Is Gun Control Just About Guns?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 3, 2000 | by Kelly Patricia O'Meara

The National Rifle Association has more than 3 million members. Who are these people and why do they believe that their constitutional rights are being threatened?

As most Americans were starting out for the office or hurrying to homeroom classes, details of yet another tragic school shooting were unfolding in Fort Gibson, Okla. Miraculously no fatalities occurred, but immediately the focus for many was how a churchgoing 13-year-old honor student obtained the 9mm semiautomatic handgun he reportedly used in an attack that left five middle-school children seriously wounded. It turned out that his father bought it legally at a Wal-Mart six years ago.

While there seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason for this round of violence in tight-knit Fort Gibson, it was no time at all before gun opponents saw this as another opportunity to blacken defenders of the constitutional right to keep and bear firearms.

The National Rifle Association, or NRA, is regarded widely as the world's premier provider of firearms education and one of the foremost defenders of Second Amendment rights. It long has advocated vigorous prosecution for crimes committed with firearms, but members believe there already are more than enough laws to prove that gun control does not stop criminal shootings. Indeed, four days after the shooting in Oklahoma, a student in the Netherlands, a country known for its draconian gun-control laws, opened up on classmates, wounding a teacher and four other teen-agers. "It is too early to know exactly what happened in Oklahoma ... but we do know that this is the kind of circumstance that can't be addressed by legislation. These issues go well beyond lawful firearms ownership and political debate," says Bill Powers, director of public affairs for the NRA. Everything this young man did with a firearm already is as illegal as you can make it. What law can you pass that will stop what happened in Oklahoma?"

In the meantime, critics of the NRA -- those who believe tougher gun laws could have prevented the rash of recent school shootings -- say the organization has lost sight of its original purpose and has set itself up for trouble by continuing to characterize itself as being committed to firearm safety. For instance, Joe Sudbay, political director of Hand Gun Control, Inc., the nation's largest gun-control group, says, "There are two NRAs. There's the Field and Stream membership and then there's the Soldier of Fortune leadership. There's a big disconnect between the membership and the leadership, with the latter having an extreme political agenda." There's a small element of hard-core gun and antigovernment people who run the NRA, Sudbay continues, "and so the NRA is going to become more and more marginalized."

Osha Gray Davidson, author of Under Fire: The NRA and the Battle for Gun Control, tells Insight that "most gun owners are not members of the NRA because the NRA makes them look irresponsible, especially after how they reacted in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. At one time, the NRA was truly a mix of America, but they've gone through a number of incarnations and they've gone from a hunting-and-fishing organization to a force today that is about lobbying and fighting all attempts at gun control."

"The NRA now fights," Davidson says, "to reduce and repeal gun laws altogether. They believe that the Second Amendment shouldn't have any restriction at all." Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, disagrees with this assessment and contends the NRA never has strayed from its roots and even is committed to enforcing existing gun laws. So who's right, and what is the NRA?

In 1871, the year of the great Chicago fire, Civil War veterans Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate founded the NRA "to promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis." As a practical matter this has meant rifle training, education and marksmanship.

For example, the NRA distributes dozens of pamphlets and books about firearm safety, including: Home Firearm Safety; Smart & Safe -- Handling Your New Gun; Hunting and Wildlife Management; NRA Education & Training Division, Eye and Ear Care; Gun Safety Rules; A Parent's Guide to Gun Safety; Responsible Hunting; Refuse to Be a Victim -- 42 Strategies for Personal Safety; and The Eddie Eagle Gun Safety Program, which instructs children in preschool through grade six on accident prevention. But who is getting this information and is it, as the NRA's critics suggest, going to a paramilitary army of antigovernment militia types?

While the NRA says it never has compiled detailed information about its membership, LaPierre says it is "both white and blue collar, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative" and is represented by people of all races, ethnicities and religious backgrounds. "Your typical NRA member," says LaPierre, "is your neighbor." He says members are Americans brought together by a fundamental belief in the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights. The NRA is proud of its membership of more than 3 million.