The Making Of 'No Compromise' A behind the scenes conversation with hosts Lisa Hagen and Chris Haxel. We hear how they got the idea for the show, their own relationship to guns and what's next on the podcast. Plus questions from fans like you.

The Making Of 'No Compromise'

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SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:

Hey, NO COMPROMISE listeners. I'm Sarah McCammon, NPR correspondent. NO COMPROMISE will have a full episode next week. But right now, we're bringing you a special behind-the-scenes conversation with your hosts, Lisa Hagen and Chris Haxel. I had the chance to chat with them on Facebook Live, where we talked about how they got the idea for the show, their own relationship to guns and what's next on the podcast. And they answered some questions from viewers. Here's that conversation.

So hello, Lisa. You're joining us from Atlanta, where you're a reporter for the NPR station WABE.

LISA HAGEN, HOST:

Hi, Sarah.

MCCAMMON: Yeah. Thanks for being here. And hi to Chris. Chris reports for NPR affiliate KCUR in Kansas City, my hometown, by the way. Hi, Chris.

CHRIS HAXEL, HOST:

Go Chiefs. Thanks, Sarah.

MCCAMMON: Yeah. We want to encourage those of you who are tuned in to this live feed to send us some of the questions you might have for Lisa and Chris. And we'll see how many we can get to later on. But first, for Lisa and Chris, both of you have been part of a multi-station initiative that's been going on for the last couple of years called Guns & America. Can you briefly talk about what that is and what kind of stories you've been doing?

HAXEL: Yeah. So the idea is it's sort of headed by WAMU, which is a member station in Washington, D.C. And we've got a team of reporters who are based at 10 different public radio stations across the country. And so we and our eight other colleagues all work together and, you know, kind of collaborate to try to come up with stories that do a good job of reporting on guns and gun culture and the gun industry. And, you know, there's all sorts of stuff you can cover when it comes to guns. It's a big topic.

MCCAMMON: So again, you're both in two different parts of the country. Lisa, you're in the south. Chris, you're in the Midwest. And you were seeing some overlapping themes as you did your reporting on guns, right?

HAGEN: I mean, we've also been seeing these themes - I think everyone has - in American culture for a while, which is that, you know, I grew up shooting guns. My dad is a Marine, as we've talked about in the podcast. And guns didn't used to be as political a thing, I think, when I was growing up, or they weren't in my circles, at least. And what we've seen is that it becomes a part of people's identity in a way that I think has changed over the last decades. When my dad taught me to shoot, I was, like, 6. It was just so I could be a well-rounded person in his eyes.

MCCAMMON: Chris, you, too, have a background, military background. You're familiar with guns before you became a reporter, right?

HAXEL: Yeah. Absolutely. I was in the Army for a few years and, you know, spent a lot of time handling weapons, firing weapons - all sorts of different types of weapons - had and still have, to this day, lots of good friends who are, you know, really in the gun culture. You know, I used to have a roommate who would come home on a Friday afternoon after work. He'd go to the gun store and pick out a new toy. And, you know, he'd walk in and say, you know, look what I got. I got this cool, you know, AK-47-style shotgun and that sort of thing. And, I mean, that was my normal lived experience.

MCCAMMON: I want to talk about the first episode of the series NO COMPROMISE. For anyone who hasn't heard it or even if you have, let's take a listen to the beginning of the first episode.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

CHRIS DORR: Did y'all see that? Oh, how wonderful. Wonderful. Defiance of tyranny is so alive and well in the great Keystone State

HAGEN: Harrisburg, Pa. - it's late April, and thousands of people are protesting outside the state capital. Coronavirus has been disrupting American life and killing people for almost two months. The governor here has ordered Pennsylvanians to stay home. Businesses are closed. Hospitals are packed. But Americans are stubborn people.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DORR: To all the haters who are watching the page right now, I hope this display of American love for freedom triggers all of you.

HAXEL: What you're hearing is video posted on Facebook. This guy, Chris Dorr, started a Facebook page called Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine, and 60,000 people joined almost instantly.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DORR: Folks, this whole Facebook page was started in order to get people to start fighting back against these tyrannical moves that Governor Wolf has been foisting upon the people of Pennsylvania. And I got to tell you I was at...

MCCAMMON: So we're hearing that Chris Dorr doesn't live in Pennsylvania. There are about a dozen groups run by five guys, as you've reported, Lisa and Chris, each supposedly grassroots. But as it turns out, according to your reporting, there are some questions about how they operate. What's the deal with these guys?

