The Biggest Gun Lobby in the World & the Presidential Campaign

Until 1977, the National Rifle Association was primarily focused on gun safety and instruction. That year was the line of demarcation into a complex new vector, a “tax deductible” non-profit combined with another related entity that slowly became the lobby against any restrictions against gun ownership in the United States on behalf, primarily, of this nation’s gun manufacturers. If you look at US Supreme Court decisions before and after that date, you will notice a gradual expansion of the interpretation of the application of the Second Amendment against restrictions, completely ignoring the “well-regulated militia” initial phrase of that Constitutional provision.

The underlying thrust of post-1977 NRA efforts was to create a new and overall expansion of the “social norm” that gun ownership, from assault weapons to oversized magazines (neither of which even existed when the amendment passed in 1789 – the above Bushmaster semi-automatic assault rifle is perfectly legal, for example), was a basic American value. As time passed, conservative members of the Court eventually bought into that NRA-promoted perceived evolution of American gun values and reinterpreted the Second Amendment accordingly, interpretations that flew in the face of the plain language of that fundamental right and the legislative history that went with it. The NRA has been a lobbyist like no other, even getting federal legislation passed that essentially stopped any federal agency from collecting or reporting any gun homicide statistics.

The NRA has successfully raised hundreds of millions of donation-dollars each year for quite a while and his deployed large chunks of that money to favor political candidates supporting gun ownership and attack those who favor reasonable gun restrictions (like background checks, central statistics, banning assault weapons and oversized magazines). In red states, strong NRA opposition is pretty much a death warrant to any political candidate supporting any form of reasonable gun control beyond the most obvious and simple restrictions against felons and the mentally ill owning guns. Even after mass shootings, the NRA simply digs in its heels.

So when Mother Jones (January 4^th) secured a copy of the NRA tax filings, the underlying numbers were very interesting. “The National Rifle Association’s political arm set a fundraising record in 2016, taking in a staggering $366 million. That’s according to the group’s latest annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service, a copy of which was obtained by Mother Jones.

“The massive haul was a $30 million increase from the group’s 2015 fundraising effort. It was helped by a single donation of $19.2 million in 2016. The filing lists the source of that massive donation both as a ‘person’ and as the NRA Foundation, a non-profit charitable wing of the organization. An NRA spokesman declined to clarify whether an individual was the ultimate source of that $19.2 million that went from the NRA Foundation to the NRA flagship group, instead referring to IRS instructions that say a ‘person’ can mean ‘individuals, fiduciaries, partnerships, corporations, associations, trusts, and exempt organizations.’ The next largest donor was an anonymous individual who gave $662,000…

“The figures in the IRS filing are for the NRA’s politically active non-profit arm—a 501(c)(4) entity, in IRS parlance. The 501(c)(4), which is legally allowed to participate in political campaigns, spent $412 million in 2016, far more than even its record fundraising figure. Separately, the NRA has a Political Action Committee, which also engages in electoral spending.

“In 2016, the NRA devoted huge sums of money to winning back the White House and protecting Republican control of Congress; the 501(c)(4) and the PAC spent millions of dollars on television and radio ads. They poured more than $54 million into electing GOP candidates up and down the ballot, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with a focus on supporting Donald Trump and a slate of Republicans running for the US House and Senate. Those investments paid off. All but a few of the candidates who received NRA backing won their respective elections.

“As president, Trump—who benefited from $10 million in NRA spending backing his candidacy and another $19.7 million attacking Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton—has spoken at NRA events and pledged his loyalty to the group. ‘You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you,’ he said at the NRA’s annual meeting last April. ‘The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end. You have a true friend and champion in the White House.’

“Trump made fears about gun violence a central part of his campaign, but as president he has done little to curb that violence. At the same time, he has methodically, if quietly, taken steps to relax gun control policies. The Justice Department tightened the definition of who qualifies as a ‘fugitive from justice’ when it comes to gun ownership, in effect making it easier for certain people with arrest warrants to possess firearms. The Interior Department removed a ban on hunting with lead ammunition on federal lands. And a bill signed last February prohibited the Social Security Administration from reporting recipients with mental impairments to a national background-check database. The NRA applauded the latter two actions.”

Every day, there are news reports of gun violence, from mass shootings to more limited shootouts that often result in the deaths of police officers just doing their jobs. Even the “death by cop” suicides have increased (you simply have to point a gun at a police officer, and not drop it when demanded, to get slammed by a hail of bullets). The NRA has been the principal architect of this national slide to “guns are good” mantra, even though the best analyses of gun deaths tell us that for every “justifiable homicide” with a gun, there are north of 30 gun homicides that are not!

Outside of civil and traditional war, the United States is the most gun-violent country in the world. Common sense has been replaced with “stand your ground” and “open carry” laws plus a generally-accepted right to own military assault rifles with oversized magazines. We get mass shootings, even little children, and so many gun deaths that unless there are multiple-killings, it isn’t even news anymore.

I’m Peter Dekom, and just looking at the damage and death that the NRA has wrought, I just wonder what’s wrong with this picture… and what’s wrong with our country that this egregious distortion of the Constitution could even happen?