Sorry, Alyssa, But We're Glad We Came

You likely recall we mentioned a new anti-gun organization recently formed, which was billed as the brainchild of actress Alyssa Milano.  You may also recall that we reported her group, NoRA, had made the vaguely threatening proclamation, “We’re going to show up at the NRA convention in Dallas and make them wish they stayed home.” So, what happened?

Well, we enjoyed yet another NRA Annual Meeting that set a new record for attendance, and which included both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence addressing a crowd of enthralled supporters.  As for NoRA’s threat?  Meh.

While NoRA and Milano encouraged supporters of their anti-NRA agenda to attend a Protest The NRA Convention event on Saturday, May 5, the turnout cannot be anywhere close to what they had hoped.  One could say they drew a small crowd, although even that might be a generous description.  There may have been 100 people who showed up, although that estimate likely includes casual passersby and looky-loos who were simply curious about what appeared to be an intimate (small) gathering.  More than likely, she had a few dozen followers.

Considering the population of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area is nearly 7 million, and considering Dallas County voted 64%-36% for Hillary Clinton in 2016, one would think a group that has placed most of its focus on being anti-NRA could get more people to show up to protest our biggest event of the year, where President Trump came to praise NRA and its members.

Perhaps the drawing power of Milano is not what it was when she was a child-star of the 80s, playing the precocious Samantha Micelli on the TV show “Who’s the Boss.”  Or maybe people are simply tired of seeing celebrities try to blame NRA and its nearly six million members for the violent acts of deranged criminals.

Then again, maybe people are simply confused by the messaging of NoRA.  After all, why show up to a protest if you don’t know what you are protesting or supporting?  A visit to the NoRA website will find it short on any sort of specifics as to what it hopes to achieve, other than its opposition to the oldest and largest civil rights organization in America—your NRA.

Of course, we can speculate Milano and her ilk don’t like AR-15s, as well as other commonly owned semi-automatic rifles.  The NoRA logo depicts one that has been broken, and she has made negative, ill-informed statements about ARs and “similar or doctored guns.”  Other than that, though, and espousing their apparent hatred of NRA and its nearly six million members, the group doesn’t offer a specific plan.  The NoRA website doesn’t state support or opposition to any particular initiative or policy that it claims will help to, in their words, “(move) culture into a less violent place,”whatever that means.

Ultimately, Milano and her group utterly failed at garnering any semblance of opposition to NRA that would lead anyone who attended the meeting in Dallas to “wish they stayed home.”  Honestly, hardly anyone even noticed NoRA was there, and the prevailing feeling among attendees was that they would love to return to Dallas for another Annual Meeting in the future.