Not content to run roughshod over the Second Amendment, anti-gun groups and celebrities are seeking to take on the spirit of the First Amendment, and remove the NRA’s television platform from streaming services. Nathaniel Meyersohn writes for CNN:

Two gun safety groups want Apple, Amazon, Google and Roku to remove the NRA's online video channel from their streaming platforms.

In letters on Friday, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense and Everytown for Gun Safety called on the companies to cut ties with NRATV because it "promotes dangerous conspiracy theories, racially charged rhetoric, and violent demonization of the NRA's political opponents."

"American businesses have the responsibility to make ethical decisions about the content they will provide on their platforms," Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts wrote.

The groups launched an online petition with the hashtag #DumpNRATV. On Thursday, #StopNRAmazon began trending on Twitter as customers threatened to stop buying products or cancel their Prime memberships if Amazon doesn't pull NRATV.

Calling would-be censors “gun safety groups” is a bit Orwellian. Actually, the NRA is by far the most effective gun safety group on the country, as anyone who has taken its firearms safety training can attest. But that is a side note to this attempt to silence speech on the basis of political disagreement.

William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection notes the sly end-run around the Constitution, using oligopolies to censor speech, not the power of the government:

It should surprise no one that what starts with an attack on 2nd Amendment rights quickly moved to an attack on free speech via the handful of internet oligopolies. Leftists have identified a weak point — private entities are not constrained by the 1st Amendment the way the government is, but they perform on the internet quasi-governmental functions over internet infrastructure and access.

  In a series of tweets, Professor Jacobson elaborated:

♦ Renewed lapsed @NRA membership for 5 years b/c of corporate cowardice in face of social media tactics that regularly get used against conservatives on a range of issues, not just #2A #TweetYourNRAMembership Anyone who thinks they will not also go after #1Aisn’t paying attn

♦ In fact, already going trying to silence @NRATV by cutting off ability to stream content

♦ Cutting back or eliminating your #2A rights is just that start, not the end

♦ Just visit almost any campus, where non-leftist words and thoughts they don’t like are equated to violence that needs to be repressed and driven off campus, it’s what’s going on now in corporate America too, and @Hertz @Delta and others are just more evidence

♦. @afbranco got it right: “The #2ndAmendment is also a symbol of our freedom and independence as a people – and that is why the left hate it so and are playing the long game to take it”

♦ Proving my point that they will not stop w #2A @JoeNBC joins chorus to cut off @NRATVfrom streaming services

Ake no mistake: Our freedoms do not please the mandarin-wannabes of the Deep State and the tech oligopolists, and they see an opportunity in the deaths in Parkland, Florida.  Professor Jacobson lays it on the line:

These people are totalitarian in nature, and that nature is on full display.