HAXEL: Yeah. So I mean, as we went around and we're talking to other people in the gun world, we heard a lot of people say that these guys, these Dorr brothers and their friends, were scam artists, essentially, who were sort of the gun world equivalent of carnival barkers going around telling everybody all across the country that they need money to defend their gun rights. But, you know, in reality, the accusation goes, these guys are just pocketing the money and not actually advocating for gun rights.

MCCAMMON: What was it about the Dorrs and this movement that made you go, this is worthy of more exploration, this is something that we need to take a closer look at?

HAGEN: I mean, hearing, again, from folks on the ground who are in gun rights activism, they would just sort of dismiss these guys and say, oh, they're not really doing anything. They're just, like, collecting money. But then I looked at sort of the Facebook engagement, the money that they were bringing in. And the popularity of these groups was going up and up, and up. And their sort of critics were right in that they weren't necessarily accomplishing much legislatively in the state. But just seeing that they were obviously having a very different kind of success online and approach was something that really intrigued me.

MCCAMMON: So obviously, Lisa and Chris, you've both been digging into the Dorr organization and what you call the no-compromise movement for over a year. Tell us more about how you put the show together to kind of lay this all out.

HAGEN: Yeah. This started as basically - I don't know - Chris raised his hand. And maybe we would work on something together, like a story that we would pitch to NPR or something. But as soon as Chris started looking into the Dorrs, who are more centrally located around the Midwest, where he's at, he turned up Paul Dorr, the father of the Dorrs. And, like, the minute we started seeing him and what he was saying and what he was about and sort of learning a little bit about the family, it was just like, oh, this is more than just a story about how and why gun rights are sort of headed in this direction more and more.

MCCAMMON: The overarching point here that your series kind of unpacks is how influential these men are well beyond where they actually live, right?

HAGEN: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the partner of the Dorr brothers here, Patrick Parsons, also operates a group in North Carolina, which, from what I hear, he does not go there. But he has many, many followers there and is raising, you know, tens of thousands of dollars - more than 75,000 or something in the most recent tax returns.

HAXEL: And Aaron Dorr is a good example. I mean, for a long time, you know, he and his brothers grew up in Iowa. So he, more than a decade ago, started the first of these groups, Iowa Gun Owners. But he's also the face of the Missouri Firearms Coalition and the face of Wyoming Gun Owners. And now he's the face of New York State Rifle Association (ph), I believe is the name of their group there.

And it's - I mean, it's interesting because he and these other guys, they will, from time to time, visit the state. And they'll record videos at the Capitol. And they kind of present to their local audience, hey, I'm here, I'm fighting for you. But, of course, if you live in Iowa, you're spending time in Wyoming and Missouri and New York and some of these other states, how much can you really fight on their behalf if you're splitting your time between so many places?

MCCAMMON: And that's one of the things you talk a lot about is that, while the Dorrs have a lot of supporters, clearly, they also have tangled with maybe some unexpected people, including Republicans and conservatives who would otherwise be seen as supporters of gun rights. I think we have a clip from the third episode where you kind of get into that. And I don't know, Lisa or Chris, if you want to set that up a little bit.

HAXEL: Yeah. Yeah. So I - you know, I've watched a lot of these videos that the Dorrs produce, and Aaron in particular because he's, you know, handles the Missouri Firearms Coalition. And he put up this video on their Facebook page one day - earlier this year, I think it was - where he seemed legitimately angry, I mean, kind of unhinged in a way that, you know - he always has sort of an aggressive, Alex Joneseskian (ph) Facebook persona.

But in this video, he seemed legitimately upset. And he was just sort of railing against this female legislator in Missouri named Suzie Pollock. And he was describing how, you know, she was mad at him because he had a bunch of people send emails attacking her and she called him up. And, you know, I will confess, I had never heard of her up until that point. She was a pretty new legislator. But I called her up. And she agreed to talk to me. And this clip will be kind of laying out both sides of the conversation, if you will.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

AARON DORR: She says, I am sick to death or outraged or angry with these prewritten emails that I have been receiving from the members of the Missouri Firearms Coalition. And I was like, oh, really? Oh, we're so sorry we offended you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SUZIE POLLOCK: You know, as a female in this, in everything I've done, you have to require people to respect you, you know, to give equal respect and to require that of people to communicate with you.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DORR: We are one day into session here in Missouri. And these arrogant people are already calling. And they're angry that they're hearing from you. And she's like, well, I just - I don't like the tone. They're very aggressive. They're very mean.

