National Rifle Association of America

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: National Rifle Association

Governing organization for the sport of shooting with rifles and pistols. It was founded in Britain in 1860. The U.S. organization, formed in 1871, has a membership of some four million. Both the British and the U.S. groups sponsor regional and national shooting competitions and offer gun safety programs. The U.S. NRA, one of the most powerful political lobbies in the country, has vigorously opposed many legislative proposals for the control of firearms.

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Contact Information

The National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Rd.
Fairfax, VA 22030
VA Tel. 703-267-1200
Toll Free 800-392-8683
Fax 703-267-3989

Type: Private - Association
On the web: http://www.nra.org/home.aspx
Employees: 500

The NRA aims to keep gun controversy in your face. The National Rifle Association (NRA), with more than 4 million members, is the staunch defender of Second Amendment rights. It's a major player in the political arena and stands firm in its resolve to protect the right to keep and bear arms. The NRA offers a variety of educational and gun safety programs and publishes magazines ("America's 1st Freedom, American Hunter, Women's Outlook"). It also caters to more than one million youth through its shooting sports events and affiliated programs with the likes of 4-H, the Boy Scouts of America, and others. It also peddles NRA merchandise. Union army veterans William Church and George Wingate founded the NRA in 1871.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2008:
Sales: $363.4M

Officers:
President: John C. Sigler
Executive Director General Operations: Kayne Robinson
Treasurer: Wilson H. (Woody) Phillips Jr.

Company History: National Rifle Association of America

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Company Perspectives:
While widely recognized today as a major political force and as America's foremost defender of Second Amendment rights, the NRA has, since its inception, been the premier firearms education organization in the world. But our successes would not be possible without the tireless efforts and countless hours of service our nearly three million members have given to champion Second Amendment rights and support NRA programs. As former Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos said, "Let me make one small vote for the NRA. They're good citizens. They call their Congressmen. They write. They vote. They contribute. And they get what they want over time."
Key Dates:
1871: The NRA is chartered in New York.
1903: Shooting programs for students is set up.
1907: National headquarters moves to Washington, D.C.
1934: The Legislative Affairs Division is created to organize
1949: NRA launches a hunter education program.
1968: First significant gun control legislation in 30 years
1975: Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying
1983: Reagan becomes the first U.S. president to address the
1994: The Brady Bill, calling for waiting periods and
1995: A new headquarters building is constructed.
1998: NRA hosts its largest convention ever and names actor

Incorporated: 1871 as the National Rifle Association
NAIC: 81394 Political Organizations
SIC: 8651 Political Organizations

The National Rifle Association is a nonprofit organization promoting gun safety and lobbying for its interpretation of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. (The amendment in full, subject to various modern interpretations, reads: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.") Long respected by some and feared by others on Capitol Hill, the Association's impressive influence extends beyond its three million members. The NRA reaches one million young men and women through educational programs, including 40,000 in its young hunters program. Moreover, 6,000 marksmen compete nationally in the Association's shooting competitions.

The NRA traces its origins to the 1870s, when two former Union Army officers--Colonel William Conant Church and General George Wingate--formed the National Rifle Association (NRA) to foster marksmanship. The NRA was chartered in the state of New York on November 17, 1871. Another well-known Civil War veteran, General Ambrose Burnside, served as the group's first president. Burnside had been a U.S. Senator and governor of Rhode Island. Although he lobbied very effectively for funding, he was not otherwise actively involved in the fledgling group and resigned within a year.

Through the founders' efforts, the state of New York granted the NRA $25,000 to create a practice ground on a 100-acre lot on Long Island. The Creedmoor range opened there in 1873 and hosted the Irish Rifle Association in a two-entrant international shooting competition held the next year. The event drew 8,000 spectators. Even in those early days, however, the NRA faced anti-gun sentiment in the cities, and in 1892 the land grant was rescinded and the range was moved to Sea Girt, New Jersey.

New York governor Alonzo Cornell, predicting a long age of peace, cut the NRA's funding in 1880. However, technological innovations and events overseas soon made weapons training relevant again. Dutch South African farmers demonstrated the effectiveness of new, highly accurate rifles in the Boer War, which led to a renewed interest in marksmanship and military preparedness in the British Empire and in America.

A revitalized NRA began setting up programs at colleges and military schools in 1903; within three years there were more than 200 young men competing at the shooting contest in New Jersey.

NRA headquarters moved to Washington, D.C. in 1907. According to Osha Gray Davidson's book, Under Fire, the NRA persuaded Congress and the War Department to first sell, then give away, surplus rifles and ammunition to NRA-sponsored shooting clubs. Between World War I and World War II, 200,000 rifles were reportedly distributed at cost to NRA members, whose ranks were ballooning. The NRA also received federal money and army assistance for its shooting competitions during this time.

