The House of Representatives voted last week to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, for withholding documents pertaining to the “Fast and Furious” program that allegedly put guns in the hands of Mexican drug gangs. Seventeen Democrats voted for the measure after the National Rifle Association indicated future endorsements could ride on the vote. The NRA is considered by many the most powerful lobbying group in the country, despite relatively modest financial resources and just 4 million members. What makes the NRA so influential?
Focus and emotion. Groups with large constituencies often address a wide variety of issues. The AARP, for example, attempts to influence such diverse issues as Social Security, health care, energy and ballot access laws. The NRA focuses almost exclusively on gun control, which enables its leaders to doggedly pursue their legislative ends. Perhaps more important, many NRA members are as single-minded as the organization itself. Polls often show that more Americans favor tightening gun control laws than relaxing them, but gun rights advocates are much more likely to be single-issue voters than those on the other side of the question. As a result, the NRA can reliably deliver votes. Politicians also fear the activism of NRA members. They’re widely believed to be more likely to attend campaign events, ring doorbells and make phone calls to help their favored candidates — or defeat their opponents — than senior citizens, members of labor unions, or public school teachers.
For the most part, the NRA’s lobbying arm didn’t gin up the emotional fervor of firearms advocates — it resulted from it. The NRA was founded shortly after the Civil War by Union veterans who felt the Confederacy only lasted as long as it did because of the Southerners’ superior marksmanship. For nearly a century, the NRA catered to competitive shooters and merely dabbled in politics. As with so many other American cultural issues, things changed in the 1960s. Crime soared. Armed members of the Black Panthers began following police officers around American cities. Riots broke out in Newark and Detroit, and some government officials blamed easy access to guns. Assassins killed two Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1968, under pressure from terrified constituents, Congress passed the first major gun control legislation since the 1930s.
A backlash ensued, as American firearms enthusiasts feared the government planned to take their guns. They pushed the relatively apolitical NRA to lobby on their behalf. When the leadership balked in 1977, a group of activists staged a coup. The new leaders commissioned a poll, which found that lobbying was the members’ biggest priority. They turned the group into a political force, with the Second Amendment as their bible.
Today, the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, has become expert at maintaining the siege mentality that birthed it. Former NRA leader Wayne LaPierre famously attacked gun control legislation in 1995 as giving “jack-booted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.” More recent mailings have claimed that the group is “fighting a multi-front battle with anti-gun radicals in the Obama administration” willing to use “ANY means necessary to DESTROY our freedoms.”
The NRA also has a better ground game than many other lobbying organizations. The group relies on scores of independent gun magazines, thousands of gun shops and gun clubs across the country to help spread its message well beyond its membership. Many small lobbying groups with enthusiastic members have exploited similar viral communications networks to splendid effect. The American Homebrewers Association, for example, with fewer than 15,000 members, has used shops, clubs and amateur podcasters to help pass beer-friendly legislation in five different states in the last two years.
Got a question about today’s news? ask-the-explainer@yahoo.com.
Explainer thanks Richard Feldman of the Independent Firearm Owners Association, author of “Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist”; Robert Spitzer SUNY Cortland, author of “Encyclopedia of Gun Control & Gun Rights”; Joseph P. Tartaro of the Second Amendment Foundation and TheGunMag.com; and Adam Winkler of UCLA, author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right To Bear Arms in America.”
Contrary to what the mainstream media would have you believe, the NRA is basically a grass roots organization that accurately reflects the concerns, issues, and fears experienced by the majority of citizens. Attempting to paint the organization as some “fringe” group with nebulous, exploitive behaviors, these platforms ignore the overwhelming percentage of firearm owning Americans, the increasing number of neophytes becoming atuned to the NRA’s message and the inumerable instances when the use or presence of firearms precludes an attack or robbery. The emphasis on individual freedom, protection of Constitutional rights, firearm safety, and the inalienable right to defend one’s self from harm allows the NRA to flourish and expand as one of the premier organizations truly advocating the singular “American Way of Life”. Ken
No they are an evil cabal that is ruining the fun for the Left…didn’t you know? If the ACLU cared half as much about the Second Amendment as does the NRA, they would get some of my money.
AARP, AFL-CIO, NEA money = good; NRA money = bad
Wrong! The ACLU cares about all of the CONSTITUTION and its amendments not just the 2nd.
Actually, the ACLU’s official position is that questions regarding the Second Amendment are a political issue and doesn’t require their attention. Clever enough. Now, imagine a couple of kids bow their heads in a moment of silence at a sports dinner…ALCU to the rescue.
