There is a fight. Before the Oklahoma city bombing, the group’s fiery antigovernment rhetoric and strong-arm tactics were feared by Democrats and admired by Republicans–dozens of whom got to Congress with the NRA’s help. But now the NRA’s image seems less impressive and more ominous. Demonizing federal law-enforcement agents is hardly fashionable. The ban on “assault” weapons– despised by the NRA–is more popular than ever. These days the NRA is making its GOP allies nervous and giving a Democratic president a rare chance to stand as a credible champion of law and order.
The NRA is under full-scale attack in Washington. After George Bush cleared the ground by quitting the NRA, President Clinton landed. Speaking to families of slain policemen, he decried as enemies of the “American Way” those who “run down” law enforcement. Privately, some Republicans urged the NRA to disown its now infamous fund-raising letter, which called U.S. agents “jackbooted thugs” in “Nazi bucket helmets.” Such alarmism had long since become obnoxious to another prominent NRA member: retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. The gulf-war hero disclosed to NEWSWEEK last week that he had quit the NRA a few years ago. They are “very inflexible and almost radical,” he said. “They appeal to a fringe element of gun owners.”
Though the NRA boasted that the letter had increased its record-high membership, the NRA caved–sort of. The fund-raising letter referred only to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms busts, said executive vice president Wayne LaPierre. But if anyone expects more white flags, they weren’t in Phoenix. “If [federal agents] act like thugs,” LaPierre told cheering members, “we’re going to call them thugs.” Other lobbies are bigger or richer, but none matches the NRA’s combination of size, technology and laser-sharp zeal. The NRA has something others don’t: members with messianic fervor fighting what they view as a battle to save the essence of liberty.
In fact, the NRA has been controlled by hard-liners since 1977–and has become more radical since the passage of the Brady waiting-period bill in 1993 and the assault-weapons ban last year. In the last two years many of the NRA’s publications have used much the same imagery and rhetoric as the now repudiated solicitation. One ad in the NRA’s American Rifleman is typical. It uses a picture of Nazi storm troopers to depict the effect of an FBI gun proposal.
The GOP now is caught in the kind of riptides that have beset Democrats for years. Republicans usually love playing to the NRA crowd, and with good reason: the group gave more than $1 million to congressional campaigns in 1994, is the best-organized grass-roots force in the party and has given heavily to most of the 1996 presidential candidates. Sen. Phil Gramm, who has received $350,000 worth of help from the NRA, was the keynote speaker in Phoenix. But the perils of seeming to be in thrall to the NRA is causing others to keep their distance. Front runner Bob Dole promises a Senate vote on the assault-weapons ban, but turned down an invitation to speak in Phoenix. He was quick to express relief at the NRA’s apology–but took a swipe in the process. “They should not have used some of that language in the first place,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Clinton White House is happily using the NRA as a “wedge” to divide the GOP coalition: pitting pro-gun rural men against suburban women, for example. (“The assault-weapons issue just kills us with women,” said a GOP consultant.) Wearing his most serious face, the president called on the NRA to donate the proceeds from its notorious letter to the families of slain police officers. The Clintonites think the boss now has a chance to prove he really is the man he claims to be: a Bubba with a conscience. Though Clinton was once an NRA member, supporting gun control is a matter of principle with him, said longtime adviser Frank Greer. If it makes Republicans feel the heat, so much the better.
MILLIONS OF MEMBERS 1989 3.0[*] 1990 2.8 1991 2.6 1992 2.7 1993 3.2 1994 3.5 1995 3.5
