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NRA Instructed Far-Right Group to ‘Shame’ Anti-Gun Activists After Massacres

Secretly recorded meetings show gun lobby officials detailing playbook after mass killings.

Officials with the National Rifle Association told an Australian far-right group to “shame” anti-gun activists in order to win public-relations battles after gun massacres. Representatives of Australia’s One Nation party reportedly sought advice from the U.S. gun lobbyist on how to go about loosening their country’s very strict gun laws. Al Jazeera secretly recorded meetings between representatives of the NRA and One Nation in Washington, D.C. in September last year, where the NRA officials offered advice on how to manipulate media coverage. The best method to handle media inquiries in the wake of a massacre was to “say nothing,” according to Catherine Mortensen, an NRA media liaison officer, on the video. But if the media inquiries about gun control persist, another NRA comms official, Lars Dalseide, said to “shame them to the whole idea,” adding: “If your policy, isn’t good enough to stand on itself, how dare you use their deaths to push that forward? How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?” One Nation’s defense for the discussions was at least honest, with one official saying: “I will be the first to admit, we’d arrived in America, we got on the sauce, we’d had a few drinks and that’s where those discussions took place.”