Image courtesy of Mark Walters & Armed American Radio. 'Gun radio' is up in arms

Welcome to the gun shows - radio shows, that is.

On programs such as “Gun Talk,” “Cam & Co.,” “Talking Guns” and “Armed American Radio,” the rights of gun owners lead every single day — not just when media figures, politicians or a recent tragedy have pushed the Second Amendment back into the national conversation.


Although the hosts and listeners in the gun radio media subculture often describe themselves as conservative, the shows don’t offer ideological talk as much as an ongoing, deep look at a single-issue with an unshakeable viewpoint in support of protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

As the hosts note, if you haven’t heard much about guns and gun rights issues lately in the media, you’re just not listening to gun radio.

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“Gun owners see that bias in the media,” said Mark Walters, the host of the nationally-syndicated “Armed American Radio” show. “They see it every day, in every mainstream television outlet and news channel, in every newspaper, on all the mainstream websites, on all the cable news outlets. And what the media does is push an anti-gun political bias and really toe the line for the gun-control crowd. As a result, they exploit and harp on and jump all over tragedy when it happens. And unfortunately they don’t cover it, they use it as an opportunity to push a gun-control agenda.”

The shows, meanwhile, garner plenty of criticism from gun control advocates who consider the programs the mouthpieces of pro-gun groups. CNN’s Piers Morgan — who has become a prominent voice for gun control and frequently tangles with gun rights advocates on his cable news show and on Twitter — said the existence and popularity of pro-gun talk radio shows and media comes courtesy of the “extremely powerful, very vocal” gun lobby.

“The current gun control lobby is nowhere near as vocal or powerful, but I believe more people in America, the majority in my opinion, agree with the basic proposals that President Obama is trying to put forward,” Morgan told POLITICO at a recent event for his new book, “Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney.” “It would be useful if in this debate the pro-gun safety lobby had the kind of resources, power and voice of the pro-gun lobby.”

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And Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said that although data shows radio is “fairly dominated by conservatives who are more likely to be against gun reform, I would argue that the media and public advocates who support gun reform are on different and more broadly seen platforms.”

“Part of the disconnect here is that the gun advocacy community distrusts how mainstream media outlets cover gun issues,” Watts said. “Although we’d always like more in depth coverage, the nation’s largest media outlets do consistently cover incidents of gun violence and legislative reforms that matter to advocates for gun reform.”

But the world of gun talk radio is one of the few places where Second Amendment supporters can escape the media’s bias against gun owners, said Tom Gresham, who hosts the long-running nationally syndicated program “Gun Talk,” which airs on more than 140 stations.

“The coverage of gun control and gun issues is really the last vestige of group-approved bigotry,” said Gresham, who broadcasts his weekly show that he describes as “‘Car Talk’ about guns, with politics thrown in,” out of Covington, Louisiana. “It’s the one place where you can make fun of an identifiable group of people, you can do caricatures of them as being stupid.”

It’s a different story on gun radio. As Gresham said on his Oct. 6 broadcast, “We’re the gun owners you never hear about.”

“You know, the ones who do it right, the responsible ones,” he said on “Gun Talk.” “Because if you’re doing it right, nobody hears about you. You don’t make the news. Which means, of course, conversely, that the ones you hear about are the ones who are doing it wrong, in many cases. And they are the teeny tiny fractionally insignificant minority. But that’s what the media covers. So you’re now with the majority of gun owners.”

There is certainly a market for gun radio shows focused on political talk, said Michael Harrison, publisher of the trade magazine Talkers. With single-issue shows in the news arena, success in radio depends on the loyalty of the audience, the availability of specific sponsors, the variety of angles and stories, and, of course, the host, he noted.

“Obviously people into guns and Second Amendment rights are passionate,” Harrison told POLITICO. “There are tons of advertisers wanting to reach this very specific segment of the population.”

