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) June 15, 2020
      “Ever since then, we’ve felt like there was comedy to be mined from real situations,” Stiefler says. “And it was almost like we back-doored our way into being kind of socially, politically aware, because if we’re gonna go to events, interact with real people, it’s much more satisfying if we’re able to stick it to the right people.”That led to a new project a few years later: a film in which the pair, playing the roles of undecided and not-so-bright voters, pranked the 2016 presidential candidates. “That was kind of the beginning of the way we’re doing things now,” Stiefler says.That film led to the Cruz exorcism attempt, as well as firing guns with Rick Santorum while in character as worshipful fans, calling him “Dad”, and a query to Marco Rubio about a girlfriend who had fallen for the candidate: “What can I do to win her back? You won her away from me.”The amount of preparation that goes into each encounter varies widely. For the film, much of the planning was an effort to find “the funniest interaction that hopefully has some social commentary woven into it”, Selvig says, but also fit with the fictional character’s motivations.But plenty of improvisation is involved. Selvig describes the moment when they stood at the front of a Trump rally, in suits and bright red Maga hats, and began loudly complaining that he was boring – derailing the speech before Trump instructed security to get rid of them.“We had kind of a plan going in for something to do,” Selvig says, but that changed when they arrived on the scene. “We didn’t realize that it was going to be so boring. He actually is very boring live, because he just repeats the same things you’ve heard over and over and over again.” It occurred to them that pointing that out would be “the most insulting thing” for Trump. “It would hurt his feelings the most. And that was important,” Selvig says.Both men have backgrounds in improvisation, particularly Stiefler, who was on several teams as part of New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade. Selvig has a degree in drama from Syracuse University. But theatrical work can only take you so far when your scene partners are America’s political leaders.“We’re not working necessarily with the people in the same way you do onstage at a UCB improv show. It’s just kind of a different beast,” Stiefler says.“Ted Cruz is a horrible improv,” Selvig adds.So what is it like performing with someone like that – how do Selvig and Stiefler maintain their remarkable composure?It can be frightening, Stiefler says, particularly given all the concerns leading up to the key moment – getting through campaign security, occupying spaces where they aren’t supposed to be. “So yeah, our hearts are kind of beating and everything,” he says.But “once you’ve started, it would be weirder to bail than it would be just to see it through. It would be stranger and more alarming to people, I think, if you give up halfway through,” he adds. “I’ve never found it hard to keep a straight face, because once you’re in, you’re in.”That certainly applied to Selvig’s NRA speech, which went on for two minutes without interruption. “I didn’t really have time to worry about it, because by the time I’d gotten the creative down, I was in front of the microphone speaking,” Selvig says.But there was a very different reason to be fearful: everyone in that room, as Stiefler puts it, was “decidedly armed”.“There’s definitely an art to not alarming people too much and not seeming threatening in any way. But [Jason] being able to get on the microphone like that, I think it was such a just a perfect way of getting a chance to say what 60% of the country would love to say to Wayne LaPierre,” Stiefler says. The speech took place at an event where NRA members were voicing their opinions on his leadership, so LaPierre “really had to sit there. Listen to it. Take it all in.”Last year, the two found themselves on the fringes of a particularly unsafe environment: they were near the Capitol on January 6, speaking to those in the area before the riot. “We were talking to people and it was like – it had a feeling like something bad was gonna happen,” Stiefler says. “And as bad as it was, I was kind of grateful that we were there to document some of it.” He recalled speaking to one man who gave a monologue about Trump’s greatness and how he would “die in his boots” for the country; others described “1776 2.0”.“It just gives you a window into what’s going on, how convinced people are of this,” Stiefler says. “Being there that day is something I will never, never forget.”They watched people break through a police line and saw people speaking in tongues. Their microphones made them a target and they were surrounded and threatened. “I didn’t sleep for a week afterwards,” Selvig says. “Cops were crying – military, these grown tough dudes are crying because they’d lost control and didn’t know if their friends were all being killed inside … nobody knew what was happening.”At a time like this, can comedy cut through the madness? Stiefler and Selvig see reason for at least a little hope.“We have fans that will reach out and say we have kept them caring at all about politics – they would have unplugged a long time ago if they didn’t have a way of interacting with it that wasn’t so depressing,” Stiefler says.At Trump rallies, younger supporters of the ex-president will approach them and say how much they love the videos. “That’s got to be a good thing, if these people are decidedly not identifying with the really out-there stuff that we’re making fun of,” Stiefler adds.