NRA spokesperson doubles down on “rape survivor” comparison, falsely accuses Media Matters of misquoting her 

Written by Cydney Hargis

Published

National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch defended her previous claim that penalizing gun owners for improperly storing firearms that are ultimately stolen is “like shaming a rape survivor.”

Loesch made that comment during the July 28 broadcast of NRATV, the NRA’s news outlet, in response to a report from the Center for American Progress on stolen firearms that said “states should consider implementing laws or policies that require or incentivize gun owners to store guns securely to help protect against theft.”

During the July 31 NRATV broadcast, Loesch doubled down on her comments, saying she doesn’t support “revictimizing innocent, law-abiding Americans … you are victim shaming.” Loesch went on to suggest that she was misquoted in a video clip of the “rape survivor” comment published by Media Matters. Loesch did not indicate how she had been misquoted; the clip accurately quoted her and provided a transcript and video of her comments. During the July 31 update, Loesch also claimed, without evidence, that Media Matters disarms women with the goal of causing more “statistics.”

From the July 31 edition of NRATV’s Stinchfield:

GRANT STINCHFIELD (HOST): There are some outlets out there that clearly do this. One, Media Matters -- throw them out the window, of course. The Washington Post is another. And so here we go again with The Washington Post want to drum up controversy over nothing. We on this program had talked about --

DANA LOESCH (NRA NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON): Right.

STINCHFIELD: -- talked about ideas to go after law-abiding gun owners who have their firearms stolen from their home and to punish them instead of going after the criminals. And yet they somehow want to twist this on me and you, more importantly. Washington Post at the heart of this, just following their marching orders from the left-wing crazies.

LOESCH: Right. Truth dies in darkness, Grant. And a note for Media Matters, and I don’t know if it inflates your ego, but I take great pride in -- and I just relish the power I have, because we’re putting food on the table of those Media Matter employees. And for people who don’t know what Media Matters is, it's basically a congregation of individuals that applies lotion to George Soros’ back and feet. That is entirely what Media Matters is. And, I mean, it seems funny, but it's true. And people who can't even get a job at Hallmark. But anyway, but they watch us every single day and they support an agenda to disarm women and and they love exploiting rape survivors when it suits them. Now see, I, and you, and everyone else at the NRA seeks to empower women. The ultimate equalizer is for women to be able to bear firearms. In fact, women long have had the right to bear arms before we had the right to vote. But yet the people over at Media Matters seek to change this. And they want to do away with our God-given rights and seek to -- and they are actually quite discriminatory towards women in this fashion, Grant. Because they seek to disarm us and make more statistics. Whereas I, you, and the NRA seeks to empower women and to educate everyone about firearms and firearm safety and law. And so that’s where the friction is.

Now, you and I had a discussion about government-mandated firearms storage, private firearms storage and government regulation, similar to what New York has with the New York Safe Act. And you, Grant, believe, as I do, as well as all of the millions of members at the NRA, we believe that the government has no place to regulate private firearms storage. We don’t believe in that sort of government inspection and those sort of regulations. Why in the world would anybody want to revictimize innocent Americans if criminals -- by the way and this is a fraction, and we can get into the math of how it’s maybe, like, what, less than one-tenth of retail thefts. But firearm thefts is actually nothing compared to retail thefts, so I think everyone should actually practice the safety model of [federal firearms license holders] and other firearm owners. But I don't support revictimizing innocent, law-abiding Americans because criminals choose to willfully act against the law. You are victim shaming. So going by that logic, you are saying that the law-abiding gun owners are just asking for it. And so whenever we talk about the logic that goes into victim shaming, Media Matters decided to take it and further exploit rape survivors that they help to create by disarming, Grant, and then they dictate what Washington Post covers. So long story short, Washington Post reached out to me to ask about this particular article because that’s whom they take their marching orders from. And I gave them a response that they’re allowed to either use in full or not at all. And we’ll see how they respond. And if they choose to only release a part of it or nothing at all, I’ll publish the full email and we’ll see how that goes. And as for -- as the folks at Media Matters, when you guys quote me, you better quote me accurately because I’ve come for you so many times and you’ve never retracted one single false story that you’ve reported. And I have been cataloging your errors and lies for about eight years now.