The Association's Legislative Affairs Division was created in 1934 to disseminate information to its members regarding pending gun control legislation. Among the vehicles of communication was the group's flagship publication, The American Rifleman, published sporadically at first and later gaining a large and regular readership. A huge NRA letter-writing campaign helped temper one wave of gun control sentiment so that the National Firearms Act of 1934 would extend only to regulating machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. In 1938, the NRA supported provisions to limit the sale of guns across state lines and prevent the sale of guns to fugitives and convicted felons.

At the dawn of World War II, the NRA collected 7,000 guns to aid Great Britain's defense. When the United States was drawn into the war, the NRA offered its facilities and encouraged its members to guard factories.

In the postwar years, the NRA focused on hunting issues, developing a pioneering hunter education program with the state of New York. The Association also began a program for instructing policemen in marksmanship; it would introduce the country's only national law enforcement certification program in 1960. Membership in the NRA reached nearly 300,000 and employment 140 in the 1950s.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963 prompted the nation to rethink the availability of guns in the United States, which ultimately led to the Gun Control Act of 1968. This act banned the sale of guns through the mail; Lee Harvey Oswald had ordered his infamous rifle from the pages of American Rifleman for just $19.95.

A new NRA shooting range, Camp Perry, had been constructed in Ohio on the Lake Erie shore, and during this time it became home to the NRA's National Matches. The U.S. government supplied $3 million a year and the use of 5,000 troops a year for these tournaments. Opposition to such government aid to the NRA was challenged; Senator Edward Kennedy attempted to cut off the financial aid in the late 1960s and routinely fought NRA-backed bills in Congress throughout his career.

The NRA launched a new magazine, The American Hunter, in 1973, addressing hunting issues only. Two years later, it formed the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), designed specifically as a lobby for Second Amendment rights. The ILA was headed by Harlon Bronson Carter, a Texan controversial for his involvement in the shooting murder of a Mexican youth, for which he was convicted and later cleared. The goals of the NRA during the 1970s had become two-fold. Sportsmanship and safety, embodied in The American Hunter, competed for attention with the role of the ILA as a gun lobby.

During this time, the NRA acquired 37,000 acres of land in the New Mexico wilderness. Controversy in the organization arose, according to Davidson's Under Fire, when some proposed that the New Mexico lands be designated as a shooting center, while others favored an outdoor center, dedicated to camping, wilderness survival, environmentalism, and other wide-ranging concerns, in addition to marksmanship and safety. The rift in the NRA--between those supporting the single issue of Second Amendment rights and those hoping to broaden the scope of the NRA-- culminated, according to Davidson, at the NRA national convention of 1977 in Cincinnati. Led by Carter, the so-called "hard-liners" took over the convention in what became known as the "Cincinnati Revolt." In short, Carter and his supporters, fervently opposed to any form of gun control, wrested control of the NRA from the existing leaders (whose concerns included sportsmanship and environmentalism), turning the NRA into a single-issue gun lobby, according to Davidson. Carter was named executive vice-president, the most powerful position in the organization.

With newly reorganized management and purpose, the NRA entered the 1980s on more cohesive footing. Energies were focused on opposing gun control. When a few local communities, such as Morton Grove, Illinois, enacted city ordinances to ban handguns all together in 1981, the NRA fought the ban unsuccessfully in court. The group then battled similar legislation on the state level, helping defeat Proposition 15 in California, which called for a ban on the sale of new handguns. However, the NRA was unable to overturn a new ban on handguns in Maryland in 1988.

A national print advertising campaign launched in January 1982 gained wide attention. With the tagline "I am the NRA," a variety of individuals--including an eight year-old boy, former astronaut Wally Schirra, former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Jo Anne Hall, humorist Roy Rogers, and others--highlighted the group's diverse member base. While several magazines refused to run the ads, particularly those ads depicting handguns, some 45 magazines did run them, and they were credited with raising the NRA's profile considerably. The NRA had more than one million members in 1977; its ranks would reach 2.6 million by the time Ronald Reagan became the first American president to address the group in 1983. Reagan's address to the NRA was regarded as an important affirmation of NRA principles; the president averred that "we will never disarm any American who seeks to protect his or her family from fear or harm."

G. Ray Arnett was picked to succeed Carter in 1985. Surrounded by scandal, however, Arnett lasted only until May 1986, when ILA leader J. Warren Cassidy became the next executive vice-president.