“It’s not like we’re trying to make Democrats out of everybody. We just think these certain people, and these certain ideas, need to be called out.”TopicsComedyUS politicsNRAfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Only cultural change will free America from its gun problem | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Only cultural change will free America from its gun problemAndrew GawthorpeThe movement to protect innocent lives from gun violence is a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans civil rights or gay Americans the right to marry Some days it feels like guns are such a foundational part of American identity that the country would have to cease to be itself before it would give them up. When a gunman murdered dozens of elementary-age schoolchildren, leaving their bodies in such a state that parents had to give up DNA samples for them to be identified, it was one such day. What cultural value, what material interest, could be worth this? It must be something that its defenders consider supremely important.Guns – that’s what. Critics of the sickness which is America’s obsession with guns often focus their fire on the second amendment, or the perverse political influence of the National Rifle Association. But neither of these things really get to the root of the pathology. It’s true that gun-rights advocates rely on a surely mistaken reading of the constitution to justify arming themselves to the teeth. And it’s also true that the NRA is a malign force in American politics. But the constitution can be changed or reinterpreted, and special interest groups can be vanquished. What is at issue here is something more foundational, and more difficult to change: American culture itself.The gun is the great symbol, and poisonous offshoot, of American individualism. The country has long valorized masculine heroes – the cowboy, the frontiersman, the patriotic soldier – who impose their will on the community’s enemies with violence. It’s no coincidence that whenever a horrific mass shooting occurs, those in favor of guns respond by claiming that the solution to the guns of the bad guys is more guns in the hands of the good guys. Such reasoning responds to a deep-seated American historical myth, and allows the speaker to imagine themselves as the hero.But they are not heroes – far from it. Mass shooters may be, as the writer John Ganz put it, the “nightmare obverse” of the ideal of the lone frontiersman. But everyone else who defends their own right to possess a gun, who lauds guns as the bringers of peace and order, is guilty too. Their choices make society less safe, not more. The pleasure derived from guns, the sense of participation in America’s deepest myths about itself which they might foster, come at the expense of tens of thousands of lives a year. Sometimes, they are the lives of small children, innocent to the ways of a world which has allowed them to die.Men own guns at nearly twice the rate of women, and within all of this there is something deeply pathetic about the state of American manhood. American gun culture treats ownership of weapons of war as a sign of masculinity and virility, something that makes you more of a man. Almost anywhere else in the western world, a man seeking to demonstrate his masculinity in this way would be treated as an absurd and tragic poser. No doubt many gun owners tell themselves that they are better equipped to protect the innocent. But they are wrong. Rather, gun culture reveals the centrality of violence to American conceptions of manhood – a violence which ultimately harms rather than protects.If the problem is cultural, then what is the solution? There is no easy one. By now, the grooves of the debate are well-worn, and even a shocking event like the Uvalde massacre will not shake us out of it for long. Proposals to change the law or the constitution will be bitterly criticized, and gun-rights proponents will present the shooter as an anomaly who holds no lessons for “responsible” gun-owners. The supreme court is expected soon to loosen rather than tighten the law around carrying guns in public. Republicans will angrily decry attempts to “politicize” the massacre, as if the fact that innocent children are being brutally murdered due to the policies those very same Republicans support was not already a political issue of the highest order.But cultural change is not impossible. It has happened in recent decades on very important issues. America also contains within itself the will to self-improvement, and citizens who will give their all to achieve it. Sometimes it comes before political or legal change, and sometimes it comes after it. The only way to avoid despair is to see the struggle to protect innocent lives against the ravages of gun violence as a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans the right to vote, or that which won the right to gay marriage. Each of these required Americans in the grip of myths and pathologies to relinquish them, and each at one time seemed impossible. But change did eventually come.The path ahead will not be easy – and, as the supreme court’s expected ruling on Roe v Wade has shown, there will be setbacks along the way. Those who embody a pathological understanding of what America should be are currently ascendant, and there will be no easy victory over them. But despair would be surrender. That’s why for now there is the need to mourn the tiny lives which were extinguished. Remember them, and in doing so remember something else: America’s genius is that it can be changed, never quickly enough, but always in the end. It’s a slim hope to grasp onto in this moment of rage and sorrow, but it may be all that we have left.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States and the host of the podcast America Explained
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      America, how long will you sacrifice your children on the altar of gun worship? | Jonathan Freedland