HAXEL: So what do these emails say, exactly?

POLLOCK: I expect you to co-sponsor and vote for this legislation on my behalf. I'm sick and tired of moderates in Jeff City, like you, killing this bill.

HAXEL: What'd you think when you started seeing those pour in?

POLLOCK: I wondered why they were calling me a moderate.

(LAUGHTER)

POLLOCK: I think that makes everybody scratch their head in this building.

HAGEN: This video...

MCCAMMON: So Chris and Lisa, here again, we're hearing that the Dorrs and the no-compromise advocates for gun rights, as you're calling them in the series, they don't just clash with liberals and gun control advocates. They clash with conservatives and Republicans. Let me just ask you a really simple question, why? What is their goal here?

HAGEN: I mean, it makes sense, right? These are some of the people who are - it's not just Republicans. It's really, like, some of the most conservative Republicans in a state tend to be the kind of people who are most vulnerable to attacks about their ideological purity. And the Dorrs and their friends have all these kinds of tactics to sort of try to box people in, I would say. They send out surveys and ask the candidate what their thoughts are on these things. And then they use that in the future if the lawmaker doesn't do what they want to sort of bludgeon them over the Internet.

HAXEL: They like to contrast that tactic with the NRA, which, of course, famously hands out grades and scorecards, right? So if you are a pro-gun legislator, maybe you get an A. If you introduce legislation NRA likes, you get that, you know, coveted A-plus rating from the NRA. Well, as the Dorrs and their allies say, you shouldn't give someone a public grade because that politician then is going to campaign on that forever. You want to just be able to attack them whenever they don't do exactly what you want them to do.

HAGEN: And it's important to say that, like, the main goal - right? - is to get people to not trust their lawmakers, who they elected. And, you know, it's all about, like, they're lying to you. Things that go on in the government are a lot shadier than you think. We're the only people you can trust. The Dorrs really lean into that as hard as possible and encourage the feeling.

MCCAMMON: I want to go to some listener comments or viewer comments. I'm in radio mode here.

HAGEN: (Laughter).

MCCAMMON: But we're on Facebook Live. A couple are sort of along the same theme here. So I'm going to read one from Heidi (ph) who says, government tyranny is here, and Second Amendment folks are not stopping cops from killing Black people. She says guns for white guys is what they really mean. And then kind of a related idea from, I believe, Jodi (ph) - how do the Second Amendment people justify the fact that they abjectly failed to act against the tyrannical government kidnappers in Portland. They're talking about, you know, federal troops being sent to try to push back protests in Portland, of course, in recent weeks. So I think what they're getting to here is the idea that government overreach isn't being stopped by Second Amendment folks, despite the argument that that's what this is about.

HAGEN: I would say, I mean, what people are getting at is a sense that there is hypocrisy in this movement, right? And that's something that, yes, we have had to grapple with quite a bit. I think there's something about Facebook and social media and the ease of framing the world around you in a really controlled manner where - you know, I've asked Chris these questions when these horrible events we see taking place all the time happen, you know, are we going to see the Dorrs commenting on this? And I think his response has been basically like, no, these things don't exist to them.

They're not particularly interested in what's happening to protesters in Portland, regardless of the fact that, technically, it's the same federal government that they vilify doing these things. They just don't bring that into their equation or broadcast it. And it's just not a discussion that gets had. And, I mean, I think what that should show us is that they are about having a government that works for them and the people who believe the things that they do. And that's about it. Just to address the question of race that I think is brought up in there, the Dorrs relish images of Black people, brown people exercising their Second Amendment rights, as long as those Black and brown people don't challenge their views, are sort of, like, silently in memes.

And they say, you know, we encourage this stuff. We think everyone should be armed. But I think when you actually take a look at their Facebook pages and the other sort of content they pump out, people can decide for themselves whether or not that's consistent with everything else they're seeing on the Internet.

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MCCAMMON: We'll be right back with more from my conversation with Chris and Lisa right after this.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MCCAMMON: And quickly, for those who are just joining us, we're talking with Lisa Hagen and Chris Hassel, two reporters with the Guns & America public radio collaboration, about their podcast, No Compromise, which looks at a movement within the gun rights movement that sees the National Rifle Association, for example, as not coming out strongly enough on gun rights, I think, is safe to say. But to what you were saying, Lisa, I want to go to another question from one of our viewers. Garrett (ph) asks, did you actually speak to gun groups that focus on nonmainstream ownership, like Black gun owners or LGBTQ gun owners? And, you know, how do they come into this?