In 1986, the NRA had three million members and income of about $66 million a year. During this time, the group was sponsoring the McClure-Volkmer Act, which amended restrictions in the Gun Control Act of 1968 and was eventually passed. The group also fought to temper legislation banning Teflon-coated "cop killer" bullets. By this time, the issue of gun control in the United States had become highly fragmented and charged with emotion. In fact, the Association was beginning to find itself on different sides of gun control issues with much of the country's police force. In the late 1980s, the NRA ran political ads and direct mail campaigns against several police chiefs who favored regulating handguns.

Although many of its members were Democrats, the NRA spent an estimated $7 million to defeat Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, a staunch supporter of gun control, in the 1988 presidential campaign. Republican George Bush broke ranks with some in the NRA while campaigning for the presidential nomination, calling for a ban on "plastic" handguns. Still, as an avid hunter, veteran, and NRA member, he appealed to the group and won its approval.

As the U.S. public became ever more aware of increases in violence involving firearms, the NRA again sought to address issues beyond gun ownership. The NRA Foundation was created in 1990 to raise tax-exempt funds for gun education. The Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program, started two years earlier, taught elementary and middle school children to avoid guns and report them to adults. Moreover, Refuse to Be a Victim seminars, introduced in 1993, lectured women on personal safety issues. According to the NRA, three out of four women would suffer through a violent crime in their lifetimes.

The early 1990s were difficult years financially for the organization. According to NRA figures cited by Fortune magazine, the NRA lost $10 million in 1991, $38 million in 1992, and $22 million in 1993. In 1991, the board replaced Warren Cassidy--whose reputation was tainted by a sex scandal, less than stellar financial results, and diminishing popularity due to what some perceived as a willingness to compromise the Association's mission--with long-time politico Wayne LaPierre, another former leader of the group's lobbying arm, the ILA.

The NRA then faced several challenges to its mission. Efforts to overturn New Jersey's ban on semiautomatic weapons and Virginia's gun-rationing program in 1993 both failed. In the late 1980s, the NRA had lobbied unsuccessfully against a national ban of certain semiautomatic assault rifles. Moreover, after several years of struggle, in 1994 the Brady Bill passed. Named for White House press secretary Jim Brady, who was shot and partially paralyzed during an attempt on Reagan's life, the bill mandated a five-day waiting period and a background check for gun purchasers. (This process would replaced by a computerized verification system run by the FBI in 1998.) However, the Brady Bill did not apply to flea markets and gun shows, and gun sales at these venues boomed.

Annual revenues for the NRA approached $150 million in 1994 as the group attracted a more active and high profile membership. The group spent $15 million on a new headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, in the mid-1990s and also invested in a new computer system.

To address issues of increasing violent crime in the country, the NRA called for more prisons, tougher sentences, and more law enforcement officers. However, the Association continued to struggle with public relations issues and alienated certain law enforcement groups. Congressman John Dingell, an NRA board member, had called the U.S. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) a "jackbooted group of fascists" in one of the group's promotional films in 1981. The NRA repeated the rhetoric in a 1995 fundraising letter, prompting former president George Bush to rescind his life membership.

In October 1997, nine firearms manufacturers, including Smith & Wesson, announced they were voluntarily adding child safety locks to their products. The unprecedented break from NRA policy was prompted by a litigious climate that had cities such as Chicago and New Orleans filing lawsuits similar to the ones that had been launched against the cigarette industry. The gun makers risked a boycott by NRA members who opposed compromise of any kind. According to Newsweek, the publicly-traded Sturm, Ruger firm had faced such a boycott earlier in the decade after it came out in favor of limiting high capacity ammo clips for assault weapons.

In 1997, in the face of such challenges, the NRA began publishing The American Guardian, designed to appeal to a more general audience, with less emphasis on technical subjects and more on self-defense and sporting uses for firearms. Membership in the NRA, after reaching at 3.5 million, had fallen by about a million in the mid-1990s. Still, the group held the largest convention in its history in 1998, attracting 41,000 attendees. In the same year, the NRA elected as its president the actor Charlton Heston, perhaps best known for his performance as Moses in the epic film The Ten Commandments. Another famous actor, Tom Selleck, appeared in a new round of magazine advertising for the NRA.

In the late 1990s, following several highly publicized incidents of violence involving guns among American teenagers, some polls indicated that 70 to 80 percent of Americans favored stricter gun control laws. However, Newsweek reported, the fear of political retaliation from the NRA killed a new round of gun control bills in June 1999. NRA membership climbed again late in the decade. By May 2000, the Association reported 3.7 million members fighting challenges to the right to bear arms.

Principal Divisions

Institute for Legislative Action; NRA Foundation.

Principal Competitors

Handgun Control, Inc.

