Scott Powers
The Pride Fund to End Gun Violence, a national gay rights organization launched in response to Orlando’s 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in order to advocate gun control, is releasing a new video focusing on the pain and anger surrounding mass murders, with the intention of keeping emotions high.
The video makes a direct accusation toward the National Rifle Association, charging that the group does not care about the impacts on people from a pro-gun culture that the Pride Fund links to the availability of assault weapons to the shooters at Orlando, Parkland, and other massacres.
Dubbed “The NRA Doesn’t Care About Jack,” the video runs nearly two and a half minutes. It features clips of mass shootings, of survivors and family members talking later about their suffering, of TV news reports, and of both Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama commenting. But mostly it focuses on a fictional toddler named Jack, and creates a video narrative wondering what his life can be like in an America where guns are prevalent and massacres common.
“This is Jack,” text reads as video appears of the boy. “By the time he can walk alone, hundreds more will die by gunfire.”
The Pride Fund was established after the June 12, 2016, massacre at Orlando’s popular gay nightclub Pulse, which killed 49 people. The group was organized in part by LGBTQ activists in Orlando, and set out to mobilize the national LGBTQ community to push for bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, and for universal background checks.
The video is being launched in response to the Feb. 14 massacre, which killed 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. The group is placing the video on social media and pushing it to its mailing list of more than 100,000 through email and soliciting them to do the same. The group also plans to raise money for a targeted internet advertising campaign featuring the video.
Pride Fund Executive Director Jason Lindsay said the campaign in part hopes to convince people to adopt the group’s positions for gun control, but the larger effort is to keep the emotions stirred among supporters, to encourage them to keep up pressure.
“It’s a good, stark reminder. It elicits the emotions of how people felt as all these tragedies unfolded,” he said. “The only way we’re going to get stuff done is for people to remember how it felt. We’ve got to keep emotions alive in this life-or-death battle for gun reform.”