Thats hard to believe when you got the head of the NRA screaming like a nut.I have a gun or 2 and would not give these nut bars a penny.
The NRA is powerful because they use any message available to sell more guns. They have been telling their membership to buy now because Obama is coming for their guns. Their proof is that he has done nothing of the sort. He is waiting to pounce in his second term.
Any organization that plays on peoples fears like this is fundamentally unethical and there is no limit to how far they will go to spread their poisonous message.
BS. The NRA represents no one but the gun manufacturers. When hunters and gun enthusiasts interests diverge from the gun manufacturers the NRA always stands proudly not for the Second Amendment but for the right of gun manufacturers to sell their wares. Their support for the so-called “cop killer bullets” and and opposition to almost any legislation which would allow police to trace firearms or ammunition being just a few examples of this.
And I’ve been a life member of NRA and was invited to participate in the coup in 1977, strrongly support the Second Amendment.
Fast and Furious is a perfect example. One morning Wayne LaPierre woke up to the news that the Mexican Government had identified the origin of some guns used by the drug gangs in Mexico and of those they could identify 70% came from the US. Hundred perhaps thousands of innocent Mexican civilians killed because the law on gun purchases in Arizona were so weak that ATF could not arrest straw and illegal purchasers. PR diasaster. So Wayne invented the “Fast and Furious” scandal sold it to Issa to be one of his unfounded investigations Issa promised before Obama took office. The current issue of Fortune hardly a liberal paper lays out the whole slimy fraud that Fast and Furious is. All so that Marshall Arms and Ewbank Manufacturing can make a profit.
You hit the nail on the head–good post.
Many of the actions and mission of the NRA are laudable, but its emotional, almost messianic preaching about the preservation of all weapons is abominable. Some of the gun-owner non-NRA members here are sigificant.
Conservatives lack the collective mentallity that the left has, otherwise the NRA membership would likely triple at a minimum. Conservatives may not be members but they vote in support of the NRA.
The NRA is not the reason Holder was found in contempt of congress. He is taking part in a huge cover up and is at least partially responsible for many deaths. The issues the left chooses to remain silent on during this presidential term amaze me.
You have a President who has declared himself to be the Executioner In Chief, needing no other authority than his own to call for the killing of Americans by drone strike. That’s Ok with you but when the Bush administration made some people think they were drowning so that he could get information from them that was a war crime?
You have an AG and President that declared that guns bought in the US were making their way to Mexico causing many deaths, all the time knowing they were the ones sending the guns down there. Not only that but they kept it a secret from the Mexican Government while they were doing it ensuring that the guns would get lost. They did this so that they could push forward their anti-2nd amendment agenda. Thsi fraud means nothing to you and you don’t even see a problem with the news skipping over it all at night.
The list goes on and on but somehow it is all Ok when it is your guy doing it.
LAnd sakes alive! I’m surprised you haven’t been asked to testify before a Senate hearing with all the facts you have.
The NEA is the most powerful lobby in the country–so this Slate writer is incorrect in his assessment of the NRA, but obviously, he is for the Leftist Liberals who are trying to ruin America from within and are becoming less subtle in their attempts.
Judging by the cuts to education and the proliferation of liberal gun laws your comment is absurd.
The NRA is a front for the weapons manufacturers, who make millions upon millions of dollars by making sure as many Americans as possible are scared into buying more and more guns.
The NRA started as a group of hunters. No hunter needs advanced military weaponry. But the sale of advanced weaponry greatly benefits the corporations.
Since your headline mentions the NRA, it makes sense to know who the NRA is. The NRA is made up of millions of people. They are our neighbors, friends, husbands, wives and co-workers. They are moms, dads, sons and daughters, college students and teachers. They are the people that service our automobile, pilot our airplanes, fight fires in our communities, legislate to protect our liberties in political venues and provide day care for our children. They wear the uniform of our military and law enforcement that protect and serve. They are found in every community, in every church on Sunday and in every polling place on election day.
Since your headline mentions the NRA, it makes sense to know who the NRA is. The NRA is made up of millions of people. They are our neighbors, friends, husbands, wives and co-workers. They are moms, dads, sons and daughters, college students and teachers. They are the people that service our automobile, pilot our airplanes, fight fires in our communities, legislate to protect our liberties in political venues and provide day care for our children. They wear the uniform of our military and law enforcement that protect and serve. They are found in every community, in every church on Sunday and in every polling place on election day.