How The NRA Is Repackaging Its Angry, Paranoid Message For Millennials

NOirnew web series for young people produced by the National Rifle Association is being widely panned by critics as a phony and out-of-touch attempt at messaging. And for good reason -- the NRA's Noir is really about the same themes the NRA has been ranting on for decades, that the NRA is the only group that can stand up for persecuted gun owners and save America in the face of machinations by anti-gun elites.

Recently launched on the NRA's new “Freestyle” network, Noir promises to report on “the latest on firearms, fashion, pop culture and other hot topics.” The show is hosted by NRA News commentator Colion Noir -- best known for his bizarre claim Martin Luther King Jr. was a gun proponent -- along with co-host Amy Robbins and is sponsored by gun manufacturer Mossberg. 

Early reviews of Noir report that it reeks of inauthenticity. Indeed the 16-minute premiere episode is rife with product placements and lame pop culture and sports references, all awkwardly interspersed between features on high-powered, expensive-looking firearms.

In one cringe-worthy moment, Noir complains that the cardboard box his $5,000 rifle came in looks like “a Build-A-Bear beginning set of a homeless guy's apartment.” During a glowing review of a compact Smith & Wesson handgun, Noir analogizes the pistol to Denver Nuggets guard Nate Robinson: “Sure he is small and unimposing, but the moment you drop your guard he will tear your ass up.” There is also an obligatory twerking reference

This fakery led Gawker's Adam Weinstein to describe the show as “hilariously bad poser garbage.” Writing for Vocativ, Mike Spies summed up the show as “public-access television: Think Wayne's World, but with a focus on sleek weapons” and concluded that “NRA employs millenial-friendly tropes to attract younger members -- and fails miserably.” While Spies imagined the show being “produced by aliens who spent an hour studying American pop culture,” Weinstein poked fun at “the cringe-inducing 'urban' script copy dropping out of Noir's mouth like it was written by a white Mitch McConnell intern on summer break from Liberty University.”

As the reviews of Noir invariably point out, millennials are less likely to own guns and more likely to support regulation of firearms, compared to older generations.

Beyond the widely noted production and messaging problems, the NRA has failed to create a different message that can resonate with young people with Noir. The NRA must realize that young people are unlikely to embrace the bombastic paranoid rants of its executive vice president Wayne LaPierre. But as the video below shows, Noir is more of the same from the NRA, only delivered with a less abrasive tone and buried between pop culture references.