With his latest round of morning tweets, Donald Trump continued his days-long streak of unrepentant comments about Charlottesville. He has continued to claim that the “alt left,” in his words, shared blame for bloodshed that left one woman dead and dozens injured, an assertion that is contradicted by extensive video evidence that shows white nationalists repeatedly attacking counter protesters.

This framing of the left as a violent force — and a more pressing threat than the far right — was trotted out by the National Rifle Association soon after Trump’s inauguration. The gun group has since pushed that narrative hard in a slew of videos, including spokeswoman Dana Loesch’s infamous “Clenched Fist of Truth” ad demonizing the Women’s March. With no Clinton or Obama in power to rail against, the NRA appears to have determined that leftist protesters pose the greatest threat to gun-owners, and indeed all Americans.

The gun group and the president have both sought to use fear to their political advantage. For the NRA, at least, this approach could backfire in a big way, political scientist Alexandra Filindra says. Filindra has run a slew of experiments on how people’s feelings about race, crime, and violence influence their positions on gun laws. In a study she published last year, she found that racial resentment strongly influenced white people to oppose gun control.

But, according to her latest research, escalating racial tensions don’t lead to retrenchment of hard-line attitudes against gun laws. Fear of social violence, Filindra says, can drown out worries about racial identity. In an as-yet unpublished experiment, she found that if white people are prompted with descriptions of violent protests or street brawls, they are more likely to support gun control.

https://www.thetrace.org/2017/08/nra-violent-left-backfire/