recently. speak of is been a dispute between wayne lapierre and oliver north and it s been playing out and gone to court. frankly, the organization itself has lost a lot of credibility. the lobbying strength isn t clear but it does have 5 million members who own guns, and they are second amendment enthusiasts. harris: and bipartisan. absolutely. there are democrats and republicans and there is more than the nra. there are other gun organizations in the country, as well. this is a constituency politicians have to take care about. obviously the democrats damage themselves with his constituency after the assault weapons ban, which is why it didn t get renewed. there s obviously a lot of politics that goes into this. harris: the former president who talked about clinging to your guns. the rhetoric from the left has not been friendly to their cause right now. real quickly, i mentioned
an fbi agent, a self described gun in three days to try to infiltrate gun organizations like nra and push moscow s agenda while on u.s. soil and that she sought to set up a back channel communications between the kremlin in u.s. politicians. this from the affidavits which were filed. these lines could be used by the russian federation to penetrate the u.s. national decision-making apparatus, to advance the agenda. special counsel robert muller s probe as far as we know, the charges filed by justice department national security prosecutors. so this is kind of a sideline story now that hooked into the narrative of russia, whatever that seems to be at whatever hour. josh: i don t know if we needed more proof that russia has a really robust and very significant espionage operation underway in the united states and has four decades. this is not the first, the first
republican base than they have been the middle sloth of america. but i think something is changing, chuck, when you look at the way those young people are mobilizing the way the gun organizations are raising money, they re mobilizing now, if this is a front and center issue for moms in this coming election, it will change. all right. we shall see. speaking of those new voices, we will hear from some of them in a minute. coming up, not that it was a doubt. we learned how long it was to call russian interference to our election in the hoax. we will break that down, as i alluded to, we want to hear from students at marjory stoneman high school who are saying enough is enough and trying to get washington to listen.
public s fears at seeing a group of armed men at the restaurant or in the parking lot of home depot. they had first said that s weird and scary. then they very quickly changed their minds. but the reason i think, and you can comment on whether you think the reason is what the threat to move on to other gun advocacy organizations, is the nra under threat of losing the support of these guys to other gun organizations if they fall away from the talking points? apparently so. you know, joy, it s been a jaw-dropping few days watching the nra. i mean, this is very unusual stuff from them and quite fascinating to see them apologize publicly the way they did for a criticism that in and of itself was quite extraordinary. so, yeah. i think, you know, my read is that they were not liking the bad publicity at all that these guys were getting for these various open carry demonstrations but then when they criticized it in an honest way, you know, they quickly were
chipotle was so worried about demonstrations it asked customers around the country to leave their guns at home when they went on burrito runs. the statement noted while unlicensed open carry of long guns is typically legal in most places a rare sight to see some one saddle up in line for lunch with a 762 point rifle slung across his chest. not only is it rare it s downright weird. open carry texas didn t like that. and responded saying if the nra wouldn t detract their disgusting, disrespectful comments, oct will have no choice but to withdraw its support of the nra and establish relationships with other gun organizations. what did the nra do? backed down. the lobbyists went on a radio show, nra show, the statement they posted was the view of one staffer expressing a personal opinion. the truth is, an alert went out that referred to this type of behavior as weird.