NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is an organization that promotes the sport of shooting rifles and pistols in the United States. In 2001, the NRA had replaced the american association of retired persons as Washington's most powerful lobbying group, according to Fortune magazine's top 25 list. The organization reports a membership of more than 4 million, which included 1 million new members alone in 2000. The membership includes hunters, target shooters, gun collectors, firearms manufacturers, and police personnel. From its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the NRA has been a dominant voice in the debate over gun control.

With a budget of more than $200 million, the NRA maintains its own $35 million state-ofthe-art lobbying machine, which includes as its major branch the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. The lobbying component is complete with an in-house telemarketing department, its own newscast, and 1 million political organizers at the precinct level. The NRA considers itself America's foremost defender of the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which preserves the right of the people to bear arms.

The NRA platform prefers gun safety programs and the intensified enforcement of existing federal gun laws to an increase in the number of restrictions on gun owners.

Formed by New York charter in 1871, the NRA defined its original goal to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis," according to co-founder Colonel William C. Church. He and fellow co-founder, fellow Union veteran George Wingate, were dismayed by the lack of sportsmanship shown by Union troops and wanted to set up a rifle range for practice. With contributions from New York State, the new organization purchased the Creed Farm on Long Island in 1872 and opened it to members in 1873 under the name of "Creedmoor," the first official NRA shooting range. When political opposition to the promotion of marksmanship arose in New York, Creedmoor was deeded back to the state. A new range was established in Sea Girt, New Jersey.

The NRA targeted America's youth from the onset, and by 1903 was promoting shooting sports and competition matches through the establishment of rifle clubs at all major colleges, universities, and military academies. In addition to training and education in marksmanship, the association published The American Rifleman, which helped keep its members abreast of new bills and laws affecting firearms. In 1934, the NRA formed its Legislative Affairs Division, which engaged in direct mail efforts to apprise members of legislative facts regarding and analyses of pending bills. Although it was not involved in direct lobbying efforts at that time, the NRA later formed the Institute for Legislative Action in 1975, organized for the "the political defense of the Second Amendment."

During world war ii, the association offered its shooting ranges to the U.S. government and helped develop training materials for personnel and industrial security. NRA members also volunteered to reload ammunition for those guarding war plants. Through a series of gun control laws enacted between the world war i and II, Britain found itself virtually disarmed and vulnerable when Germany began its European invasions. The NRA's efforts to encourage assistance for Britain in 1940 resulted in the collection of more than 7,000 firearms for Britain's defense against German invasion.

Following the war, the NRA concentrated on the hunting community and in 1949, in conjunction with the state of New York, set up the first hunter education program. In 1973, it launched its second magazine, The American Hunter. Although hunter education courses eventually became the assumed responsibility of state fish and game departments, the NRA continued to manage its Youth Hunter Education Challenge (YHEC), a program that as of 2003 was active in 43 states and three Canadian provinces, with youth enrollment of more than 40,000.

Since 1956, the association has been instrumental in law enforcement training as well. With the introduction of its Police Firearms Instructor Certification Program in 1960, the NRA became the only national trainer of law enforcement officers, and by 2000, more than 10,000 individuals had become NRA-certified graduates. The association's certified instructors train about 750,000 civilian gun owners each year, conducting gun safety programs for children in addition to personal security and protection seminars, as well as marksmanship training, for adults.

The NRA in the 1990s, in addition to fighting gun control, worked to pass state laws that made it easier for gun owners to carry their weapons in public. The "right-to-carry" movement is based on the idea that any trained, law-abiding citizen has a right to get a permit from the government to carry a firearm. As a result of the NRA's lobbying efforts, 14 states have passed right-to-carry laws and 24 other states have liberalized their statutes.

The NRA has also fought efforts by city and county governments to regulate firearms. It has lobbied for state preemption statutes, which declare that only the state government may pass firearms laws. Through its efforts, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and several other states passed preemption laws in 1995. Despite its longtime success in fighting gun control, the increasingly belligerent NRA rhetoric became a problem for the organization in the mid-1990s. Former President george h.w. bush, a lifetime member, resigned from the NRA to protest a fundraising letter that contained anti-government statements.

The association announced the publication of its third periodical, The American Guardian, which proved to be less esoteric in content and catered more to topics such as recreational use of firearms and self-defense. Concomitant with the new publication was an internal effort to purge the organization of radical, right-wing gun enthusiasts and develop a more general appeal. From 1997 to 2003, actor Charleton Heston served as the organization's president. Kayne Robinson, a former police officer and Marine, took over as president after Heston announced that he was suffering from a neurological disorder

Politically and historically, supporters for both the NRA and the gun-control movement have split along party lines. The NRA essentially backed so-called conservative candidates and views, such as those typically held by the republican party or the libertarian party; those who sought stricter limitations on gun ownership tended to support Democratic candidates. At the end of the twentieth century, the delineation became more nebulous, not only among politicians but also between lobbying groups. While the organization generally opposes all forms of gun control as abridgements upon individuals' constitutional rights, many NRA members had aligned with what they refer to as "common-sense" gun control efforts. The militant gun control movement, however, splintered into extremist and middle-ground factions within their own ranks. The NRA generally holds that the criminals create gun violence, not the 48 percent of the electorate who constitute law-abiding gun owners.

further readings

Davidson, Osha Gray. 1998. Under Fire: The NRA and the Battle for Gun Control. Expanded ed. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press.

LaPierre, Wayne R. 2002. Shooting Straight: Telling the Truth About Guns in America. Washington, D.C.: Regnery.

Rodengen, Jeffrey L. 2002. NRA: An American Legend. Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: Write Stuff Enterprises.

National Rifle Association. Available online at <www.nra.org> (accessed July 29, 2003).

