Marissa Moss is a freelance writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of Lockeland Springsteen, a Nashville-based music blog.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Johnny Cash was a fan of Westerns and stars like “singing cowboy” Gene Autry, using what he learned to feed his tales of rambling gunslingers, most of whom ended up on the wrong side of the law. And as the genre progressed, this penchant for firearms hasn’t waned—it’s grown, except instead of being enamored with the outlaw, it’s obsessed with the Constitution and the Second Amendment. In modern country iconography, it’s the hunter, not the cowboy, who reigns supreme. As is clear from some of the hits of today’s country superstars—like Luke Bryan’s “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day,” Granger Smith’s major-label debut album Remington and Justin Moore’s unsubtle “Guns”—it’s now as much a lifestyle as it is a lyrical trope.

Stephen Paddock, who took the lives of 59 innocent concertgoers on Sunday night and wounded over 500 at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, was no cowboy. He wasn’t a hunter, either (that we know of, at least). But his massacre has struck at the heart of one of the most untouchable political issues in country music: gun rights.


Country music is so closely entwined with gun culture that it even has its own wing of the National Rifle Association, NRA Country, which sponsors tours for artists like Lee Brice and Brantley Gilbert. And until now, gun control has remained just another mostly unchallenged, contentious topic, like the genre’s use of the Confederate flag to personify “Southern pride.”

If you didn’t know a lot about country music, you’d be tempted to think this might be a hinge moment. But for those who do, we know how tribal the genre can be about its politics. One need look only as far back as 2003, when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks told a crowd in England they were “ashamed that the president of the United States was from Texas.” They were almost immediately shunned. Angry callers demanded they be taken off the air at radio stations around the country; the band canceled concerts because they couldn’t sell tickets. And mainstream country seems to have learned the lesson of breaking from conservative orthodoxy: Not a single major star has criticized President Donald Trump yet, a striking absence compared with artists in other genres.

But while there’s no reason to expect major country stars to suddenly risk their fan bases by speaking out in favor of new gun control legislation, the country music industry is changing, thanks to streaming services that are breaking radio’s stranglehold on the industry and a newer cohort of more under-the-radar Americana artists who are more outspoken than their mainstream counterparts.

For at least one mainstream country musician, Sunday night was in fact a turning point. Guitarist for the Texas-based Josh Abbott Band, Caleb Keeter, was at the festival on the day of the massacre, and living through the experience of a mass shooting firsthand was enough to make him rethink his own stance on gun control. “I cannot express how wrong I was,” he said in a Twitter post on Monday morning, still reeling from the shock of the attack after shielding himself from the gunfire on the floor of his tour bus. “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW. My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn't realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it.”

But the list of mainstream country music artists who are willing to speak out in favor of gun control has essentially stopped there. Rosanne Cash, the daughter of Johnny Cash, denounced the NRA as a funder of “domestic terrorism” in a recent New York Times op-ed and pleaded with the country community to rally against the organization and distance itself from gun culture. But she’s been doing so for 20 years. And other artists from outside of the pull of the traditional Nashville music industry like country/Americana artists Will Hoge and Margo Price, have been vocal, urging for action, but they’re left of center and don’t depend on country radio as their lifeblood. Despite enduring an event that has shaken Nashville to its core, few artists have connected their sympathies with calls for political action. “There has been a lot of this, ‘Oh, I’m speaking out against hate,’ but being very vague, and not actually saying anything about laws,” says Price, a native of rural Illinois and a vocal firearms owner herself.

There’s a reason for those mainstream artists’ reticence: The blessing of country radio is still vital for their careers, especially those with a small or burgeoning fan base, and they have seen what happens when you get on the wrong side of the DJs and the fans they represent.

And those fans still love guns. Pro-gun culture is as entrenched in country music culture as never before, thanks in part to the marketing efforts of the NRA itself. A relatively new organization, NRA Country was founded in 2010 to promote, according to the website’s mission statement, “a lifestyle and a bond between the best and brightest in country music and hard-working Americans.”

Not unlike the demands the NRA places on politicians through its ability to mobilize voters and steer donations, NRA Country supports artists in many ways, from sponsoring tours to launching promotional ad campaigns for its “featured artists,” affording newer singers like Michael Ray, who played the first night of Route 91 this past weekend, a helpful platform and a built-in fan base. In return, NRA Country can tap into the genre’s growing millennial market for new recruits, something the organization is eager to access: A young audience already predisposed to love hunting and firearms is gun-lobby gold.