National Rifle Association of America
National Rifle Association logo
Formation	November 17, 1871
Headquarters	Fairfax, Virginia
Membership	Nearly 4 million^[1]
President	Ron Schmeits
Executive Vice President	Wayne LaPierre
Website	http://www.nra.org/

Sport and safety programs

NRA firearms safety programs

NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia

The NRA sponsors a range of safety programs to educate and encourage the safe use of firearms.

NRA hunting safety courses are offered all across the U.S. for both children and adults. In recent years gun safety classes oriented more towards firearm safety, particularly for women, have become popular. Intended for school-age children, the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" program encourages the viewer to "Stop! Don't touch! Leave the area! Tell an adult!" if the child ever sees a firearm lying around. The NRA has claimed that studies prove the "Eddie Eagle" program reduces the likelihood of firearms accidents in the home, and the program is used in many elementary schools nationwide.

The NRA in its instructional guide The Basics of Personal Protection In The Home (published in 2000) has chapters on Basic Firearm Safety and Safe Firearm Storage.

Shooting sports

Historically, the NRA has governed and advanced the shooting sports in the United States. However, in 1992 the NRA ceased to be the National Governing Body for Olympic shooting (USA Shooting is now the NGB), and in 2000 the NRA chose not to be a member of the National Three-Position Air Rifle Council. The NRA is not directly involved in the practical pistol competitions conducted by the International Practical Shooting Confederation and International Defensive Pistol Association, or in cowboy action shooting; both of these types of events have grown dramatically in recent years.

However, the National Rifle and Pistol Matches at Camp Perry are sponsored by the NRA, which most consider the "World Series of competitive shooting". Commonly known as Bullseye or Conventional Pistol, shooters from the military as well as many top-ranked civilians gather annually in July and August for this well-attended competition. The NRA also sponsors its National Muzzle Loading Championship at the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association's Friendship, Indiana facility.

The NRA functions as a general promoter of the shooting sports. The NRA house magazine, American Rifleman, covers major shooting competitions and related topics, and the NRA offers a publication dedicated to competitive shooting, Shooting Sports USA. Most competitive shooters are NRA members.

The current NRA competitions division publishes its own rulebooks, maintains a registry of marksmanship classifications, and sanctions matches.

NRA volunteers

Many NRA competitions would not be possible without the help of volunteers. The NRA hosts more than 500 volunteers during the NRA National Rifle & Pistol Championships in Camp Perry, Ohio.

Grassroots shooting support

Through the NRA Foundation and Friends of NRA, the NRA also raises funds and distributes grants to local clubs. In addition to competitive marksmanship and gun safety, local programs supported by the NRA include instructor/coach training, gun collector programs, hunting programs, and programs for law enforcement officers.

Instructors

The National Rifle association will issue recognition credentials to individuals who are trained by the Association to be instructors. Divisions of instructor are divided into what are referred to as "disciplines". Each discipline earned is indicative that the person is qualified to teach in relation to that area. Instruction in a particular field includes marksmanship, maintenance, and legalities. Instructors are required to teach at least 1 person per year in each discipline in order to keep their certification in that discipline current. There are varied levels of most disciplines, including Apprentice Instructor, Assistant Instructor, and Certified Instructor. This differentiation is primarily a matter of age and legality. A person can become an Apprentice Instructor as early as the age of 15, with upgrade to Assistant upon turning 18, and upgrade to full instructor at the age of 21. Per the NRA's policies for instructors, Apprentice and Assistant Instructors are not allowed to operate a range without a qualified person (such as a full instructor, military, or law enforcement officer) present. Also as per regulations one instructor cannot supervise more than 8 persons on a firing line at any given time. Doing so requires the addition of at least 1 or 2 more instructors. (1 if the other instructor is of higher rank, 2 if of equal rank with one being the de facto leader.) In cases where multiple instructors are present it is not uncommon to have a Range Safety Officer as the senior instructor. Instructors and Range Safety Officers are trained by Training Counselors, who are themselves trained directly by the NRA itself. Instructors are first and foremost responsible for following and teaching the principles of safety, including the "Three Rules of Gun Safety." Disciplines include (but are not limited to):

Rifle
Muzzle-loading Rifle
Shotgun
Muzzle-loading Shotgun
Pistol
Muzzle-loading Pistol
Home and Personal Defense
Range Safety Officer
Training Counselor

Instructors not only teach firearms usage, basic law, and care and cleaning, but can grade students and other persons on the quality of their Marksmanship. Those who score adequately are issued ranks and a certification to that effect by the NRA. While the rules and standards for the ranks depend on the firearm type, the ranks themselves are consistent and are as follows

Pro-Marksman
Marksman
Marksman First Class
Sharpshooter; Bars 1-9
Expert
Distinguished Expert

The ranks Pro-Marksman through Distinguished Expert can be signed off on by an instructor or a current NRA member. The National Rifle Association keeps a list of its registered Instructors and can contact them for those seeking instruction. NRA Instructors can commonly be found at privately owned firearms ranges, and are commonly employed by the Boy Scouts of America on their summer camps. NRA Instructors cannot issue Concealed Carry Permits, or Tax Stamps for restricted firearms types, such writs must be issued at the state, or federal levels of government.