HAGEN: Not for this podcast, but in our work as guns reporters and just - you know, I did criminal justice previously. There have been many moments where we've had sort of media stories crop up about, like - Pink Pistols, for instance, is a group that advocates for LGBTQ gun ownership. And, you know, we have the National African American Gun Owners Association here headquartered in Atlanta. So yes, I have spoken to these groups. And this is kind of the issue that we're getting into - right? - is that I think a lot of times in media, we talk about gun rights and the Second Amendment and all this stuff very much as a monolith. And there is a lot of really varied issues here. I don't think that the Dorr pages in particular feel like very friendly places to some folks. But, of course, there are Black people who are members of these groups.

MCCAMMON: But it feels like the gun rights movement is overwhelmingly white. Does that - is that accurate?

HAGEN: That tracks with the statistics we have. And, of course, that's the data about the gun world - this country that we live in - is pretty limited because we're not allowed to register the names of gun owners or anything like that. We don't - we basically go off of a combination of gun sales and concealed carry permits that are issued. And...

HAXEL: Well, and - I mean, also in the first episode, if people have listened or give it a listen in the future, they will hear Lisa go to a gun rally that happened in Richmond, Va., earlier this year in January. And the thing that was interesting about that rally was, first of all, the number of people who went there - it was about 20,000 people. And second was the NRA basically had nothing to do with it. This was sort of what we've termed the no-compromise crowd.

And I guess, you know, to that end, if you've got 20,000-some odd pro-gun people who in general - generally speaking, align with this no-compromise philosophy - I mean, Lisa, what was the racial makeup of that crowd, based on your experience there that day?

HAGEN: It was white guys. The vast, vast majority were white men. And that, I mean, is what we see about gun ownership in America.

MCCAMMON: I covered that rally for NPR, and I would agree. That was my observation as well. About that day in Virginia, it did make national news because this, of course, came on the heels of Democrats taking control of the Virginia Legislature. It came several months after the shooting in Virginia Beach that took the lives of a dozen people at a municipal complex, which is - I'm here in Virginia Beach today. I covered that as well.

And that particular rally drew so much attention because, one, it was so large. And there were - there was a lot of anger about some of the steps Democrats were taking in Virginia to - toward gun control. And as you said, it was not an NRA-sponsored event, which I think - I found surprising. I was, you know, a little confused by that at the time. There was a lot of fear that it was going to be violent. There were threats and comments from a lot of extremist groups. And, you know, a lot of steps were taken to try to enhance security, including closing down many areas around the Capitol. It didn't turn out to be violent.

But it does bring me to a really big question I have as I listen to this, which is - where is this movement going? I mean, you talk to some of your sources in this series, NO COMPROMISE, about the possibility of violence breaking out in the U.S. Is that something they envision? Is it something that they want?

HAXEL: Well, you know, some people who follow the Dorrs and like the Dorrs, as people here in Episode 2, are - you know, we interviewed Carolyn Ricker, who is a stay-at-home mom who watches these videos when, you know, she's sewing and knitting. And she sends emails to her legislators, and she calls her legislators, but I don't see her, for example, as someone who's ready to pick up arms.

At the same time, we do see, at times, members of militia groups trying to recruit people in the comment sections. And a couple of the people I spoke with in Missouri are, you know, involved in a militia. And so, I mean, it's always tricky, even if you get into people who are in a militia. They say they're ready to pick up arms, but there are different categories of that, you know, level of dedication. And everybody has a different idea in their head of, like, when is that moment to pop off, as we heard in Episode 1?

And so, I mean, it's - you know, the overall number of people is, I think, impossible to calculate, and a lot of them don't even know themselves. But, you know, if you go back to the '90s, when the militia movement really was kind of in its, at least, initial heyday - we'll see what happens over the next couple of years - but, you know, it really took one guy to have made the decision to do something - Timothy McVeigh. And so it's - on one hand, the actual percentage is really low. But even if the percentage is really low, you still get someone like Timothy McVeigh popping up.

