NRA online ad spending increased sixfold after Parkland shooting: report

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s leading gun lobbying group, increased its online ad spending sixfold after the deadly mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school last month, according to a new report.

While the gun lobbying group briefly went silent online after the shooting, pausing all website and social media advertising, it redoubled its efforts within four days with an aggressive advertising push, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday, citing a review of online data from analytics company Pathmatics.

Daily spending by the NRA in the 24 days before the Parkland shooting averaged $11,300 but leapt to $47,300 on average in the 24 days after the shooting, Pathmatics found, a push that included heavy advertising in the state where the shooting took place.

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Florida was the focus of a massive NRA effort on Facebook, jumping from the gun-rights group’s ninth most targeted state to its third in the aftermath of the tragedy, the review found, according to the Tribune. The NRA’s daily Facebook advertising dollars jumped from $4,400 to $34,000. 

Some pro-gun NRA ads also showed up in videos for children, according to the report, following the shooting at the Florida high school that left 17 people dead and more than a dozen others wounded.

The online push was punctuated with fiery speeches blasting gun control efforts by NRA president and CEO Wayne LaPierre and spokeswoman Dana Loesch at an annual conservative gathering near Washington just weeks after the shooting. 

A student-led march against gun violence will take place in Washington on Saturday and is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of protesters to demand gun control measures from Congress.