Inside the Gun Lobby
After each assassination, from John Kennedy to John Lennon, there has been a public outcry for gun control. And each time, new membership cards have come firing in to the National Rifle Association. Since 1960, membership has jumped from 250,000 to 1.8 million. It appears that the gun-control issue is the best thing that’s ever happened to the NRA. I suggested this to their chief lobbyist, Neal Knox.
“No question about it.”
If it wasn’t for you guys in the liberal press, the NRA would’ve closed up shop a long time ago. You guys like to have a big, bad villain. So presto, you make the NRA into a big, bad villain. To me, it isn’t a villain at all. It’s a paper tiger.”
— an aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy
From the Civil War statue at Scott Circle in Washington D.C. you can see the rise of gray-blue marble and tinted glass. The chrome calligraphy across its face reads THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION. In the basement there are soundproof target ranges. On the ground floor is a museum open to the public. The exhibits are kept under glass. Teddy Roosevelt’s Winchester, a matched pair of percussion pistols, Erle Stanley Gardner’s single-action Colt — they are masterpieces from history, objects of love.
Upstairs are the computers. Bank upon bank of computers. From them spit Mailgrams by the thousands, names and addresses peering urgently from windowed envelopes, and inside a plea from Neal Knox: Write! Write your congressman. Tell him you are watching. Don’t let him screw around with your right to bear arms!
On a bright March morning, I signed the logbook for the security guard and took an elevator up to the seventh floor. Neal Knox waved me into his ample office — the kind a chairman of the board would have — but somehow he didn’t look like he belonged there. He looked rumpled, rough-edged, the way old newspapermen sometimes do. “I gave some of the best years of my life to newspapers,” he said. He had been the founding editor of Gun Week and the editor and publisher of two gun magazines.
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“Sit down.” His face was relaxed, a little puffy at the edges. Knox is an expert marksman, a two-time winner of national bench-rest rifle championships. While Knox is the man most responsible for modernizing the NRA, changing it from an association of sporting shooters into an often effective political weapon, he also remembers growing up in a time when the average boy learned how to whittle, how to play ball and how to fire a gun. In the early days of the organization, the typical NRA member lived far from the urban combat zones. He was a hunter. He shot rifles and shotguns. The new NRA member is likely to be a terrified city man with a pistol in a holster slung over his bedpost at night. He often joins to help Neal Knox scare the hell out of a few politicians.
In 1975, the NRA’s board of directors created a lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, and Knox became its executive director in early 1978. He intended to stay three months. He’s been there three years. He had no idea he would be so good at it.
As one of his first acts, Knox sent out questionnaires to the membership. “I wanted to confirm what I’ve always believed: that ninety-nine percent of our members are opposed to gun control.”
“How’d the other one percent get in?” I wondered.
“They’re the infiltrators,” he said, smiling. “Some of Kennedy’s people signed up so they could get on our mailing list.”
Information from this and other questionnaires went into computers or is on file. Are you a Democrat? A Republican? In which congressional district do you live? How prominent are you — the biggest car dealer in Omaha, say? Are you willing to write a post card or letter? And so on. (Says Charlie Orasin, an antigun lobbyist: “The NRA has compiled more information about gun owners than the government ever would.”)
For their fifteen dollars in annual dues, NRA members receive a subscription to their choice of two slick magazines: American Hunter and American Rifleman. They also receive a monthly newsletter, and in times of legislative crisis, a Mailgram or letter.
“Ever been to Massachusetts?” Knox asked. “How much clout do you think the NRA has in Massachusetts?”
According to the polls, sixty-two percent of all Americans want tougher gun laws, a figure that’s certainly higher in Massachusetts. But Knox had a story to tell. In a statewide referendum in 1976, Massachusetts voters were given a chance to say yes to a ban of all handguns. Two out of three said no. Knox beamed. “Pollsters make people feel guilty,” he said. “In their hearts, most people are not in favor of gun control.”
But the issue in Massachusetts essentially became confiscation of all handguns, not just regulation, and the progun lobby outspent the supporters of the referendum by ten to one. The NRA was a major contributor to the war chest.
Up on Capitol Hill, in a warren of cubbyholes and offices, legislative aides were telling me about handgun control: “It’ll never happen, never in a million years.” Tip O’Neill, the most powerful Democrat on the Hill, said not to expect it this year, which is the same as saying never, given that this was the morning after the Reagan shooting. O’Neill was busy counseling a group of freshman congressmen so they wouldn’t sound naive on the subject.
Inside the Gun Lobby, Page 1 of 7