Illustration: Nicolas Ortega for The Intercept

THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION nearly doubled its spending on pro-gun Facebook propaganda for three weeks after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, according to analytics provided to The Intercept.

The social advertising surge began just one day after the El Paso massacre, which left 22 people dead, and on the same day as the Dayton killings, which took 10 lives. At one point in this period, the NRA was spending $29,000 on a day’s worth of Facebook ads, nearly four times as much as before the shootings, according to Pathmatics, a company that monitors online advertising spending.

The ad spending was conducted through the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, which, in the four weeks before the shootings, spent on average just over $9,400 a day on Facebook ads. Then came the El Paso shooting on August 3 and Dayton on August 4. Between August 4 and August 25, the institute spent around $360,000 on Facebook — roughly $16,500 per […]

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