Introduction

This chapter focuses on the political power of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and asks the questions: What is the source of its power? How does it operate? How has it shaped gun policy and the broader political system? It looks beyond the NRA's use of financial resources and turns instead to what the chapter describes as ideational resources: the identity and ideology it cultivates among its members, which have enabled it to build an active, engaged, and powerful constituency. The chapter contends that the NRA has played a central role in driving the political outlooks and political activity of its supporters — activity that has had both direct and indirect influence on federal gun policy in the United States. Even from its earliest days as a relatively small organization dedicated to marksmanship, competitive shooting, and military preparedness, the NRA cultivated a distinct worldview around guns — framing gun ownership as an identity that was tied to a broader, gun-centric political ideology — and mobilized its members into political action on behalf of its agenda. The chapter analyzes how a group can construct an identity and an ideology, and what happens when it aligns these behind a single party.

Explaining the NRA’s Power

This chapter lays out a framework for answering why supporters of gun rights are so dedicated to their cause and why the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its members have such an important place in the Republican Party. It discusses how the NRA has crafted a worldview around guns, consisting of both a gun owner social identity and a broader political ideology. The chapter then looks into greater detail about each of these central ideas: the ideational resources of identity and ideology, and the party–group alignment that has been so central to the NRA's more recent political power. The chapter ends by circling back to the previous chapter's discussion of political power, exploring what the NRA can teach us about how power is built and exercised.

Firepower

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the most powerful interest groups in America, and has consistently managed to defeat or weaken proposed gun regulations — even despite widespread public support for stricter laws and the prevalence of mass shootings and gun-related deaths. This book provides an unprecedented look at how this controversial organization built its political power and deploys it on behalf of its pro-gun agenda. Taking readers from the 1930s to the age of Donald Trump, the book traces how the NRA's immense influence on national politics arises from its ability to shape the political outlooks and actions of its followers. The book draws on nearly a century of archival records and surveys to show how the organization has fashioned a distinct worldview around gun ownership and has used it to mobilize its supporters. It reveals how the NRA's cultivation of a large, unified, and active base has enabled it to build a resilient alliance with the Republican Party, and examines why the NRA and its members formed an important constituency that helped fuel Trump's unlikely political rise. The book sheds vital new light on how the NRA has grown powerful by mobilizing average Americans, and how it uses its GOP alliance to advance its objectives and shape the national agenda.

Conclusion

This chapter looks toward the future of both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the gun debate more broadly. It discusses potential threats to the NRA's political influence, including its own internal struggles, the rise of more effective gun control advocacy organizations, and the potential downsides of its close relationship with the Republican Party. The chapter also talks about the potential generalizability of the book's findings to other groups and policy areas. It considers the lessons that other groups might learn from the NRA in terms of cultivating and using ideational power. Ultimately, the chapter notes its implications for our understanding of interest groups and political parties, and reflects on the NRA's place in American democracy.

The Party-Group Alignment of the NRA and the GOP

This chapter chronicles the party–group alignment of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the GOP, detailing the constellation of factors that collectively facilitated this alignment, which began in the 1960s, culminated during the 1980 election, and has deepened in the decades since. It reveals how the NRA's cultivation of a group social identity and gun-centric political ideology made its supporters an attractive demographic group to conservative politicians, and laid the foundation for the group's eventual incorporation into the Republican coalition. The chapter also delves into the NRA's motivations for entering the realm of partisan politics, showing how funding challenges and internal conflicts led to the 1977 “Revolt at Cincinnati,” after which the NRA quickly became an active player in GOP politics. Ultimately, the chapter analyzes public opinion polls to document gun owners' increasing close relationship with the Republican Party — especially following the election of President Donald Trump.

“America’s First Freedom”

This chapter employs the same American Rifleman editorials and gun control-related letters to explain how the National Rifle Association (NRA) has created a gun-centric political ideology, in which gun rights are central to a broader set of issue positions, and thus how gun rights became so closely related to contemporary conservatism in the United States. For many gun owners, gun rights stand at the center of a broader political ideology that embraces liberty, nationalism, limited government, and law and order. The chapter addresses the roots of this ideology and its relation to the gun owner identity by examining NRA's decades-long efforts to build an ideology around gun rights. Working in conjunction with its group identity, the NRA's ideology comprises the second stream of the gun-centric worldview it has used to advance gun rights. This group ideology increases the political unity of gun rights supporters — they are similar not just in their shared support for gun rights, but also along a broader range of issue positions and values. In connecting gun rights to other issues, the chapter unveils how ideology linked the gun owner identity to other politically relevant identities, strengthening each.

The NRA in Crisis: Social Identities and Publics’ Cognitive and Affective Evaluations

Contextualized in the Florida Parkland high school mass shooting and National Rifle Association (NRA) crisis, our study is among the first to apply the social identity theory in understanding simultaneously publics’ cognitive and affective evaluations of a non-profit organization’s crisis response. Results from an online survey ( N = 603) revealed that participants displayed a range of both negative and positive emotions towards the NRA, including anger, disgust, and interest and hope. On the rational side, publics considered NRA’s actions as harmful and unjust. Publics’ NRA affiliation status and political partisanship identity had a significant main effect on their crisis evaluations.

Dovesong

This chapter describes the mourning dove's funerary dirge. For the first time in nearly a century, open season has been declared on the dove. Amendments fail to outlaw the lead bullet or set the kill zone back from homes. The chief executive signs the bill in the company of lobbyists from the National Rifle Association. These five ounces of meat with wings are purported to bring seven million dollars into governmental coffers. Ultimately, forty-one of fifty states favor open season on the dove of mourning, making them, in effect, sitting ducks. The chapter then explores how the debate over open season on the mourning dove heralds the coming of the culture wars.

Introduction

This book takes up the problems that we run into when we judge works of art to be morally good or bad. This might seem like an unserious thing to do. In public discourse, such judgments are often born of prejudice or are mere devices for political scapegoating. For example, former senator Jesse Helms’s attacks on the alleged immorality of Mapplethorpe’s photography seem to have been grounded in his hatred and fear of gays and lesbians; leaders of the National Rifle Association routinely raise moral concerns about violent video games as means to distract people and to undermine public support for gun control. We ought not to take such moral judgments very seriously....