The NRA publishes gun safety rules. Three rules are given special importance and are known as the fundamental NRA rules for safe gun handling:^[6]

Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

Relations with other organizations

The National Rifle Association maintains ties with other organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America, and 4-H. NRA relations with these groups include monetary donations, equipment donations to supply firearms ranges, and provision on instructors to assist in their programs. Notably the Boy Scouts of America has strict guidelines on who is allowed to operate their ranges, one of the recognized personnel groups are NRA Certified Instructors. (Along with military, and Law Enforcement).

Political lobbying

Members of Congress have ranked the NRA as the most powerful lobbying organization in the country several years in a row.^[7] Opponents of the organization accuse it of unduly influencing political appointments.^[8] Chris W. Cox is the NRA's chief lobbyist and principal political strategist, a position he has held since 2002.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the NRA spent $10 million.^[9]

Second Amendment

In its lobbying for gun rights, the NRA asserts the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individuals to own and use guns. The NRA opposes measures that conflict with the Second Amendment and/or the right to privacy enjoyed by law-abiding citizens who are gun owners. The NRA has supported gun rights on other grounds as well—they opposed the Brady Bill in the courts on Tenth Amendment grounds, not Second Amendment.

On June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time in American history in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment provides for an individual right to own a gun. The implication of this major decision will play out over the next several decades. However, the lawyer who organized the plaintiffs, Robert Levy, told the Washington Post he is "not a member of any of those pro-gun groups," and the case was funded only by him.^[10] The NRA has since been party to a lawsuit against the DC government, stating that the emergency legislation enacted by the DC government violates the Constitution in its continued ban on handguns and all semiautomatic firearms and its requirement that any firearm in the home be disassembled, unloaded, and locked away unless there is an "immediate" threat of violence.^[11]

In 2005, the NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), and others successfully sued the Mayor of New Orleans and others to stop unconstitutional gun seizures in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As of March 2006, documents have been filed by NRA, SAF, et al. seeking to hold Ray Nagin and others in contempt of court for violating the consent order. The case is National Rifle Association of America, Inc., et al. v. C. Ray Nagin et al..^[12]^[13]

Past elections

1980 presidential election

Three days before the November 4 voting in the 1980 presidential election, the NRA endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its history, backing Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter. Reagan had received the California Rifle and Pistol Association's Outstanding Public Service Award. Carter had appointed Abner J. Mikva, a fervent proponent of gun control, to a federal judgeship and had supported the Alaska Lands Bill, closing 40,000,000 acres (160,000 km²) to hunting.^[14]

1994

In the 1994 election the NRA is often credited with defeating Congressmen Jack Brooks and Tom Foley (the first Speaker of the House to lose reelection since 1860). Bill Clinton wrote:

“	The NRA had a great night. They beat both Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in more than a century. Jack Brooks had supported the NRA for years and had led the fight against the assault weapons ban in the House, but as chairman of the Judiciary Committee he had voted for the overall crime bill even after the ban was put into it. The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you're out. The gun lobby claimed to have defeated nineteen of the twenty-four members on its hit list. They did at least that much damage and could rightly claim to have made Gingrich the House Speaker.	”
—Bill Clinton, My Life pp 629-30

Past campaigns

Many gun-control laws that the NRA and its supporters fought vigorously have been passed throughout the country. These laws range from the near-total ban on gun ownership in Washington, D.C. (ultimately found to be unconstitutional in District of Columbia v. Heller), to the outlawing of entire classes of firearms in many states as well as at the federal level, to the licensing of firearms owners in some jurisdictions.

The NRA opposes most new gun-control legislation, calling instead for stricter enforcement of existing laws such as prohibiting convicted felons and violent criminals from possessing firearms and increased sentencing for gun-related crimes. The NRA also lobbies for "shall issue" right-to-carry laws for concealed carry licenses in many states. It takes positions on non-firearm hunting issues, too, such as supporting wildlife management programs that allow hunting and opposing restrictions on devices like crossbows and leg hold traps.

