In the wake of the mass shooting at Parkland Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead on Feb. 14, a bipartisan group of legislators met with President Trump at the White House to discuss the epidemic of gun violence. At the conclusion of that meeting, Trump called for legislation that would strengthen background checks, address mental illness, and spoke in support of raising the age limit for the purchase of military-style assault rifles from 18 to 21 years old. In recognizing the difficulty of passing new gun control laws, the president repeatedly accused members of his own Republican party of being “afraid of the NRA (National Rifle Association).
However, just two weeks later, after the president met with NRA officials in the Oval Office, the White House unveiled its plan to combat school shootings, which included a proposal to arm teachers, but no measure that would raise the age limit on buying assault rifles. A dramatic shift by the president, who now embraced the controversial policy positions of the NRA.
The power and influence of the NRA has long been one of the major obstacles standing in the way of passing widely supported gun control legislation in Congress. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of the new book, “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment.” Here, she discusses the hidden origins of the NRA, which has transformed from a club promoting target shooting and hunting, to an organization now identified with right-wing culture wars and white nationalism.
ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ: The National Rifle Association, which up to 1977, had been a pretty benign, kind of stupid organization for men and boys, you know of target shooting, and hunting, recreational shooting. They never, ever talked about the Second Amendment.
But a white nationals organization, kind of neo-Nazis, they were anti-Semitic, anti-black – it was in the state of Washington, out in eastern Washington, which is still a hotbed of white nationalism. This organization called the Second Amendment Foundation formed, and very specifically, about promoting the Second Amendment as a right, a way for them to arm themselves legally because they were always getting busted for having all kinds of weapons, automatic weapons and stuff. Because NRA was a membership organization, they began joining. And they got enough of a solid group together that got themselves elected and actually they took over the leadership of the organization.
BETWEEN THE LINES: What was the year that this group took over the NRA?
ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ: 1977.
BETWEEN THE LINES: So today’s NRA, very different from the one that existed before the late ’70s, they seem to be very much keyed into right-wing culture wars and as you describe them, they also seem to push hot button issues related to racism and white supremacy. Tell us a little bit about today’s NRA and how you think they’ll survive in a climate where the public is becoming ever more angry and outraged at this culture which promotes the idea that the more guns, the guns the better.
ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ: Well, they succeeded a lot and their success is based not on money or bribing legislators. That’s an easy explanation and falls into the U.S. tendency of finding a culprit, a single culprit and if you can just wipe that out, everything will be okay.
But’s much scarier than that because they are a membership organization of 5 million and a lot of them are passive members – they just want the discounts and whatever. Apparently among those, you know, they’re actually losing some memberships over their radicalism, you know, it’s not something everyone wants or buys into, think they’re getting into.
But there is this core group of about a million. I’m talking about not a small conspiracy, but a mass-based organization. There’s no way any organization on the left in the United States comes anywhere near those kinds of numbers of dedicated, hardcore volunteers. They’re not being paid. They’re citizens in every congressional district in the United States and they make sure that anyone who’s elected – either on the local level – because most gun laws are state laws, even the municipal level, federal level – they’ve largely been the dedicated base that has brought Trump to the presidency and the entire Congress is afraid of them. Because all they have to do is send out the names. They watch what’s going on in Washington. And they send out alerts. They’ve become very much more effective with social media, just as other movements have.
It is a white nationalist, mass-based organization and that is why it’s so powerful. There’s no way it could be that powerful if just an organization, no matter how much money they had. And they actually don’t operate with a whole lot of money – $300 million a year is their budget. And when they give to Congress members, it’s usually like a gift, a thank you. It’s not really a contribution to their campaigns. They don’t need it. They have the Koch brothers. They have these huge, rich right-wing donors. They don’t need the NRA’s money. It’s their political base. But the evangelicals, which are the largest single voting group in the United States, are allied with the NRA.
For more information, visit “Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment” at citylights.com.
