The National Rifle Association's hold over the politics of gun control in America may be slipping.
The nation's largest and most influential gun rights lobbying group has remained silent in the aftermath of the deadly school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Friday.
On Friday evening, the NRA took down its Facebook page. The page now redirects to the Wikipedia entry for the NRA. While the NRA's Twitter account is still visible, the group has not sent out a tweet since the shooting.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke out against the NRA on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, saying that the lobbying group doesn't have as much power as most politicians fear.
"The NRA's number one objective this time was to defeat Barack Obama for a second term," said Bloomberg. "Last time I checked the election results, he won and he won comfortably. This myth that the NRA can destroy political careers is just not true."
Bloomberg has long been an outspoken supporter of gun control legislation.
"The public, when you do the polls, they want to stop this carnage," he said. "And if 20 kids isn't enough to convince them, I don't know what would be."
Other politicians are beginning to speak up more vocally after the shooting.
A New York Democratic representative blamed the NRA for the thousands of American gun-related deaths each year and called for drastic action.
"Al-Qaida killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center in 2001. The United States went to war because of that. Because of the NRA, we've lost 10,000 people last year unnecessarily. It's time we went to war," said Jerrold Nadler, the House representative for the west side of Manhattan, including Ground Zero.
"And you have to say the National Rifle Association is the enabler of mass murderers. And we've got to stomp on them instead of kowtowing to them," he said
Like Bloomberg, Nadler has been a staunch opponent of the NRA for many years.
But even political allies are beginning to turn on the NRA.
On Monday morning, a pro-gun Senator from West Virginia called for a reinstatement of the ban on assault weapons, which was passed during the Clinton presidency and allowed to lapse under George W. Bush.
"I want to call all our friends at the NRA and sit down," Manchin said Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who has received an "A" rating from the NRA for his support of gun rights.
"They have to be at the table. This is a time for all of us to sit down and move in a responsible manner. I think they will," Manchin said.
"Anyone saying they don't want to talk and sit down and have that type of discussion is wrong."
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