One example of the NRA's legislative effectiveness is that, while 7 US states and the District of Columbia still generally restrict the issuance of concealed carry permits ("may issue" or "no-issue"), 38 states have mandatory shall-issue issuance of such permits upon the applicant demonstrating completion of a training requirement or other basic criteria, 3 states have may-issue permits that are liberally issued by local law enforcement, and 2 states (Alaska and Vermont) have unrestricted universal concealed carry without any permit requirements.^{[citation needed]}

The NRA predominately endorses Republican candidates.^[15] The NRA's policy is that it will endorse any incumbent who supports its positions, even if the challenger supports them as well, as incumbents tend to hold more political power. This was evident in the 2006 Senate Elections when the NRA endorsed Rick Santorum over Bob Casey, Jr. even though they both had an "A" rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund.^{[citation needed]}

1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban

In 2004 the NRA successfully opposed renewal of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which banned many features of certain semiautomatic rifles and certain types of removable magazines, against a campaign to make the ban permanent and expand it. The ban expired at midnight on September 13, 2004.

Current campaigns

Confiscations in New Orleans

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, multiple reports of confiscations of civilian firearms by law enforcement began coming out of New Orleans. Firearm searches of evacuees were carried out prior to allowing them into evacuation centers,^[16] house-to-house firearm confiscations were conducted,^[17] and the superintendent of police was quoted as saying "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons" and "We are going to take all of the weapons."^[18]

On September 12, 2005 National Rifle Association executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre spoke out against these confiscations. "What we’ve seen in Louisiana — the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster — is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves," LaPierre said. The NRA filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District in Louisiana.

On September 23, two weeks after seizures began, NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation filed for a temporary restraining order. On September 24, 2005 U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a temporary restraining order barring any further gun confiscations and ordering the return of lawfully owned firearms to their owners. On March 1, 2006, the NRA filed a motion for contempt against the city of New Orleans, its mayor, and the chief of police for failure to comply with the restraining order. On March 15, 2006, lawyers from both sides reached an agreement in the case of NRA v. Mayor Ray Nagin, which is pending before a federal court. The city of New Orleans admitted that it holds a number of confiscated firearms, and the Property and Evidence Division of the New Orleans Police Department is to return the firearms to their owners on request and proof of ownership or affidavit. In the chaos and destruction following Katrina many homeowners have, however, lost everything including the paperwork that would prove ownership. At this time (2006) the majority of the seized firearms have not been returned to the rightful owners. (See Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.)

In June 2006 Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco signed the NRA-backed Act 275, forbidding the confiscation of firearms from lawful citizens during declared emergencies. Similar legislation had already been adopted in nine other states.

On October 4, 2006 President George W. Bush signed into law the NRA-backed Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006 (incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill). This legislation prohibits the confiscation of legal firearms from citizens during states of emergency by any agent of the Federal Government or anyone receiving Federal funds (effectively, any Federal, state, or local governmental entity). Introduced in Congress by Rep. Bobby Jindal and Sen. David Vitter, both of Louisiana, this bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support, passing the House of Representatives with a margin of 322-99 and the Senate by 84-16.

Also see Civil disturbances and military action in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

San Francisco's Proposition H

In November 2005, 58% of voters in San Francisco, California, approved "Proposition H", which would ban the sale, manufacture and distribution of firearms and ammunition (as well as the possession of handguns) within city limits, effective January 1, 2006. (The last gun dealer in the city had closed several years earlier because of a special tax.) San Francisco thereby became the third major city in the United States with a handgun ban, after Chicago and Washington, D.C.

The day after the election, the National Rifle Association and other gun advocates filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, saying it oversteps local government authority and intrudes into an area regulated by the state. (A previous handgun ban, adopted in 1984, was successfully challenged on similar grounds.) On June 12, 2006 Superior Court Judge agreed with the NRA position, saying that California law "implicitly prohibits a city or county from banning gun possession by law-abiding adults".^[19]

The City appealed Judge Warren's ruling, but lost in a unanimous opinion from the three judge panel in the Court of Appeal issued on January 9, 2008.

Publications

The NRA publishes a number of periodicals including^[20]:

American Rifleman^[21]
American Hunter
Shooting Illustrated
America's 1st Freedom
Shooting Sports USA

Current leadership and policies

Charlton Heston accepting a presentation rifle at 2000 NRA convention with the now well-known exclamation "From my cold, dead hands!"

The NRA organization is governed by a large (typically 75 member) board of directors. The directors choose the president, the leading spokesman for the organization, from among their members. Although traditionally this position changed annually, for several years it was consecutively held by actor and activist Charlton Heston, who was a compelling promoter of the NRA agenda. Heston became afflicted with Alzheimer's disease and stepped down in April 2003. Ron Schmeits is the current president, replacing John C. Sigler in 2009. Sandra Froman served 2005-2007. Marion P. Hammer was the first female president, serving from 1995 to 1998.