MCCAMMON: I want to talk also about some - we've talked about the influence of this no-compromise gun movement that's very, you know, grounded in social media, also very active in several state legislatures - sees the NRA as too weak on gun rights. But I also want to talk about who's influencing them. You delve into that in Episode 4. And you talk about this Calvinist Christian philosopher and writer, the late R.J. Rushdoony, in the most recent episode. Who is he? Why is he important when it comes to guns?

HAXEL: Yeah, so R.J. Rushdoony was a theologian who was a very prolific writer. And so if you think about just sort of leaders of religious movements, oftentimes they're, you know, very charismatic speakers who, you know, build megachurches or that sort of thing. This guy wasn't that. He was the sort of guy who would sit in his office on a typewriter and just punch out, you know, 500-page books. And he wrote, like, 50 or 60 books over his life. And he created - essentially, within the world of very conservative Calvinist Presbyterianism, created sort of this movement known as Christian Reconstructionism.

He had a lot of - basically, this idea believes in implementing Old Testament biblical law. And, you know, the word reconstructionism comes from the idea that they believe they need to reconstruct society to conform with their view of what the kingdom of God should look like in order for Jesus Christ to return for the second coming.

And it turns out, as people would hear in Episode 4, the father of these Dorr brothers who we've been exploring with these gun groups is himself very much into the Christian reconstructionist movement. He sort of converted or had an awakening in the 1980s. And he raised all 11 of his children, you know, kind of protesting outside of abortion clinics. And they were all home-schooled. And they were all raised in this very, you know, kind of strict, Christian reconstructionist philosophy. And so we start sort of looking at the Dorr brothers and this - you know, all of the work they do through this lens. We start to see a lot of connections to Christian Reconstructionism.

MCCAMMON: And just to pop in really quick with a couple of definitions. So we talked about Calvinism. For those who aren't nerds about religion, that's a division of Protestant Christianity, which, of course, split off from Catholicism about 500 years ago. Not all Protestants are Calvinists, certainly. But it's an influential stream of Protestant thought.

And how does Rushdoony, his larger vision for what he sees as reconstructing the kingdom of God through government - right? - in America, how does that influence gun rights supporters like the Dorrs, the way they think about the Second Amendment?

HAXEL: This worldview is very patriarchal. And, you know, the belief that they have is that part of that arrangement is that it is the man's duty to protect his family. And therefore, he is ordered by God to use whatever the tools of the day may be to protect his family. And so in the era of firearms, the belief is that they have a God-given right to keep and bear arms because God commands them to protect their family. So you know, if this is a belief system you ascribe to, then very quickly even the Second Amendment itself becomes, really, just a place where you are writing down not the human laws or the humanist concepts, as they would say, but rather you're just sort of codifying the word of God. And so that sort of explains some of the very forceful opinions on the matter.

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MCCAMMON: More of my Facebook Live conversation with Chris and Lisa just ahead.

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MCCAMMON: I want to go back to some of our listener, viewer comments. Emmy (ph) asks, have you maintained contact with any of your sources? How do they feel about the podcast? And Emmy also says, Lisa Hagen is so smart, which I would agree with. And then we have a question from Eliza (ph) who also asks, are you facing any blowback from the subjects of the podcast?

HAGEN: OK. Let's see. I got confused because someone complimented me.

(LAUGHTER)

HAGEN: What - the first question was, have we gone back to - have we heard back from any of our sources?

MCCAMMON: Right.

HAGEN: This is a story that came to us from gun rights advocates, from people who are the most pro-Second Amendment folks that I know in my work. And we wanted to make sure that we were going to honor the fact that they trusted us to talk to us and let us into this world, and also to sort of celebrate the things that are, in fact, a little bit fun about, you know - and enticing to a lot of people about parts of these cultures. So that's why the sound of the podcast itself has sort of a metal and country feel to it. It was just really important for us - and has been all along for us - to write this in a way that would be open and not alienating to people who own guns and care very deeply about them. So far, it's gone pretty good, I would say. I've gotten a lot of nice texts from people...

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HAGEN: ...Just saying that we're nailing it. I'm sure there are plenty of comments on the Internet saying that we are not nailing it. But I also think that that comes with the territory. But as far as I know, I haven't really made any, like, pro-gun (laughter) folks that we've talked to, particularly, angry with our coverage.

