Kiwis targeted in US pro-gun social media harassment campaign on Twitter

New Zealand social media has been inundated by US pro-gun tweets since the Christchurch attacks, and new data analysis by the Herald shows many of these were from accounts intended for harassment. Since the terrorist attack in Christchurch, there have been nearly 9000 tweets about gun control in New Zealand, retweeted almost 90,000 times in total. Two-thirds of these came from users in America, based on analysis of their activity patterns. Some were in support of the Government's gun reforms, but the majority were pro-gun voices describing it as a "gun grab" or an attempt to "disarm" New Zealanders. More than 9000 of the users involved described themselves using the hashtags #NRA (National Rifle Association), #2A (Second Amendment, the part of the US Constitution relating to guns) or #MAGA (for President Donald Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again"). Many tweeted at the Police and the Prime Minister's accounts directly, accusing them of being socialists and dictators. Why does gun control in New Zealand inspire such passions in America? "I think what the Prime Minister has done stands in such stark contrast to how the debate to address gun violence usually go in the United States. It represents a real threat to how the National Rifle Association operates," says Chelsea Parsons, Vice President for Gun Violence Prevention at the Center for American Progress, a thinktank in Washington DC. "The NRA and the gun lobby in the US ... promote this narrative of futility, which is 'we shouldn't consider new gun laws because gun laws won't work'," says Parsons. "We're already hearing from the advocacy community here: 'Why can't our leaders do what Prime Minister Ardern is doing in New Zealand? Why can't we have that?'." Parsons says that the NRA is already active overseas, recently sending their experts to

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