“The N.R.A.,” John Oliver said as he opened Last Week Tonight’s long segment Sunday night, is like “a group that feels about guns the way the rest of us feel about Nutella: a little is good, more is better, and you can tell me it’s bad for me all you like, but you will pry it from my cold, dead hands.” As the fallout from the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, continues, Oliver noted, more and more brands have been dropping their partnerships with the National Rifle Association—but one exception has been NRATV, a channel that remains available to stream on digital platforms including Roku and Apple TV.

“With all of the discussion this week of boycotting NRATV, we thought it might be worth answering the question, ‘What the fuck is that?’“ Oliver said. “Because the truth is you may have actually seen tiny bits of its programming without even realizing it.”

A few clips from NRATV have gone viral in recent years—including one in which Dana Loesch warns viewers, “They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. The only way we stop this—the only way save our country and our freedom—is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.”

To Oliver, this hub is basically “Fox News on a much lower budget.” But as he noted, NRATV does offer a wide variety of programming, including no fewer than three “Antiques Roadshow knockoffs” in which the participants “get progressively more and more aroused by the guns they’re holding.” And not all of the content is aimed at gun bros, either; the N.R.A. is making “a big push for women,” Oliver said, with series like Love at First Shot, “a kind of QVC for firearms” intended to make women more comfortable with the idea of owning and firing guns.

Another regular fixture of NRATV? Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of hunting-focused content—but perhaps not the kind anyone would expect. “While the visuals are predictable beauty shots of nature,” Oliver said, “the voice-over takes a different path . . . less Planet Earth and more ‘deranged letter from a serial killer.’“

“The final defining characteristic of the network,” Oliver said, “is painting a bleak vision of America, with threats around every single corner and one solution.” As proof, he rolled a clip in which various talking heads from the network painted a terrifying picture of “today’s America,” noting, “They’re using the same techniques as an infomercial there: Is human traffic getting you down? Do you have ISIS sympathizers in those hard-to-reach places? Are you tired of getting 9/11-ed? There’s got to be a better way! Try the AR-15, available at way too many stores near you.” That infomercial-like approach makes sense, Oliver said, since many NRATV series are, no surprise, sponsored by gun brands.

As Oliver wrapped up, he left viewers with one final thought: “The answer to the question ‘What the fuck is NRATV?’ is it’s just a vessel to sell America guns. That’s pretty much it. Does it work? It’s honestly hard to say; they won’t reveal their ratings, so it’s plausible that no one is watching this . . . NRATV might actually be the dumbest, most transparent thing that it does. Think about it this way: if the N.R.A. is a ferocious bear charging at you, NRATV is that bear’s ridiculous hat. Is it eye-catching? Sure it is. Is it perversely entertaining? Absolutely. Is it the main thing you should be worried about? Probably not. Because the real truth here is, hat or no hat, it is imperative that everyone keep their eyes on that fucking bear.”