NRA Mocked by Trump Critics After Tim Walz Shotgun Fact-Check

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is being mocked on X, formerly Twitter, after it posted a video of Democratic vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz with a shotgun on Tuesday.
The video, accompanied by circus music, showed the Minnesota governor in a field with a gun, which the organization said he was attempting to load.
“Tim Walz previously claimed he kept a shotgun in his car so he could hunt pheasants after football practice,” the post said. “This is Tim Walz attempting to load his shotgun this past weekend.”
The clip showed Walz hunched over the gun working with a mechanism before tapping the butt pad. It ended with a graphic reading “that dog don’t hunt,” making the assertion the governor did not know how to use his firearm.
The post quickly attracted the attention of other X users, who were quick to point out that Walz was, in fact, unloading the gun properly.
A community note, which appears under posts to add context, read “Walz is unloading the gun” with a link to a YouTube video of another gun owner carrying out the same action.
“Community Note on proper gun use to the NRA? Straight gold,” one user replied, with another calling it “humiliating.”
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland school shooting, also replied to the post.
“This is the NRA proving that they know nothing about gun safety and preventing people from getting shot,” he said.
“@Tim_Walz is showing the right way to do this, safely. If ever you doubted who to listen to, focus on gun owners who believe in safety.”
Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris have been vocal about their gun ownership during the election campaign.
The Minnesota governor was once highly favored by the NRA, which gave him an A rating for his support of gun rights, but that relationship soured in recent years as Walz moved toward backing gun reform measures.
“I know guns. I’m a veteran, a hunter, and I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress—and I’ve got the trophies to prove it. But I’m also a dad. I believe in the Second Amendment. But our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe,” he said at the Democratic National Convention in August.
The NRA has taken issue with Walz’s stance, which has included the introduction of background checks and “red flag” protections in his state. He and Harris have since said they would like to see these introduced at the federal level.
Newsweek reached out to the NRA and the Harris-Walz campaign for comment via email Thursday afternoon.