The organization also has an Executive Vice President, who is not a director but functions as Chief Executive Officer, appointed at the pleasure of the directors. Wayne LaPierre has held this position since 1991. The Executive Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action is Chris W. Cox, who has been appointed by LaPierre every year since 2002. Kayne Robinson was also reappointed Executive Director of NRA General Operations.^[22]

Finances

Annual revenues for the NRA were around $150 million in 1994, up from $66 million in 1986. It spent $15 million on a new headquarters in the 1990s.

The NRA Office of Advancement ^[23] was created in 2005 to focus on building the NRA's endowment and underwriting programs and projects across the organization - including the NRA, the NRA Foundation, NRA-ILA, the NRA Whittington Center, and the Civil Rights Defense Fund. In 2007, the NRA Office of Advancement launched a new donor recognition society called the Ring of Freedom. In July 2008, the NRA Foundation was designated a Four Star Charity by Charity Navigator for the sixth consecutive year.

According to the Better Business Bureau's web site, the NRA does not fall within the BBB's scope of Standards for Charity Accountability. They do note the following financials for the NRA as of December 31, 2004. The NRA's CEO, Wayne LaPierre, received a yearly salary of $895,897 in 2004. They also indicated that fundraising costs accounted for 46% of the contributions received. The NRA is a 501(c)(4) organization and indicated that the NRA's total income in 2004 was $205,402,491 and had expenses of $206,886,970. Total NRA assets at the end of 2004 were $222,841,128.

Popular culture

The NRA has received both positive and negative criticism in the popular media, and its image has included references in television shows and other forms of popular culture. In 2000, the NRA announced plans (never completed) to open up a NRA Sports Blast in Times Square (New York).^[24] The themed restaurant would have featured food, arcade attractions, and other NRA-themed entertainment. The plan received both positive and negative comments in popular media.^[25]

Criticism

This article's Criticism or Controversy section(s) may mean the article does not present a neutral point of view of the subject. It may be better to integrate the material in those sections into the article as a whole. (June 2009)

From gun control advocates

The NRA is criticized by gun control groups such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Brady Campaign, Million Mom March, and Americans for Gun Safety. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has criticized the NRA for its "warped conception of popular sovereignty...that citizens need to arm themselves to safeguard political liberties against threats by the government."^[26] It went on to add that "[if the NRA members] believe in the right to take up arms to resist government policies they consider oppressive, even when these policies have been adopted by elected officials and subjected to review by an independent judiciary, then they are opposed to constitutional democracy." More specifically, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun violence has stated that, as a result of the NRA's lobbying, gun crime has "soared" and a teenager can "purchase an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle at a gun show without having to show ID and without a background check."^[27] Jim Kessler, of the Third Way (a pro-gun control group that has incorporated Americans for Gun Safety), has also criticized the NRA for promoting a bill that limited information that was disseminated regarding guns that have been used to commit crimes.^[28]

A variety of newspaper editorial boards, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today, disagree with the NRA's policies, such as in September 2004, when the boards called for the extension of the assault weapons ban. Recently, the New York Times has criticized the NRA for promoting politicians that oppose "sensible gun control laws."^[29] In addition, the NRA's publications prompted former U.S. President George H. W. Bush to resign his life-long membership^[30] after they published an advertisement calling federal agents "jack-booted government thugs" out to take away individual gun rights. The NRA later apologized for the letter's language.^[30]

From other gun rights organizations

The NRA has been criticized by other gun rights groups for doing too little to get existing restrictions repealed, and sometimes helping to draft restrictive legislation. This critique is most often voiced by gun rights organizations and libertarians who take a more comprehensive view of the Second Amendment and Bill of Rights, and are viewed as being less amenable to compromise on these issues, e.g. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), and Gun Owners of America (GOA). GOA has castigated the NRA in the past for what it perceives as its willingness to compromise on legislative restrictions concerning access to firearms.^[31]

The JPFO and its leadership has also criticized the NRA's political strategy on several occasions, lambasting what it views as their counterproductive focus on Capitol Hill lobbying, as well as taking the NRA and its leadership to task for not explicitly making a connection between gun control measures introduced in the United States and those implemented by the Weimar Republic and subsequently the Nazi regime in pre-war Germany, as well as other totalitarian, or ineffectual regimes that were eventually overthrown.^[32] To a certain extent, this criticism has been addressed in recent years by Wayne LaPierre, who has attempted to convince the public that the atrocities committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Yugoslavian Civil War, as well as the Rwandan genocide of 1994, can be traced to a lack of institutional, individual gun rights in those countries.

