Fish in a Barrel

The film opens at the 2018 March For Our Lives in Los Angeles, where thousands of demonstrators with powerful signs converged in a turning point in the long fight to curb gun violence in America. How long? We see footage of 20 years prior at the Million Mom March in Washington, D.C., where speakers and marchers echo many of the same points. The film explores why things don’t change, following the NRA’s influence in politics. Even after Sandy Hook, the NRA watered down and then derailed a modest background checks bill, using misinformation that the bill would create a registry. This information is spread using the NRA’s own database of gun owners which has added millions of names without permission. The NRA’s political influence is explored through their membership numbers claims, use of coordinating vendors with Republican candidates, and their direct efforts to elect Donald Trump. At the same time, the amount of election interference by Russia is considerable, ranging from hacking election vendors to U.S. power plants, and a review of Soviet history shows the troubling efforts to undermine American democracy. Similarly, Republicans like Senator Joseph McCarthy were vehemently anti-Russia, underscoring the change of attitude toward Russia in recent years. The film takes a deep dive into the story of Maria Butina and Aleksandr Torshin, a pair of Russian nationals who became NRA members in a brazen effort to influence American politicians. Along the way, the NRA committed numerous financial violations and broke campaign finance laws, which would typically result in a loss of tax-exempt status, as the film’s last part details.