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      America, how long will you sacrifice your children on the altar of gun worship?Jonathan FreedlandThis devotion to the right to bear arms is horrifyingly outdated. It brought terror to Texas – and it will happen again and again America’s great appeal to the world was its promise of possibility. It presented itself as virgin territory, a tabula rasa where a society could form anew, free of the past, and where individuals might do the same, reinventing themselves, renewing themselves, starting over. It was a myth, of course: it took no account of those people who were already there, and whose lives and lands were taken, or of those who had been brought to America in shackles. But it was a powerful myth all the same, one whose grip on the global imagination lives on: witness the success of the stage show Hamilton in seducing yet another generation into the romance of a new world and its revolutionary creation.But now we see something else: a country uniquely burdened with the dead weight of its past, and therefore powerless either to deal with a danger in its present or to make a better future. The land of possibility stands paralysed, apparently unable to make even the smallest change that might save the lives of its young.The evidence came again this week in the Texan town of Uvalde, where an 18-year-old walked into an elementary school and killed 19 children, aged between eight and 10, and two of their teachers. It was the 27th school shooting in the US this year, and it’s not yet June.There are so many stats like that. In the US, 109 people die of gun violence every day. There have been more mass shootings in the US in 2022 than days of the year. There are more guns in America than there are people. It was Uvalde this week, but last week it was Buffalo, where another 18-year-old walked into a supermarket and killed 10: his animus was directed at black people rather than children, but his method was the same.Each time, the satirists at the Onion bring out the same headline: “‘No way to prevent this,’ says only nation where this regularly happens”. The joke gets at something critical and curiously un-American: a debilitating form of fatalism.After Uvalde, I spoke to several seasoned Washington hands, asking if the horror of this latest massacre might at last prompt action. No, was the reply. Of course, each side makes the same ritual moves. Democrats deliver stirring, even heartbreaking speeches. Republicans then accuse Democrats of “politicising” tragedy, preferring instead to offer “thoughts and prayers” to the victims, before suggesting every possible remedy except the obvious one: this week we had Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas demand an end to the menace of unlocked back doors in schools. Not one of them will so much as entertain the idea of, you know, making it a tiny bit harder for a disturbed teenager to get hold of a military grade assault weapon.The easy explanation for this refusal to act is money, specifically the cash put in the hands of pro-gun politicians by the National Rifle Association (whose annual convention, addressed by Donald Trump, is going ahead this weekend in Houston, Texas, with the massacre in Uvalde deemed no reason to reschedule). But that is too pat. The NRA has been weakened by a slew of recent scandals, yet Republican politicians still refuse to pass even the mildest gun safety measures. The glum truth is that it’s not a lobby organisation that has a hold on them so much as pro-gun voters, who have concluded that if a politician dares suggest, say, the massively popular move of requiring universal background checks – looking for a record of instability or past violence – before selling someone an AR-15, they have taken the first step towards government confiscation of citizens’ guns.That, of course, is seen as an unconscionable violation of the constitution’s second amendment, which enshrines the right to bear arms. Never mind that no Democrat is advocating anything like the action Britain or Australia took after mass shootings, all but banning guns, and never mind that it’s hard to believe that the framers of the constitution were intent on allowing unhinged teenagers access to weapons that could kill en masse and in seconds. That slippery slope argument, combined with the sacred status accorded to the second amendment and the constitution itself, has immobilised Republican politicians.Their opposition matters because they have far more say than the number of votes that they win might suggest. Under the US system, every state gets two senators, no matter how many or how few people live in that state. It means mainly white, mainly rural states with few voters – but strong views on guns – exercise an effective veto on more populous, more diverse, more urban states, whose tens of millions of voters are desperate for gun safety measures. That’s why even the modest proposals that followed the Sandy Hook school massacre of 2012 died in the Senate. And that’s why so many feel fatalistic about the prospects of change, resigning themselves to another massacre and then another.Some try to keep the fatalism at bay, insisting that with the NRA weak, now is the time to strike. They propose a march on Washington of a million parents and their children. Or a consumer push to demand the Republicans’ corporate donors withhold their cash until the party acts on guns. Or maybe even international pressure, with foreign leaders raising gun violence with their US counterparts the way they’d raise human rights abuses when meeting representatives of China. The US Senate banned assault weapons back in 1994 (before allowing the ban to expire a decade later): if they did it once, they can do it again.But those defiant voices are in the minority. Most believe that the state of America’s politics has condemned the US to suffer a fate the rest of the democratic world has avoided. Beyond the mortal threat that represents to Americans, that despair, that sense that political effort is futile and that change is impossible, endangers US democracy and the country’s very sense of self.That it arises out of the constitution – its second amendment and its design of the Senate – is a bitter irony. The whole point of the American revolution enshrined in that document was to forge a society that could make the world anew, able to adapt to the present unbound by the strictures of the past. In the words of the great English-born revolutionary Thomas Paine, who argued that circumstances always changed from one generation to the next: “As government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.” Today’s America is sacrificing the living in the name of the dead of two centuries ago. It is betraying its founding ideal. It is offering up its young to placate ghosts from a time long gone.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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