The NRA has also seen internal dissent from its membership, including a prolonged series of verbal attacks and campaigns initiated by Neal Knox, a former vice-president of the organization who attempted to depose both Wayne LaPierre and Tanya Metaksa, the former executive director of the NRA's Institute For Legislative Action, in leadership elections during the late Nineties^[33] which Knox described as putting down a "mutiny".^[34]

In addition to the generic criticism voiced by other more absolutist gun-rights organizations and public figures, Knox and his supporters allege that the NRA has failed to protect the rights of gun-owners during debates over proposed federal gun laws. They cite the NRA's involvement in the passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act, otherwise known as the McClure-Volkmer Act, which amended the Gun Control Act of 1968.^[35]^[36]

Although this represented a significant liberalization of the 1968 Gun Control Act, the fact that the NRA did not seek its outright repeal led some critics, such as Knox, to assert that it had abandoned its members.^{[citation needed]}

References

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (May 2009)

^ ^a ^b NRA-ILA :: About
^ NRA "About Us" webpage, accessed Sept. 9, 2008
^ NRA Institute for Legislative Action News Release, accessed March 15, 2009
^ NRA-ILA
^ FORTUNE Survey: NRA deemed most powerful lobbyist by lawmakers and their staffers
^ NRA Gun Safety Rules
^ FORTUNE Survey
^ "Power of NRA Showcased in U.S. Delegation to Small Arms Conference"
^ Eunice Moscoso, "NRA campaign against Obama carries $10 million price tag," Palm Beach Post, October 21, 2008)
^ "Washington Post"
^ [1]
^ [2]CNN transcript of NRA video interviews, aired on July 2, 2008 by Glenn Beck
^ [3] NRA video on You-tube of Katrina victims describing illegal confiscation of personal firearms.
^ Facts on File 1980 Yearbook, p.844
^ Vest, Jason (April 3, 2000). "The NRA Goes Global". Salon. http://www.salon.com/politics2000/feature/2000/04/03/nra/index1.html.
^ KHOU : 100,000 evacuees in Houston
^ Columbia Daily Tribune : Officials grab guns, holdouts
^ The Arizona Republic : Police prepare to use force
^ SFGate : Judge invalidates Prop. H handgun ban
^ NRA Publications as of 2009
^ American Rifleman website
^ NRAILA : National Rifle Association Announces New Officers and Board Members
^ NRA Advancement: Home
^ Dave Boyer, “NRA aims gun range at heart of New York,” Washington Times, May, 2000.
^ Scott A. Lukas, “A Politics of Reverence and Irreverence: Social Discourse on Theming Controversies,” pp. 271-293 in The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation, and Self, ed. Scott A. Lukas (Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2007), ISBN 0739121421
^ ""Gun Culture Threatens Democracy"". http://www.csgv.org/site/c.pmL5JnO7KzE/b.3924845/apps/s/content.asp?ct=4538211. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
^ ""The Gun Industry, the Gun Lobby, and the National Rifle Association"". http://www.bradycampaign.org/issues/gunlobby/. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
^ ""The Tiahrt Amendment: Time to Shoot It Down"". http://dispatch.thirdway.org/articles/2007/06/08/the-tiahrt-amendment-time-to-shoot-it-down. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
^ ""The Gun Lobby's Loss"". http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/opinion/02tue3.html?_r=3. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
^ ^a ^b "NRA Apologizes for 'Jack Boot' Letter" Seattle Times (AP) 05/18/95 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19950518&slug=2121718
^ Letter To The Directors Of The NRA
^ Aaron Zelman Talks to the NRA Board
^ After an inflammatory ad in a national magazine, which called federal agents "jack-booted government thugs", and portrayed them in a negative light out to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, former U.S. President George Bush resigned his life-long membership in the organization, angry over such accusations at federal law enforcement agencies. TIME magazine
^ Neal Knox : The Mutiny At NRA
^ Gun Law News: Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986
^ FOPA, A Historical and Legal Perspective

v • d • e Gun interest groups in the U.S.

Pro-gun rights	Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms · Gun Owners of America · Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership · Law Enforcement Alliance of America · Liberty Belles · National Rifle Association · Pink Pistols · Second Amendment Foundation · Second Amendment Sisters · Students for Concealed Carry on Campus · National Shooting Sports Foundation

Pro-gun control	American Hunters and Shooters Association · Americans for Democratic Action · Americans for Gun Safety Foundation · Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence · Coalition to Stop Gun Violence · Joyce Foundation · League of Women Voters · Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition · Violence Policy Center

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