HAXEL: Yeah. It's all been positive in terms of, you know, the sources. Now, if you're talking subjects, of course, the Dorrs themselves - you know, we were curious coming into this kind of what their reaction would be because they are, you know, very prolific on Facebook and make lots of videos. And in the past even, when articles have been written about them, they would sometimes, you know, come out with a Facebook video where they read the whole article and go line by line and, you know, present their perspective on why the article is terrible and the fake news is out to get you and that sort of thing.

So far, we haven't seen much reaction. I mean, there's been a little - they tried to do a little bit of fundraising off of it, I think. But we haven't gotten any, you know, direct contact from them, and they haven't made too much of a public comment. I think maybe they're waiting to see what comes next.

MCCAMMON: Speaking of what comes next, in Episode 5, you are going to really grapple with some of these serious issues we were talking about - the issues of race that intersect with this movement. And I think we have a little clip of tape from the next episode.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LARRY PRATT: So-called assault weapon that we hear about, the AR-15 or the AK-47 - those guns are good in their place, and they're especially good for other things, but not for 200 yards, taking somebody out. You really would want to get another kind of gun.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I appreciate Larry coming back up to speak. We might have him again.

PRATT: Thanks for the opportunity.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You bet. I'm going to have - right on his heels, and we'll just leave it right on the same take if my technician can do it.

HAGEN: (Laughter) They were having problems back then, too.

MCCAMMON: Yeah, tell us more about that tape, Lisa, and where the next episode is going.

HAGEN: That is tape of a man who is involved - has been the longtime head of another gun group that I think is very influential in this world called Gun Owners of America. And I don't believe that that is tape that many people have. We got it through some special circumstances. And the context in which Larry Pratt is speaking is very, very important to the substance of the next episode.

And I think, you know, we always knew that we were going to have to talk about some of the history of where this movement itself, the no-compromise movement that we - you know, which is what we call it, came from and what kind of folks they were associated with.

HAXEL: Yeah, just as we kind of saw in Episode 4 how you've got a person or an organization - more specifically R.J. Rushdoony, who's kind of, like, the ideological godfather of the movement - I think so, too, in the world of no-compromise gun rights activism, you've got sort of the godfather person and godfather organization sort of planting seeds that maybe 10 or 20 or 50 years later are sprouting new groups. And the Dorrs and their friends are one of those seeds that, you know, wouldn't have happened were it not for Larry Pratt and Gun Owners of America.

MCCAMMON: We need to wrap up soon. But before we do that, I just want to end by asking you both another question from one of our viewers who says, what are your hopes for this podcast? Do you think it will change the gun conversation in America?

HAGEN: Whew. I hope so. I think my main hope - and I think it's one that we are accomplishing - is that we as a country and reporters especially need to understand that there is a larger landscape at play when it comes to gun policy in our country. It is not all about the NRA. And, in fact, we're in a pretty precarious moment as far as the future of the National Rifle Association. So, you know, I think what I have wanted to do with this series is educate people about what it is that we've been learning in our reporting. And I think it's different than what most people and especially NPR listeners have heard of about this world.

HAXEL: I think also this is something - you know, we haven't gotten to the point in the series where we are really exploring this yet. But if people keep listening, they will come to understand that there are lessons to be learned in how the Dorrs and their ilk operate and how successful they've been.

Whether success means legislatively or raising money or just getting a bunch of people fired up on Facebook, regardless, like, their tactics work. And an examination of their tactics can give you an idea of how these tactics may be applied to other issues on both sides of the spectrum. You know, even if people aren't - don't think they care about the gun rights issue itself, like, this applies to an issue they probably do care about.

HAGEN: Yeah. And one last thing I would say is just that our hope with this series has definitely been to reach gun-owning audiences, people who care about these issues, and show that, yes, even NPR reporters can do a thorough and fair job of covering some of the issues that are real and occurring on the right.

MCCAMMON: Well, thanks for this conversation. I've been talking with Lisa Hagen and Chris Haxel, the hosts of NPR's new limited-run podcast NO COMPROMISE. There are already four episodes out and a few more coming in the next few weeks. So if you haven't heard it, I encourage you to go to npr.org or Apple Podcasts or wherever you go for your podcasts and just check it out. It's a fascinating exploration of a movement that I know I was not aware of. So, Chris and Lisa, thank you so much for your time.

HAXEL: Thank you, Sarah.

HAGEN: Thank you, Sarah. And thanks for watching this, people (laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MCCAMMON: Thank you for listening to this special edition. Expect a new episode of NO COMPROMISE next week.

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