Gun talk radio — which the hosts say is booming thanks to President Barack Obama’s gun control agenda — takes a different perspective on the news of the day, the hosts say: Their bias in favor of gun owners is out there for all to hear.

Walters, after all, touts his show — which is the official radio program of the United States Concealed Carry Association and airs on just under 200 stations across the country — as “not fair and balanced.”

“If you don’t like guns and you don’t believe in the right to keep and bear arms or the right to carry a firearm, my show will be the most unfair, unbalanced, most biased program you’ve ever heard,” Walters, 51, who also writes the column “One to the Head” for Concealed Carry Magazine and has written two books on gun rights, told POLITICO.

And Kate Krueger, who hosts “Talking Guns” out of Scottsdale, Ariz., on 1100 AM KFNX and available online, said she also doesn’t see her show as a place for debating the rights of gun owners. Krueger, who in 1992 ran a failed campaign for U.S. Senate as a Libertarian in New Hampshire, noted that she learned how to use guns and became a Second Amendment supporter because she is a survivor of violence. “I never shot a gun until I was 31,” said Krueger, now “plus 60” and a gun store owner.

Guests are on her show to echo the viewpoint that she and her listeners share, she said, not to question their worldview.

“I’m not going to get [Fox News liberal commentator] Bob Beckel on because I’d probably kill him on the air. One of us would die on the air,” Krueger said. “I’m not going to bring somebody like that on. I’m going to bring somebody that is going to get my political point and is going to bring that point across, and is going to be the expert that I’m not and say the same thing that I’ve been saying.”

Other hosts, like Gresham and Cam Edwards — the host of NRA News’ “Cam & Co,” which broadcasts daily on NRANews.com, Sportsman Channel and SiriusXM Patriot — said they’re more welcoming of a dialogue on their shows, although they always maintain their firm stance on the right to keep and bear arms.

“We’re here for gun owners,” said Edwards, 39, who noted his three-hour Washington, D.C.-based program is editorially separate from the NRA. “And I always say when we’re talking about an issue, it’s just my opinion. The audience is more than welcome to disagree with me and that’s how we have good conversations.”

While the hosts have nothing good to say about Obama’s stance on guns, there is one thing they say the president’s time in office has been good for. “The Obama administration has been a big boon for this type of format,” Walters said.

And Gresham, 61, who characterizes himself as someone who tends toward the conservative side of the spectrum but is also a political “mix” as both a member of the NRA and the ACLU, said “the Obama administration has had a huge impact on both firearms sales and on awareness and people’s awakening to gun rights as a whole.” And Edwards, who kicks off every show by reading the Second Amendment, said there’s no sense of victory in the Obama administration’s failure to pass substantial gun control laws: “We know that the Obama administration is going to continue to pursue these policies,” he said.

Walters added, “What has happened during the Obama administration is the sleeping giant of pro-gun activism has been awakened and people are very alert to the attacks against their freedom. No question about it, my show has absolutely grown as a result.”

As for gauging the political impact of these gun shows, Harrison said it is “difficult to measure,” particularly when you consider that they are single-issue programs that “specifically preach to the choir.”

“But even those have influence: they galvanize, inspire, motivate and focus the choir to both awareness and action,” he said. “They also have influence in being potent buys for their advertisers, keeping in mind they are in the commercial broadcasting business, not the political one.”

Looking ahead at what they will be offering their listeners in terms of political talk, the hosts of gun talk radio say that although it’s too early to really take sides on 2016, there are some names to take note of. Krueger, who said she is a “constitutional conservative” and is “proud to be considered” a “teabagger,” said she is a fan of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “I don’t think he’ll make it, but if he runs, I’ll give him a look,” she said.

And there is one Republican politician whose name has been thrown around as a possibility for 2016 that the hosts of gun radio shows say they’re very wary of: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Gresham said the Republican governor “likes to talk about how he’s a Second Amendment supporter, and he’s not,” and Walters agreed that Christie “is not going to be a favorite of gun owners.”

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