Patrick, Brian Anse. 2002. The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage. New York: Peter Lang.

cross-references

Gun Control; Libertarian Party.

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION

NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION (NRA) is a voluntary group dedicated to the promotion and proper use of firearms in the United States. It was founded in 1871 in New York City by William Church and George Wingate. Its original purpose was to teach marksmanship to the New York National Guard for riot control in the city. The association languished until the twentieth century, when the deadly accuracy of untrained farmers with rifles in the Boer War awakened military interest in the NRA in 1901. The U.S. Army began funding NRA-sponsored shooting matches in 1912 at the NRA firing range on Long Island, New York. The army also gave away surplus or outdated weapons and ammunition to NRA chapters for their members' use.

Beginning with the National Firearms Act of 1934, the association began lobbying Congress to prevent firearms control legislation. Despite the public outcries over the indiscriminate use of firearms by criminals, this law barred only machine guns and sawed-off shotguns from interstate commerce. In the National Firearms Act of 1936, the NRA succeeded in getting handguns, including the infamous Saturday night specials, exempted from interstate prohibitions.

After World War II, the NRA became more of a leisure and recreation club than a lobbying organization. Its espoused purposes during this time included firearm safety education, marksmanship training, and shooting for recreation. Its national board floated suggestions to change the NRA's name to the National Outdoors Association. After three high-profile assassinations using firearms—John F. Kennedy (1963), Robert Kennedy (1968), and Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)—the Democratic-controlled Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968, ending mail-order sales of weapons. The army ceased providing funds and guns for the NRA-sponsored shooting matches in 1977. In response, conservative hard-liners demanded the NRA's return to legislative lobbying. Led by the Texan Harlan Carter, they staged the Cincinnati Revolt at the annual membership meeting in 1977, stripping power from the elected president and giving it to the appointed executive director—Harlan Carter. As part of the nationwide conservative surge in 1980, Carter turned the NRA's moribund Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) over to professional lobbyists Wayne LaPierre and James Jay Baker. These changes turned the NRA into a single-issue lobbying organization par excellence. Its membership had jumped to three million by 1984, with fifty-four state chapters and fourteen hundred local organizations. The locals became a grassroots political power, ready to inundate newspapers with letters to the editor and politicians' offices with progun ownership materials.

Most of the membership espoused conservative causes generally. Their reward for supporting Ronald Reagan was the Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986, which weakened the 1968 law's gun availability restraints. Nevertheless, in 1987 the NRA refused to endorse Robert Bork's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by claiming itself first and foremost a progun group, not a conservative organization. In addition, as a federal judge Bork had failed—in NRA eyes—to protect retail gun sales to the full. After seven years of maneuvering, NRA lobbying helped limit the provisions of the Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993—known as the Brady Bill—to just a five-day waiting period and a federal record-keeping system for all gun purchases. During the 2000 presidential election, the NRA spent approximately $20 million. Democratic Party analysts credited the NRA with swinging at least two states—Arkansas and Tennessee—and thus the election, to the Republican candidate.

The NRA also worked other political venues in its single-minded efforts to thwart government gun controls. At the NRA's annual meeting in Kansas City in 2001, its firearms law seminar offered legal advice, strategies, and theories for undermining local government enforcement of existing gun laws. The new attorney general, NRA life member John Ashcroft, also initiated Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation rule changes weakening waiting periods and record-keeping requirements for firearm ownership.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Davidson, Osha Gray. Under Fire: The NRA and the Battle for Gun Control. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998.

BillOlbrich

See alsoBrady Bill ; Gun Control .

National Rifle Association. The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) was incorporated in 1871 by William C. Church and other Civil War veterans.Military doctrine of the time emphasized massed rifle fire, downplaying marksmanship. The NRA stressed accurate shooting and promoted competitions at its rifle range. The early NRA focused its efforts on state militia units, and its fortunes varied with their support. In 1880, New York state stopped funding NRA activities, leaving it effectively moribund. The organization revived after the U.S. Congress established the National Board for the Promotion of Rifle Practice in 1903 and in Public Law 149 (1905) allowed members of NRA‐approved clubs to purchase guns and ammunition at low cost.

Through the twentieth century, the NRA steadily expanded its scope and membership and broadened its interests to include safety instruction, firearm collecting, hunting, and police training. From the 1960s on, the NRA also devoted increasing attention to firearm‐control legislation. It supported laws that punished armed criminals but fought most limits on general gun ownership and use. A lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, was formed in 1975. At the 1977 annual meeting, a group led by the activist Harlon Carter gained control of the organization. Carter's group increased the membership's role in governance and launched an unyielding campaign against gun control. By 1995, membership exceeded 3 million.

From 1989 to 1999, the NRA contributed some $8.4 million to political candidates sympathetic to its cause. The movie actor Charlton Heston, famed for his role as Moses in The Ten Commandments and for many other films, served as president of the NRA from 1998 to 2003.

Bibliography

James B. Trefethen , comp., Americans and Their Guns: The National Rifle Association Story through Nearly a Century of Service to the Nation, 1967.
Osha Gray Davidson , Under Fire: The NRA and the Battle for Gun Control, 1993.

David McDowall and and Alan Lizotte

Paul S. Boyer

National Rifle Association of America (NRA), group founded (1871) to promote shooting, hunting, firearm safety, and wildlife conservation. The NRA has nearly 3 million members. The association sponsors shooting competitions and maintains a collection of antique and modern firearms. It also lobbies vigorously against gun control legislation and gun registration, basing its position on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; this position is disputed by most legal scholars.

Bibliography: See E. F. Leddy, Magnum Force Lobby (1987); L. Nisbet, ed., The Gun Control Debate (1990).