But it also takes advantage of the nebulous line between an artist who supports and sings about gun ownership and one associated directly with the NRA as a political organization. Miranda Lambert, for instance, often appears as retweets in their feed, and though she is a vocal gun owner, she is not officially sponsored by NRA Country. And Blake Shelton, who doesn’t carry official ties with the organization, either, has lent his name to their events, including a celebrity shootout in 2010 to benefit flood relief in Nashville.

Perhaps NRA Country’s most effective tactic is connecting support for gun rights with an idealized rural lifestyle with its own values system, which includes central tenets like strong support for the military and law enforcement. Just as the NRA itself put out an ad with former Navy SEAL Dom Raso explaining why he “stands” during the anthem amid a national debate over NFL players’ kneeling protests of police violence, so NRA Country has wrapped itself in patriotic symbolism. “NRA members stand for the flag, and they want the whole country to know it,” Executive Vice President and CEO of the NRA Wayne LaPierre has said. An NRA Country news release announcing duo LOCASH as September’s “featured artist” hails the group’s “support of our brave men and women in uniform, appreciation for the great outdoors and love of family.”

Country’s relationship with the military goes even deeper than its relationship with guns: Its biggest names, like Cash himself, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Johnny Paycheck and Kris Kristofferson, were all soldiers, and appearing on USO tours is a strong tradition within the genre. NRA Country’s social media accounts have retweeted artists like Gilbert—whose entire back is covered in a tattoo dedicated to the Second Amendment—showing off a flag he received from a member of the Air Force. The goal, it seems clear, is to make the cause of gun rights seem indistinguishable from supporting the troops.

But the reality underneath all of this is that many country artists, including some speaking off the record for this story, endorse both gun ownership and responsible legislation, yet fear being “Dixie Chicked”—now essentially shorthand for the radio industry’s power to blacklist artists—if they speak out.

Still, country radio has lost some of its power since Maines, the group’s lead singer, spoke out against George W. Bush. In the pre-Twitter era, the noise against Keeter could have been crippling—now, he has over 60,000 retweets. Spotify, SiriusXM and other streaming services have provided an alternate route for exposure, and artists like Lambert, with barely a recent hit on country radio, still sends her albums to the top of the Billboard albums chart and embarks on successful tours without those No. 1 singles.

These changes have given some country music artists hope that they can start to speak their minds a bit more. “Will this be the thing where all of a sudden every conservative artist comes out and supports gun control? That’s an unrealistic idea,” says Hoge, who lives in Nashville and owns a firearm. “I do think this is the point where country artists are going to have to take long hard looks in the mirror and ask, ‘What’s more important to me: maintaining success at commercial radio, or doing what’s right?’”

One sign that things might be changing: Three mainstream country acts, including the popular Florida-Georgia Line, have quietly canceled their NRA Country partnerships in the wake of the Vegas shooting, and only one would confirm to Rolling Stone that they were still partnered with the organization.

Several in the industry who support gun control measures, speaking anonymously, believe that if anyone challenges the industry’s dominant, no-compromise stance on guns, it will be artists like Price and Hoge and others outside of the establishment machine in Nashville. Yet many of these musicians are already distinguished as being more closely aligned with Democrats on policy issues, as one publicist for some of Americana’s most prominent names noted. “If we’re going to open up a thoughtful dialogue in the mind of the public,” he told me, “it can’t come from a source they already dismiss as liberal.”

Perhaps that’s why some think that country’s newest generation of young major-label stars, like Brothers Osborne, Charlie Worsham, Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves, who remain mostly politically neutral and have a fan base of both conservatives and liberals, might be moved enough by the Las Vegas massacre to at least start asking new questions about whether America’s gun laws make sense, when anyone can amass a private arsenal and mow down dozens of unsuspecting music fans who just wanted to enjoy a concert.

And at least one of them sounds ready. “There isn’t a constitution of country music, but if there were, it would speak to a moment like this,” says Worsham, a Warner Nashville artist. “That people would operate without the fear of losing money or fans. We have a chance to say and do what we know in our hearts is right. It will not be the easiest thing we’ve ever done. But my favorite country songs aren’t about easy stuff, anyway.”