Google Searches on ‘NRA Membership’ Hit Record Levels During Student Gun Control March

While students marched for gun control in Washington, DC, Americans were doing Google searches on “NRA membership” at a record pace.

The Daily Caller reported that searches for the term “NRA membership” surged to “peak popularity” on Google during the student gun control event. And the Daily Wire noted that, when the last 14 years of search data for the term “NRA membership” was examined, it showed “searches for the phrase spiked higher over the weekend than … in response to the gun control push and campaign against the NRA after Sandy Hook.”

Google searches for the term “NRA membership” rose significantly, but briefly, following the heinous attack on Sandy Hook and the subsequent gun control push. However, that surge was well beneath the one that followed Democrats’ immediate attempts to use the Parkland school shooting for gun control.

Ironically, there was no surge of searches for “NRA membership” following the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech shooting. Thirty-two innocents were killed in that horrific crime, but the Daily Wire opines that it did not lend itself to a gun control campaign because the attacker used handguns instead of an AR-15, AK-47, or similar rifle.

While handguns are far more prevalent for criminal use than AR-15s, AK-47s, or any other rifle, it should be noted that even knives are used in more homicides than “assault weapons.” FBI crime stats say that over four times as many people were stabbed to death in 2016 than were killed with rifles of any kind.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.