On Tuesday October 4th, both Vice Presidential candidates gathered at Longwood University in Virginia. Both Senator Kaine, Hilary Clinton’s running partner, and Governor Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s running partner, gathered to participate in the event. Elaine Quijano was the moderator of the event, and would a vast variety of questions to both men. When Quijano asked Kaine whether ““we ask too much of police in our country?” that would spark gun control issues to life.
The response
It was Senator Kaine’s response that sparked a confrontation. Kaine said “I’m a gun owner, I’m a strong Second Amendment supporter, but I’ve got a lot of scar tissue because when I was governor of Virginia there was a horrible shooting at Virginia Tech. And we learned that, through that painful situation that gaps in the background record system should have been closed and that could have prevented that crime. So we’re going work to do things like close background record checks and if we do, we won’t have the tragedies that we did.” It was the first part of this statement that didn’t sit well with one of the largest Second Amendment right supporters in our nation. The Nation Riffle Association did not take well to this and would take the platform of Twitter to respond.
Here is a link to article containing NRA tweets http://bearingarms.com/beth-b/2016/10/04/nra-sets-record-straight-on-senator-kaines-gun-control-push/
Why Twitter?
The NRA wanted to separate themselves as far away from Senator Kaine and as quickly as possible. The quickest way in society today to send out a message is via social media. Social media gives an immediate platform to present your view point and also acquire immediate feedback from others. It is also massive, with nearly 313 million users on twitter alone. The NRA tweet rating Senator Kaine as an “f” would immediately be seen and redistributed across the web. The giant nature of the NRA and its close association with defending the second amendment, combined with the immediate distribution of their message was an attempt to separate Senator Kaine and the idea that he is a supporter of the 2nd amendment.